Pro
Tesla Bethel
Lantern Staff
There are positives and negatives to everything in the celestial world we reside in. With social media, there comes many positives in this election season.
With the election coming up, social media has become a battlefield of “dank memes” about the political world. Now, you might not think that’s a positive, but if it makes you smile and brightens your mood, then I for one think that is a strong positive. Social media is not all sunshine and rainbows, but there are a lot of positives to come from it.
For one, social media is an easy advertisement. Usually, one would only see commercials on television or over the radio, but social media has created a new form of political propaganda. For instance, former Sen. Bernie Sanders took millennials by storm with the hashtag “Feel the Bern.”
Jill Stein is another example. Without social media, many of us wouldn’t have ever known of her as a candidate, let alone a part of the Green Party. We millennials also never would have known that she may be facing charges for spray painting construction machines while protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline or Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate. Without social media, we never would have heard about him without deliberately looking.
Another positive that comes from social media with politics is that it can unveil nasty or hidden things about a candidate that may change one’s mind. For instance, think back to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the whole deleted emails fiasco, or recall how Donald Trump is going to trial for sexual assaulting a 13-year-old girl. These are some pretty sketchy things that would definitely make some individuals either refuse to vote or change the candidate they are voting for.
Social media can either alleviate or ignite fear in the populous. For instance, people may have opened their hearts to letting more refugees into the country when President Barack Obama read the letter from a six-year-old boy. For a moment, we were a country no longer afraid, but heartbroken and wanting to help. We stopped looking at refugees as potential terrorists and instead looked at them as humans who are afraid and homeless.
Social networking has helped people get more involved with politics and become more informed in many ways. What started out as just a way to get people to connect became a way for people to proudly express themselves and their beliefs. I for one think that’s the biggest positive impact social media has had on this country.
Con
Kaitlin Parks
Lantern Staff
Just in the last two elections, social media has become a strong factor in United States politics. But in this year’s election, social media seems to overrule all other outlets of retrieving information on candidates and their platforms.
Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are three of the most popular social media sites in the United States, and they have started becoming political. Popular news sources such as ATTN, NowThis, Occupy Democrats, CNN, AJ+, NPR and Daily Mail have made their way to these social media sites. They have videos pertaining to the presidential election including personal videos from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Republican representative Donald Trump, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party representative Jill Stein.
The problem with social media linking up with politics is that bias easily comes into play. Most of the videos on these social media sites are already one-sided and persuade the viewer to think a certain way. The videos also tend to miss the entire story or information and choose which parts to use and remove; they include feelings and opinions, often omitting facts and figures. This causes those watching the videos to think more close-mindedly. University of Hawaii researchers from the Hawaii Computer-Human Interaction Lab recently produced a study looking at how adults born after 1980 use social media to make political decisions.
“People who are exposed to political information on social media might be making decisions differently than those reading traditional news,” said Misa Maruyama, co-author of the study.
Social media is used to interact and connect with people outside of real life interactions, but is also used for exposing people, whether that be positive or negative. Because social media is never face to face, it is impeccably easier to say things without conscientious thought. Republican representative Donald Trump is a prime example of this behavior. Trump has a numerous amount of awful tweets including the following: “I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11.” He also tweeted “@ariannahuff is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man–he made a good decision.”
Clinton is also guilty of this behavior.
“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make” said Hillary Clinton during a veteran’s forum.
Because of this emotional disconnection on social media, insensitive statements by the future leaders of America are being made for the entire country to see. When a natural disaster or national emergency occurs, everyone seems to flock to social media to give their opinion on the situation. People need to do the research for themselves without the primarily biased ideas on social media.