Major Project One

Recently, a study conducted by Pew Research Center concluded that around sixty-eight percent of adult Americans receive their news from social media. These social platforms have not only connected people to what their friends and family are doing, but what is going on around the world. Political polarization has caused for shifts in both elections and in public opinion. While terms like conservative and Republican alongside liberal and Democratic used to not be synonymous terms, recently they have become interchangeable in the sense that so many groups have become polarized within their own groups. This has shaken up Washington due to this uncontrollable force, being Twitter, that is able to make or break a politician’s career.

This matters to me because I am a political science major, and I eventually would like to work in the United States government. During the summer of 2017, I was chosen as a US Senate Page, and I was able to work inside the building that I had merely peered into two years prior. During this experience, I was able to witness the voting on the proposed GOP Healthcare Bill, and I was able to gain valuable insight into what it means to be a governmental employee. The most significant thing I learned was just how much legislation impacts real people; I was able to meet a group of parents and their children with disabilities who were there with a lobbying group and see how the Healthcare proposal would positively and negatively impact their lives. While I was there I also witnessed many protests, and I saw just how polarizing these hot button issues can be, and how much resentment people can hold against one another for varying political ideologies. This is really important because while this polarization may just seem like insignificant fights on social media or on CSPAN, this concept has the ability to affect who gets elected and which individuals are properly or improperly represented in the government.

Through my major, I have learned a lot about public opinion, which is a subsector of the political science field. I have learned how the American population has become more polarized through partisanship, ideology, and representation. This is something that has affected how politicians have crafted their campaigns and how they have advocated for different pieces of legislation.

In addition to this, I am an avid user of Twitter, and while I cannot say that it is my main source for current events, I would be lying to say that I do not learn about many current issues through the app and scroll through it to see others’ opinions on varying issues. Twitter is unique in the sense that it allows people to convey their ideas freely, but it limits their character count, causing for many creative liberties to be made when getting a point across. So, while virtually anyone is able to share their views on anything they want, they are only allocated 180 characters, although more recently it has become 280 characters.

The platform in question, Twitter, was established in 2006 by Jack Dorsey. This new method of communication changed writing technology in the sense that it was originally created as an SMS-like communication platform, and it was designed to combine a group message feel with the standard format of social media at the time. By 2007, over 60,000 tweets were being sent out per day. One of Twitter’s most notable characteristics is its implementation of a maximum character count--originally being 180 characters. This was implemented to allow for Twitter to maintain that SMS feel that Dorsey originally intended.

One thing that has made Twitter special, is the new form of jargon and slang that has arisen from the platform. In the sense, this application has added to casual conversation and bled into offline interactions. In this way, Twitter has been able to hold its ground online as well as in “real life.” Certain functions such at “@ ing” a fellow tweeter, or retweeting another’s tweet, were originally created through the public’s regular usage. Members of the platform would place an @ symbol before someone else’s username to indicate they were attempting to talk to them, and in response Twitter allowed the @ symbol to allow for a sense of tagging someone else in your tweet. In the same way, members of the platform would place an “RT” in front of a tweet they liked and wanted to retweet; in response Twitter officially established a retweet button. This form of communication has changed the way others interact directly with one another and how people pass on one another’s ideas.

This has caused for polarization in the sense that social media has made certain bills that the public may not normally be aware of more accessible to the general public, so it is less likely that certain politicians will side with their opposing party, because this makes them appear less appealing to voters whom they share partisanship with. Therefore, many politicians have become more polarized and burrowed into their party as a “safety move” and it has allowed them to seem more trustworthy to their party leader and also to the voters in their party.  And with people becoming more polarized, as a result these governmental officials only rest themselves even further into their individual parties.

Another special thing about Twitter is that its intended audience, while it originally only contained Generation Z and millennials, it now includes many adults in their middle and late stages. This is because of Twitter’s growing popularity in terms of conducting business, so just like with Facebook, many adults have created accounts in an attempt to stay in the loop about what is going on in the world. The wide array of individuals on the platform allows for broad discussion, and it often leads to heated debates because of the intense diversity on the app.

However, even with the incredible diversity Twitter presents, on social media it is still easy for individuals to become polarized with the inclusion of a follow button. In this case, confirmation bias causes many users to only follow people and news outlets that share their own political opinion, causing people to have a more partisan view on current events. A recent study by Pew Research Center states that forty-seven percent of conservative Americans consistently get their news from Fox News, whereas forty percent of Democrats are more likely to consistently get their news from CNN, MSNBC, NPR, or The New York Times.

In a study conducted, both liberals and conservatives were given the same thirty-six sources and chosen to decipher them to see which ones they trusted and which ones they distrusted. In the study liberals trusted twenty-eight of the news sources, whereas conservatives were shown to distrust twenty-four of the thirty-six sources. This shows that even when shown the same sources, many individuals have been shifted to far left or right that they view opinions from the other as not only wrong but untrustworthy, and a large contributor to this result is the fact that these people are constantly surrounded by like-minded people thanks to a Twitter timeline that is able to be fully catered to them. This is different from normal life, because one can simply mute conversations that are more uncomfortable to engage with and instead settle and stick with one party consistently.

In terms of the usage of a hashtag to emphasize a point, hashtag usage like that of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the #MeToo movement have caused for major ripples between the parties and even led to changes in Washington. Sexual harassment and assault has become an issue that has been more so addressed in the news, and with Democratic senator Al Franken, allegations against him caused him to be pressured to resign from his position by other members of his party. In addition, Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore received an increased amount of backlash from members of his party due to allegations of sexual assault against minors and caused him to lose his election against a Democratic candidate, which shocked many due to Alabama’s high conservative status.

