Social media has been a powerful driving force during this and previous election cycles. President Barack Obama used social media to great effect in order to win his two presidential runs. Now, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are doing the same thing, but with decidedly more disastrous results. One study has actually revealed the power of social media to change the stances of voters, making them more or less favorable to particular candidates depending on what they saw.
According to a survey done by the Pew Research center, a significant chunk of voters was swayed by what they saw on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. The survey also revealed that liberals were more likely to change their minds because of the content that was shared by their friends. In the case of Hillary Clinton, those whose opinions were affected by social media were three times more likely to have a negative opinion of her than positive.
This spells trouble for the Democratic nominee as the Trump campaign has consistently come out on top when it came to social media strategies. The biggest difference lay with how often the Trump campaign used platforms like Facebook to reach voters, Yahoo reports, and how different his camp’s approach has been at using social media.
Ezy Insights actually made a report on both major campaigns’ strategies regarding social media and revealed that Trump beat Clinton at engagement by up to three times on Facebook. In terms of using pre-shot and Live videos, Trump also came out as the clear winner. This does not bode well for the Democratic candidate.
Trump has also had a more significant presence on Twitter than Clinton, which NPR reports could prove disastrous. The political discourse within the Twitter-sphere is basically one big hot mess of a dumpster fire.
There’s more trolling than engagement on Twitter, but it still holds sway over the opinions of those that follow the trend. If Trump wins this election, it will be in no small part due to social media.


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