I’m the One: Social Media, Social Identity, and Elections

Jason Anthony Cain

doi:10.30935/ojcmt/9142

I’m the One: Social Media, Social Identity, and Elections

Jason Anthony Cain ¹ ^*

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Abstract

This study surveyed voters to investigate why they shared political information on social media during the 2016 election. A strong social identity informed by political alignment was found to predict both polarization and more sharing, while feeling politically misaligned was found to decrease information sharing, supporting a spiral of silence phenomenon. Those with higher scores on a scale of social identity were more likely to feel sharing information to be an influential activity.

Keywords

social identity social media political communication

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/9142

Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, Volume 10, Issue 4, October 2020, Article No: e202025

Published Online: 04 Nov 2020

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Article Downloads: 177

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I’m the One: Social Media, Social Identity, and Elections

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