Political Conflicts In Social Media: How It Influences And Mechanisms

Problem statement

The way social media has changed communication and connection, it has also re-shaped the way wars are waged, covered and consumed. According to Bonilla & Rosa (2015), social media is considered as the battleground of the 21^st century. The use of social media has increased over the years that have resulted in maximization of the active social users. Social media has minimized the barriers of communication, increased the speed of communication and the ability to be updated through this platform. However, conflicts are natural to arise as an idea might not be preferred and supported by the billion of social media users thereby, giving rise to conflicts.

The social media reports protests, parades, rising gas prices, presidential platforms and wars going on in the world to which some of the social media users agrees while other disagree. The disagreement with the political posts on the social media leads to conflicts among the social media users that turn violent at times. The social media users also get violent and abusive if they do not support the political changes that give rise of words of war. This is a problem as social media is a medium of communication and the platform of sharing views and opinions (Trottier & Fuchs, 2014).

The thesis statement is “how social media influence conflict and contentious politics and trough what mechanism is this happening.”

The aim of the research is to analyze the political conflicts in the social media.

The objectives of the research are:

• To understand the expansion and significance of social media
• To investigate the political conflicts over the social media
• To critically analyze the mechanisms that facilitates conflict and contentious politics over the social media
• To provide suitable recommendations for mitigating conflict and contentious politics over the social media

The research questions are:

• What is the significance of social media and how has it expanded over the years?
• What are the political conflicts over the social media?
• What are the mechanisms that facilitate conflict and contentious politics over the social media?
• What are the suitable recommendations for mitigating conflict and contentious politics over the social media?

This research is significant as conducting this research will help in analyzing the various political conflicts over the social media. This study aims towards understanding and analyzing the concept and significance of social media and its role in supporting and criticizing the various political scenarios. This will also help in identifying the gaps that leads to conflicts and contentious politics over the social media and the mechanisms that are facilitating the development of such scenarios (Kavada, 2015).

Both independent and dependent variables are identified in this chapter based on which the overall structure of the literature review has been formulated. The literature review of the thesis talks and discusses about social media, its growth and expansion, its types and the significance it has on today’s world. Knowing that social media is used largely used as a communication platform, the political conflicts are highly prevalent on the virtual platform making it a matter of concern. In addition to, this chapter identifies the gap as well as critically analyzes the probable reasons that is resulting this happening.

Advancement of technology has facilitated the use of social media since the origination. Though the function of social media is similar, it has different definition. As commented by Perrin (2015), social media is defined as an interactive computer-mediated technology that allows building and sharing of information, ideas, causes and interests. However, as argued by Scott (2015), social media is defined as the interactive 2.0 internet based application that facilities communication regardless location and time. The core characteristics of social media are its interactive platform that facilitates communication and connection among people throughout the globe. The emergence of social media has brought the world population much closer.

Thesis statement

According to Gerbaudo (2018), the concept of social media considers it as a user-generated platform that facilitates the posting and sharing of posts, photographs, videos and comments. Thus, social media is used as a medium that allows the individuals or groups to support or criticize a cause or information. However, as criticized by Ruths and Pfeffer (2014), social media is considered as the platform that allows the individuals or groups to create profiles that are service-specific. The social media are accessed generally by using web-based technologies such as laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets. The use of these electronic services influences interaction and communication for sharing; discussing, co-creating and modifying user generated or pre-generated contents.

The social media platforms have more than 100,000,000 registered users that use the virtual platform for both personal and professional use. The social media has gained popularity over the traditional media due to advantages such as highly interactive, operative 24*7, extended reach and transparency. Though the social media has various advantages, the definition of social media itself highlights some drawbacks such as conflicts among the users due to difference in opinions on a particular cause or movement. Social media is also defined as the platform enhances the sense of individual connectedness with both real and online communities (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017).

Since 2004, the growth of social media has been exponential, as it is used by individuals and groups by every small and big purpose. The below picture shows the journey of social media over the years along with the establishment of new social media platforms in the years and the popularity gained by then over the years. The concept and emergence of social media was seen in 2002 and since then there is no looking back for the virtual platform.

Figure 1: Timeline of Social Media

(Source: Sustein, 2018)

Figure 2: Global social media penetration rate

(Source: Cook, 2017)

The figure above highlights the penetration rate of social media around the globe. From the figure it can be said that social media has grown, as the global average is approximately 31%.

