Position Paper 3: Social Media

Internet Battlegrounds.

From the perspective of a voting-age young adult, this election year has been nothing short of dramatic. The 2020 election is a scenic backdrop for a global pandemic in an already erratic year. It is strange to think that the impeachment trials, Weinstein trials, Brexit, and the Australian bushfires all happened this year, and now the election is in the limelight in the penultimate month of the year.

As someone who is constantly viewing social media and online entertainment of various kinds, I have seen my fair-share of political advertisements. Outside of class, as well as for in-class assignments, I have viewed well over a dozen of these advertisements from various candidates including Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Jo Jorgensen, and Howie Hawkins. Candidates like Jorgensen and Hawkins do not have as large of a following as the two primary candidates, and as such, I have not seen their ads without looking for them specifically.

I do not normally seek out news through traditional websites, and I more often get my news through social media feeds, like Twitter and sometimes Facebook. When it comes to political advertisements on social media, I would say that both parties have been pretty even in representation. I see most Donald Trump advertisements on the header-banner on YouTube and paid advertisement slots on Facebook while most Joe Biden ads I see air before YouTube videos that I am watching.

When it comes to my most viewed social media platform, Twitter, I see mostly Joe Biden advertisements. I do follow the President on Twitter, just as I follow former President Barack Obama, though I do not personally follow Joe Biden. Many of the personalities that I follow on Twitter do lean left and often republish tweets from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all prominent Democratic leaders. Most tweets I see pertaining to Donald Trump either come from his personal Twitter account or from a paid advertisement. However, Twitter recently announced that there will no longer be political advertisements, which may be detrimental to both sides.

Deciding a victor based on my personal experience is pretty difficult considering the little amount of total interaction I have had with each side. I only visit 4-6 different websites each day, if that many, so it is hard to say which side has made the biggest impact on me personally, as well as the general public through social media.

The left has definitely won the youth vote and that is the only things I am 100% sure of. You may recall that AOC streamed a video game on the popular streaming platform, Twitch, this past month in which other popular streamers participated. The stream is the third highest viewed stream in Twitch history only behind the Ninja-Drake collab-stream and the return of a popular streamer, Shroud.

Over the past few years, I have noticed a trend that the right usually pushes its advertisements onto platforms with a large middle-aged following, like Facebook. Though it seems that Facebook has begun to crackdown on misinformation and political advertisements in-general, Facebook is where I see most political advertisements, primarily from the right.

Finally, personal account activity from the political spectrum is dominated by the left, for me personally at least. I don't follow any politicians (other than the President and former President Obama) so I only see popular posts from politicians. Though it often feels like both sides are at each other's throats, I see a lot of positivity from both sides often. From personal experience, I find that politicians from the left will tweet more often for interaction with their followers while politicians from the right don't tweet for interaction, which may be an indication as to why the left has dominated the youth vote in recent years.

In terms of social media activity, I will reinforce that the left are more prominent and have likely won in those regards. However, politics are unpredictable (see: 2016) and while the right may control various other social media platforms, the battle for the world wide web is merely a stepping stone in the political spectrum in the year of 2020.