The social media company is no stranger to watching voting and post activity analytics, keeping track of trends with some intriguing and perhaps unsettling blog updates regarding national voter turnout on Election Day. However, one of the bigger controversies is the question of how our newsfeeds might influence our decisions.
According to The Verge, “Facebook had been running another newsfeed experiment, giving news stories an algorithmic boost for certain users to see if it heightened civic engagement, as measured by a questionnaire.” Do these algorithms guarantee that Facebook viewers gain exposure to unbiased items in their news feeds? If not, then it’s certainly possible that our newsfeeds could subtly influence a user’s affinity for specific candidates or party alliances.
The Peer Pressure of Status Updates
One of the most intriguing things about Facebook’s involvement in voting culture is the ability to share a status update by clicking on the “I’m A Voter” button. This small widget allowed you to see exactly how many Facebook users voted this year. Researchers believe that this status sharing increases the likelihood that your peers will hit the polls. According to research described in The New Republic, “users notified of their friends’ voting were 0.39 percent more likely to vote than those in the control group.”
If politicians haven’t been thinking about social media engagement in the past, they will need to do so now. During previous year elections, the same study revealed that these Facebook voter statuses “caused an additional 340,000 votes to be cast that day.” These numbers cannot be ignored, especially as politicians try to mobilize younger Americans to get to the polls.
Voting and Location Data
In the past, Facebook has also included polling locators to help social media users find the nearest voting station. This might not seem like a big deal in states that use postal systems, but it can certainly make a difference in areas that rely on physical polling areas. This added level of convenience can certainly influence the number of people who turn up to vote. For example, someone who might not be planning to participate on Election Day might be surprised to discover a polling location near their workplace or home. This additional information could be the tipping point between passive, non-voting and heading out to cast a ballot.
The Washington Post notes that Facebook ran a real-time heat map during the 2014 elections to display activity across the nation as users clicked the “I voted” button. This intriguing animated gif shows a heavy amount of activity on the east and west coasts, which is to be expected in densely populated cities. The map also shows demographics data of voters using social media, displaying gender and age group percentages. According to the data from the most recent election, the demographic group with the greatest representation were female voters between the ages of 25 to 44.
Newsfeed Unease
On the surface, Facebook’s efforts to increase voter participation seem like praiseworthy endeavors. However, some of concerned about the potential of social media to impact entire elections, especially since Facebook has come under fire for social experiments in the past. Mother Jones says that Facebook has been “quietly conducting experiments on how the company’s actions can affect the voting behavior of its users,” describing data experiments conducted by Facebook back in 2012, when 1.9 million news feeds were manipulated to display more hard news content. One could contend that the seemingly random news that appears in our feeds can influence our future decisions.
If the social media company is applying to changes to some, but not all news feeds, then it’s possible that even voting behaviors could be swayed by what dominates news feeds. Just take a look at the controversy that embroiled Facebook in the summer of 2014, when the social media company was accused of conducting unethical psychological experiments by funneling negative or positive content into news feeds.
The influence of social media on voters is a phenomenon that is likely here to stay. However, users and politicians must take care to recognize the potential pitfalls of these systems, along with their advantages.