Figure 3: Social media use around the world

(Source: Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2016)

The above figure suggests that the number of social media users globally is 3.196 billion and is said to rise by 13% each year. The number of social media users by smartphone was estimated 5.135 billion and is expected to rise 4% each year. For example, in 2004, Facebook the most used social media platform had only 1 million active users. However, by the 2011 it grew so large that the population of active users on social media was considered to that with the population of a country. This has resulted in more than 1 billion registered users with a personal mission of connecting 5 billion people globally.

Figure 4: Annual Growth of Social Media Users

(Source: Filo, Lock & Karg, 2015)

The above figure suggests that the use of social media has increased by 13% since January 2013. The use of social media has increased in countries such as Saudi Arabia. Since January 2017, Saudi Arabia has seen increase of social media use each year, that is, 17% increase compared to the global average. Countries such as India, Ghana and Indonesia have seen highest growth of social media, as regions of the country are getting access to internet.

Research aim

Social media networks are the fastest growing industries in the world. Social media has gained huge popularity over the years once the users have come to know about the benefits of using the platform for the betterment of the society and for themselves. As mentioned by Dreher (2014), one of the major advantages of social media is that it is easily accessible from places that have internet facilities. However, as argued by Kaya and Bicen (2016), accessing social media is an issue as still some parts of the world lack high speed internet access. The users of the social media can communicate without the any hassle of being physically present.

As commented by Stephen (2016), social media is significant in today’s world as this allows the users to update themselves with the happenings around the world. Individuals have the access to world news at the tip of their fingers. Information and news around the world includes political issues, weather updates, marketing information and educational information. However, as criticized by Kim, Lim and Brymer (2015), apart from having access to world news, the users are able to either offer support towards a movement and a cause or criticize it without any prohibition. The transparent nature of the social media platform allows all the users to share their opinions and viewpoints that often lead to conflicts in the platform. Under certain circumstances, the difference in opinions and viewpoints leads to verbal violence and severe conflicts. Some of the users do not even hesitate to share abusive content about the fellow users or the public figures. Conflict, abuse and negative comments on the social media platform results in police action for the user that is responsible.  

Also, social media is a platform that debates about critical issues that is happening around the world. In this world of democracy, the each social media user have different viewpoints and the social media offers them a wide and transparent platform for opposing or supporting and be a part of the political movement of changes. Other than sharing individual opinions, the social media platform facilitates sales maximization for the business organizations (Zhu & Chen, 2015).

The different types of social media platform are Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, WhatsApp, Pinterest and Tumblr.

Facebook is one of the most used and preferred social media platforms that were launched in 2004 that has an estimated 2.2 million active users. The launch of Facebook has helped in bringing the world population closer and together. Facebook is accessible from smartphones, laptops and desktop and is used mainly for communication and connecting with people around the world (Bakshy, Messing & Adamic, 2015).

LinkedIn is another type of social media platform that was launched in 2002 December with the aim of helping individuals connect easily with large business organizations for their latest updates and information regarding jobs. This social media platform has an estimated 590 million active members and uses this platform for establishing connections between the employees and the employers (Utz, 2016).

Research objectives

Twitter is a free social media microblogging platform that provides registered members for broadcasting small posts known as tweets. The tweets are limited to 140 characters only and may include hyperlinks also. The main aim of Twitter platform is to ensure communication effectively and quickly but keeping the privacy intact. As of July 2018, Twitter has 335 million active users globally (Weller et al., 2014).

Google+ is a social media platform owned and operated by Google and is an initiative towards connecting people around the world. This social media platform was launched in June, 2011 and has 111 million active users. This social media platform offers users to share, communicate and connect with people around the world (Norouzizadeh Dezfouli et al., 2016).

YouTube was launched in 2005 and is one of the most used and visited websites in the history. This is a video sharing social media platform that features videos from music, politics, education, documentary and live streams. The users are able to view what is happening over this websites and has a huge impact on the users (Burgess & Green, 2018).

WhatsApp is a text message and voice message sending platform owned by Facebook that also allows sending images and other forms of media. This social media platform has an estimated user of one and a half billion making it the most popular messaging application in recent times (Bouhnik & Deshen, 2014).

Pinterest is a social media platform and a mobile application that requires the users to register for using. The users are able to upload, save, sort and manage videos and contents known as pins. This social media platform has 250 million active users that use the platform for sharing, communicating and connecting (Chang et al., 2014).

