IMPACTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON VOTER’S BEHAVIORS

Abstract

Social media, a medium of the 21st century and a tool to help the nation and its communities produce, express, broadly share their thoughts and ideas. People of all ages are passionate about using and making this medium, like any other media, to link it with less time and energy to the world. The technology of social media is broad enough to include tweeting, picture-sharing, wall posting, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, blogs, etc., which people today enjoy using to connect with each other and also inspire themselves to innovate more ideas and expressions. Social media, emerging as the political parties' hottest promotion tool during elections to control, connect and communicate their vision, aim to help them increase their popularity or win a majority. People are living on social media nowadays, where even political parties try to reach out to strike them where they are living. The purpose of writing this research paper is to understand the role that social media plays in voter decision-making while voting. Results of the study indicate that social media, in particular young voters, have a major impact on voting decisions.