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Politics

Study: Social Media Users Politically Engaged

Is the study's subtitle "Just look at your Facebook feed"?

Reason Staff | 10.19.2012 10:45 PM

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Roughly two-thirds of adult social media users in the United States have engaged in some form of political activity using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, according to a study released on Friday by the Pew Research Center. 

The study found that 38 percent of adult social media users have "liked" or promoted material associated with politics or social issues. Around one-third of these users have turned to social networking sites to post their thoughts on politics and share content that someone had originally posted on political or social issues.  

In some cases, Pew observed that liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans have different behavior when it comes to engaging in political activity on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. For example, liberal Democrats were slightly more likely than conservative Republicans to post links to political articles on social media sites. Around 39 percent of liberal Democrats versus 34 percent of conservative Republicans posted links to articles.

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Reason Staff
PoliticsScience & TechnologySocial MediaElection 2012Free SpeechTechnology
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