Politics is a vast topic and in this democratic world opinion of each individual matters, as they have opinions and viewpoints distinct from others. The political landscape has changed over the past decades and social media has played a large role in changing the landscape. As mentioned by Ceron et al., (2014), social media is used as a platform that allows political campaigns and highlighting political agenda. The candidates and supporters of the respective political party post their opinion and comments as well as criticize the individuals opposing the campaign. Different political parties have pages on the social media platforms such as in Facebook and Twitter. In these social media platforms, the political parties broadcast their propaganda and requests according to their needs (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015).

The social media has also transformed the face of politics is due to the speed it offers while spreading news to the followers. News relevant to the parties and poll results are shared by the political parties to its followers across the nation. This is an advantage that social media offers to the political world, as previously the people had to wait for newspaper or TV news shows for getting the latest and updated information about the political party (Fuchs, 2017). Political polls are important part of each of the campaigns. The social media is used by the political parties to reveal the poll results as well as live stream the entire process thereby, allowing the followers and other people have the latest news. In addition to, social media provides an opportunity for the normal population to communicate directly with the politicians. Different politicians have pages on the social media through which the people communicate with the politicians and are responded actively. These pages on the social media allow the people to highlight the issues in their area, fetching support, advising and supporting the movements (Gil De Zuniga, Molyneux & Zheng, 2014).

Research questions

After discussing the role social media in politics, it is time to shed light on the influence of social media on conflicts and contentious politics. As commented by Xenos, Vromen and Loader (2014), social media is a transparent platform that allow the users to share their opinion freely and without any boundaries. As a result, conflicts over political issues on the community pages are very common. As the political parties use the social media platform for campaigns, this provides an opportunity for all the users across the world approve or disapprove the campaigns. This support and criticism about particular campaigns due to difference in opinions leads to conflicts. While some of the users support and encourage the campaigns others criticizes the campaigns that leads to major conflicts.

One of the most important uses of social media in the field of politics is poll promotion and results. As mentioned by Bode (2016), the following up of the poll results along with declaration of the results leads to conflicts and political controversies. This is due to the varied poll results that highlight the winning and losing of political parties. The politicians, leaders, supporters and protestors use the social media platform as a medium for communication with their followers that has turned the virtual platform as the medium for political arguments and controversies. Thus, it can be said that in spite of being an effective communication tool for the politicians and leaders, social media is a major medium for political arguments and controversies (Gibson, 2015).

As political conflicts are gaining popularity over the social media due to the varied opinions of the supporters and protestors of the political parties and leaders, it is important to be able to have plans to deal with the political conflicts over the social media. This is required because the people supporting or opposing an figure out the identity of the individuals and can cause harm due to the conflict (Reuter & Szakonyi, 2015). Out of the different social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter are the most used social platform that has encountered political conflicts. In order to deal with the increasing conflicts in Facebook, the platform have the feature of hiding the individual comments. The “Hide” feature in Facebook provides an opportunity for a user to hide individual comment of any post. As a result, the comment cannot be seen by all the existing users but is only visible to the commenter and the supporters. This provides an opportunity for tailoring the comments on the posts without blocking the other users or deleting the comments (Sandoval-Almazan & Gil-Garcia, 2014).

Similar feature is also found in Twitter, as the social media application has “Mute” option. The enabling of this option in Twitter helps the users to stop the conversations, posts and comments. In addition to, this feature in Twitter also helps to select the keywords to appear in the feeds and mentions. However, the difference with Facebook is that muting the tweet will stop the user to view the comment but will not remove the tweet or the account from Twitter. As a result, other users can still have access to the comments (Yamamoto, Kushin & Dalisay, 2015).

Research rationale

Research philosophy

For this thesis, positivism research philosophy will be applied. This will help in using factual knowledge regarding the expansion of social media over the years by analyzing the significance of the virtual platform in communication and sharing. The use of positivism philosophy will help in using making quantifiable observations on the conflicts based on the authenticity of the data. The researcher will be able to consider the different social media platforms and its influence on conflicts and contentious politics (Mackey & Gass, 2015). The use of pragmatism philosophy will not be preferred as using both positivism and interpretivism philosophies will make the thesis complex. On the other hand, the use of interpretivism philosophy will be not preferred as this will fail to ensure authenticity to the thesis, as this philosophy lacks the use of factual knowledge (Taylor, Bogdan & DeVault, 2015).  

Deductive approach will be used for this thesis. The concept of deductive approach offers the provision to make suitable observations based on the previously existing theories, concepts and information. Deductive approach also ensures that the ultimate aim is to prove the set aim and thesis statement (Lewis, 2015). Thus, deductive approach will be most suited for this thesis, as this will offer provision to refer to already existing data and information about social media, how it expanded over the years, how it turned as the most preferred medium of communication, the platform to share opinions and viewpoints and the influence of social media on conflict and contentious politics and make suitable observations. The use of deductive approach will be best suited because this will allow the researcher prove the thesis statement and transform general information into specific information by referring it to the thesis (Vaioleti, 2016).