These hashtags have been used widely with #BlackLivesMatter being used on Twitter over thirty million times; #LoveWins was used over seven million times the day same sex marriage was legalized and three million times the following day; #MAGA was shown to have been used 205,238 times per day from Election Day 2016 through May 1, 2018. These hashtags allow people to join in the movements, but it distracts them and causes them to believe that they are actually making a change when they may or may not be. Because of this, many users have taken on a more active role in speaking up about certain issues through social media platforms, Twitter being one of the main outlets for protest, and many individuals such as progressive David Hogg, who advocates for the March for Our Lives shooting, and conservative Kaitlin Bennett, who advocates for the Second Amendment, have become famous for their social media presence and its relation to politics. As political theorist Park Sinjin states, "For these political celebrities, social media has become a particularly useful platform. Due to its unique ‘follow’ and ‘retweet’ features, Twitter is not only a social networking tool, but it also possesses broadcaster-like network characteristics, allowing it to function as a conveyer of news.”

When focusing specifically on the Black Lives Matter movement, this hashtag worked to enable African American individuals to speak up on political issues when many were previously denied a seat at the table. This movement was launched in 2013 following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a black unarmed teenager who had been shot by George Zimmerman. The social movement was launched to direct attention to injustices facing African Americans, including racial profiling, police brutality, and inequality within the criminal justice system. The movement began to pick up following the devastating events that occurred in Ferguson, and in 2014 Yes! Magazine awarded the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag as one of the twelve most influential hashtags of the year, and the American Dialect Society declared #BlackLivesMatter as their Word of the Year.

What really kickstarted the Black Lives Matter movement, though, came from factors other than just the hashtag. In addition to movement activists, contributors to the movement’s popularization include: bipartisan reports, black celebrities and entertainers, mainstream news organizations, “young black Twitter”, and conservatives in violent opposition to the movement.

What has also added to the movement is the creation of the Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter movements in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement. Both of these organizations have their own hashtags, and while some of these opponents act out through protest, a majority of them take to Twitter to voice their opinions. With these hashtags being put in many users’ profile biographies, it allows people to immediately assert themselves into a certain political ideology, creating a positive cycle between political polarization and social media usage. The more people use their political ideology as a method of defining themselves, the more polarized the American population becomes, and thus the more inclined they feel about voicing their polarizing viewpoints.

The Black Lives Matter’s concise sense of branding in their movement is what has allowed their ideas to spread to quickly. The short hashtag, one that is popularly shortened even further to #BLM, is something that can easily be shared around the internet, and as previously stated, it has been shared millions of times between individuals. The implementation of the Black Lives Matter slogan on various pieces of merchandise, and with many celebrities, such as singer Beyoncé, voicing their support for the movement, it has quickly turned into an international phenomenon.

The 2016 presidential election was unlike any other in the sense that it had such a far-right candidate receive the party vote and self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders receive popular support from so many individuals, even leading in the New Hampshire polls and many expecting he would win against eventual Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. And in this election period, both Trump and Clinton finished with extremely low approval ratings; Trump finished with the worst ratings with sixty-one percent of voters viewing him unfavorably and Clinton with fifty-two percent of voters viewing her unfavorably. However, it also varied in the sense that while Hillary Clinton took a very conventional approach to campaigning, Donald Trump changed game in the sense that he had many moments that could be compared to politician Rick Perry’s “oops” moment, however, Trump was somehow able to maintain party and public support. Through social media, the Make America Great Again slogan became a brand more so compared to a campaign, something that eventually helped him in the long run.

Donald Trump being able to run as a “celebrity” and utilize Twitter as a main source of campaigning allowed him to become more of an entertaining figure, something that, surprisingly, is more important to some voters that other more qualifiable factors. The strategy of appearing more like an everyman, something that past conservative figures such as Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan have utilized in their careers, is a tactic that helps polarizing candidates seem more likable to the everyday voter. As political theorist Jerimiah Morelock argues, "The ideological confusion is further strengthened by Trump's self-branded persona: he is the guy-next-door who happens to live in a gilded loft in Manhattan.” By utilizing a more colloquial method of communication, Donald Trump asserts himself as “one of the people,” whether that was his original intent or not. Data scientist David Robinson asserted that Donald Trump’s tendency to act as an “entertainer” on the social platform caused for a lot of both positive and negative interest from the American public, which ultimately is what landed him the Presidency. However, it is to be noted that Trump’s aides were speculated to have taken over his social media accounts a few days prior to Election Day in attempt to make the candidate appear more polished and confident.

With Donald Trump’s constant usage of Twitter to relay his political stances, it allows for a more one-dimensional platform, and thus creates politics to become more black-and-white. This causes for less intellectual discussion and more blind acceptance from his more conservative followers. With Twitter’s limited character count, he has more of an excuse to give these simplified answers, and political theorist Jerimiah Morelock adds that, “the use of simplistic language to talk about complex social issues where 'the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations' is an attempt to downplay the importance of these issues.” In this way, he is able to quickly deflect from the flaws he may be showcasing during his first term, and this will definitely be a strategy in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Elections when Trump attempts to run for reelection.

In conclusion, Twitter’s unique platform that allows for concise ideas to easily be spread has changed how politicians and the public view politics. While the general public still do not have official legislative power, social media platforms like Twitter have allowed more ease in the masses forming to protest against certain candidates and policies. This power that the public holds has caused many politicians to thus choose their niche and bury themselves within their own party to avoid themselves being shunned by voters with matching partisanship. This has thus caused politics to become more polarized.

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