College Students’ Disengagement in Elections Due to Twitter Messages

College Students’ Disengagement in Elections Due to Twitter Messages

By: Carolyn Deal

Twitter affects college students’ participation in election polls due to messages spread across the platform.

“The social networks that exist have become divided among partisan lines. People follow the Twitter accounts of people they agree with or believe in. That creates a concern about polarization. Self-reinforcing messages can drive people further and further apart,” Stonehill College Political Science and International Studies Department Chair, Robert Rodgers said.

Twitter is just one of the social media outlets used by both Democrat and Republican groups to influence people. One study found some people don’t trust what they see on social media.

“Thirty-nine percent of young Americans indicated that they never trust Facebook… Similarly, 38% indicated that they never trust Wall Street, 35% never trust Twitter, and 32% never trust the media,” Spring 2021 Harvard Youth Poll stated.

Voters use social media to access information, but the study indicates that few people accept others’ opinions along with their own.

“Over the last decade, the number of young Americans who see politics as partisan, and politicians as selfish, has risen sharply. Seventy-six percent of youth… agreed with the statement, ‘We need more open-mindedness in politics,’ only 4% disagreed,” Spring 2021 Harvard Youth Poll said.

The appeal of college students exercising their right to vote has changed over the years. Trends have formed to explain the age group targeted and lack thereof.

“The future is in the hands of younger people so both parties have made an effort to reach out to younger voters with the idea of hooking them when they’re young to allow them to stay party faithful through the years. But given low turnout rates, the significance of younger people voting has diminished,” Rodgers said.

Political engagement can be part of elections.

“I do not believe enough people from our age group get out to vote. Things seem to be moving in the right direction with young people getting more involved in politics, but there is still an extremely large group who doesn’t seem to care about who is governing their country. I believe, in order to have an accurate representative democracy that follows the general will of the people, we need more people from all age groups to exercise their right to vote,” Craig Myers, sophomore political science and international studies double major said.

Interest in choosing a politician varies among people.

“I think this is mostly due to the fact that a lot of people in my age group do not generally care about politics or are not interested enough to do the research required to choose a candidate to vote for, especially when it comes to primaries,” sophomore engineering major, Brian Farrell said.

Another individual recognizes her peers’ disinterest in exercising their right to vote.

“A lot of my peers exercise their right to vote, but I also know a lot of people my age do not exercise that right, even though they easily could,” sophomore criminology major, Madison Cabral said.

Studies show doubt about people’s choices when participating in elections.

“…less than 10 percent of youth said they were “not at all confident” that votes would be counted accurately in 2020… 73% of young white voters and 68% of young voters of color were either ‘not too confident’ or just ‘somewhat confident’ that votes would be counted accurately this year,” CIRCLE analysis of AP VoteCast data from the Associated Press said.

Primaries may not bring as much attention from voters as final elections do.

“It seems like people around my age only vote for big elections, like presidential ones, but there are so many more smaller scale ones that people do not vote in,” senior English and communications double major, Alexandra Koulouris said.