For this thesis descriptive design is most suited. The main characteristics of descriptive design highlight its ability to both explore and explain the reason of the identified gap in the study. As a result, it is possible to suggest ways of mitigating the identified gap (Flick, 2015). Descriptive design is most suited for this research because this will help in exploring why social media is becoming the platform for political conflicts when it is used as a medium or platform for sharing opinions and viewpoints regarding a particular action over the platform. On the other hand, application of descriptive design will also help in explaining the identified reasons that has made social media as a war zone of politics (Smith, 2015). As exploratory and explanatory designs have individual characteristics of exploring and explaining, applying individually will result in complexity.

For this thesis, case study research strategy will be applied. Case study research strategy highlights the ability of the researcher to refer to similar works and cases that can be used as a valuable piece of information for developing knowledge and deeper understanding (Bresler & Stake, 2017). Thus, the application of case study research strategy is best suited for this thesis, as will allow referring to previous case studies that contains information about political conflicts in the social media. As a result, the thesis paper will contain adequate information about how the social media influence   conflict and contentious politics as well as shedding light on the probable reasons that is giving rise to such situations (Bauer, 2014). Other research strategies such as action research, survey and interview will not be applicable for this research, as this will restrict gathering valuable and information regarding the thesis statement.

Literature review

Secondary data collection process is the most suited for this thesis. The application of secondary data collection process highlights the ability to refer to different secondary resources such as articles, books, journals, official websites, online newspaper platforms and various other internet facilities (Ledford & Gast, 2018). For this thesis, secondary data collection process is most suited, as this offered the provision to consider the various social media platforms and the political conflicts that take place there. In addition to, the use of secondary data collection process will allow referring to the recent political conflicts over the social media such as Facebook and Twitter and understand the reason for this (Reynolds et al., 2014).

Thematic data analysis technique will be the most suited data analysis process for this thesis. Thematic data analysis is the secondary qualitative data analysis technique that is conducted by developing themes according to the thesis statement (Jamshed, 2014). Thus, the use of thematic data analysis technique will be justified as this will help in developing specific themes in accordance with the thesis statement, aim and objectives followed by analyzing it by taking into account different secondary resources that includes information about how social media is influencing conflicts and contentious politics and the probable reasons for this (Humphries, 2017).

For the successful completion of the thesis, abiding by the ethical considerations is of utmost significance. As the thesis will be conducted using secondary data collection process, collection of data from authentic secondary resources is a significant research ethics. Another significant ethics for this thesis will be ensuring strict prohibition of data manipulation. The information presented in the thesis has to be in its original form and cannot be manipulated. Also, the information gathered for this thesis will have to be used only for academic purpose and using the information for commercial purpose is strictly prohibited and against the ethics (Dang & Pheng, 2015).

Taking into account the proposed methodologies, some accessibility issues will be encountered. The implementation of secondary data collection technique will prevent the use of statistical analysis for this thesis that will raise question on the reliability and validity of the data. Developing the entire thesis based on the secondary data collection process will restrict in considering the opinions about the active social media users on how social media is influencing conflicts and contentious politics as well as the probable reasons that are forcing the social media users for fighting over political issues over the social media.

References

Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.

Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130-1132.

Bauer, G. R. (2014). Incorporating intersectionality theory into population health research methodology: Challenges and the potential to advance health equity. Social science & medicine, 110, 10-17.

Bode, L. (2016). Political news in the news feed: Learning politics from social media. Mass Communication and Society, 19(1), 24-48.

Bonilla, Y., & Rosa, J. (2015). # Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), 4-17.

Bonilla, Y., & Rosa, J. (2015). # Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), 4-17.

Bouhnik, D., & Deshen, M. (2014). WhatsApp goes to school: Mobile instant messaging between teachers and students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 13(1), 217-231.

Bresler, L., & Stake, R. E. (2017). Qualitative research methodology in music education. In Critical Essays in Music Education (pp. 113-128). Routledge.

Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2018). YouTube: Online video and participatory culture. John Wiley & Sons.

Ceron, A., Curini, L., Iacus, S. M., & Porro, G. (2014). Every tweet counts? How sentiment analysis of social media can improve our knowledge of citizens’ political preferences with an application to Italy and France. New Media & Society, 16(2), 340-358.

Chang, S., Kumar, V., Gilbert, E., & Terveen, L. G. (2014, February). Specialization, homophily, and gender in a social curation site: findings from pinterest. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 674-686). ACM.

Cook, N. (2017). Enterprise 2.0: How social software will change the future of work. Routledge.

Dang, G., & Pheng, L. S. (2015). Research methodology. In Infrastructure Investments in Developing Economies (pp. 135-155). Springer, Singapore.

Dreher, S. (2014). Social media and the world of work: A strategic approach to employees’ participation in social media. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 19(4), 344-356.

Filo, K., Lock, D., & Karg, A. (2015). Sport and social media research: A review. Sport management review, 18(2), 166-181.

Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. Sage.

Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.

Gerbaudo, P. (2018). Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. Pluto Press.

Gibson, R. K. (2015). Party change, social media and the rise of ‘citizen-initiated’campaigning. Party politics, 21(2), 183-197.

Gil de Zúñiga, H., Molyneux, L., & Zheng, P. (2014). Social media, political expression, and political participation: Panel analysis of lagged and concurrent relationships. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 612-634.

Humphries, B. (2017). Re-thinking social research: anti-discriminatory approaches in research methodology. Routledge.

Jamshed, S. (2014). Qualitative research method-interviewing and observation. Journal of basic and clinical pharmacy, 5(4), 87.

Kavada, A. (2015). Creating the collective: social media, the Occupy Movement and its constitution as a collective actor. Information, Communication & Society, 18(8), 872-886.

Kaya, T., & Bicen, H. (2016). The effects of social media on students’ behaviors; Facebook as a case study. Computers in Human Behavior, 59, 374-379.

Kim, W. G., Lim, H., & Brymer, R. A. (2015). The effectiveness of managing social media on hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 44, 165-171.

Ledford, J. R., & Gast, D. L. (2018). Single case research methodology: Applications in special education and behavioral sciences. Routledge.

Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), 473-475.

Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

Norouzizadeh Dezfouli, F., Dehghantanha, A., Eterovic-Soric, B., & Choo, K. K. R. (2016). Investigating Social Networking applications on smartphones detecting Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ artefacts on Android and iOS platforms. Australian journal of forensic sciences, 48(4), 469-488.

Perrin, A. (2015). Social media usage. Pew research center, 52-68.

Reuter, O. J., & Szakonyi, D. (2015). Online social media and political awareness in authoritarian regimes. British Journal of Political Science, 45(1), 29-51.

Reynolds, D., Creemers, B., Nesselrodt, P. S., Shaffer, E. C., Stringfield, S., & Teddlie, C. (Eds.). (2014). Advances in school effectiveness research and practice. Elsevier.

Ruths, D., & Pfeffer, J. (2014). Social media for large studies of behavior. Science, 346(6213), 1063-1064.

Sandoval-Almazan, R., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2014). Towards cyberactivism 2.0? Understanding the use of social media and other information technologies for political activism and social movements. Government Information Quarterly, 31(3), 365-378.

Schivinski, B., & Dabrowski, D. (2016). The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(2), 189-214.

Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons.

Smith, J. A. (Ed.). (2015). Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage.

Stephen, A. T. (2016). The role of digital and social media marketing in consumer behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10, 17-21.

Sunstein, C. R. (2018). # Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton University Press.

Taylor, S. J., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M. (2015). Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons.

Trottier, D., & Fuchs, C. (Eds.). (2014). Social media, politics and the state: Protests, revolutions, riots, crime and policing in the age of facebook, twitter and youtube (Vol. 16). Routledge.

Utz, S. (2016). Is LinkedIn making you more successful? The informational benefits derived from public social media. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2685-2702.

Vaioleti, T. M. (2016). Talanoa research methodology: A developing position on Pacific research. Waikato Journal of Education, 12(1).

Weller, K., Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Mahrt, M., & Puschmann, C. (2014). Twitter and society (Vol. 89). Peter Lang.

Xenos, M., Vromen, A., & Loader, B. D. (2014). The great equalizer? Patterns of social media use and youth political engagement in three advanced democracies. Information, Communication & Society, 17(2), 151-167.

Yamamoto, M., Kushin, M. J., & Dalisay, F. (2015). Social media and mobiles as political mobilization forces for young adults: Examining the moderating role of online political expression in political participation. New Media & Society, 17(6), 880-898.

Zhu, Y. Q., & Chen, H. G. (2015). Social media and human need satisfaction: Implications for social media marketing. Business horizons, 58(3), 335-345.