With a huge growth in social networking, and the craziest American Presidential Election ever anticipated, it comes as no surprise that studies linking political leanings to social networking sites (SNS) are omnipresent. One such study was conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, to study the relationship between political posts people share on SNS and reactions arising from the same.
The survey was conducted over phone, by Princeton Survey Research Associates, among a sample of 2,253 adults.
The findings of the study highlighted some interesting things, the first of them being that 80% of American adults use the Internet of which 66% use SNS like Facebook and Linkedin.
Political posts on SNS play a key role in determining whether someone will continue to be your friend or not. 18% of SNS have resorted to blocking, unfriending or hiding someone because they disagreed with what the other posted, or he posted about politics too frequently or posted something that could potentially harm his/her other friends' sentiments.
SNS have become such an integral part of our lives that friends get to know of one's political leaning mostly through SNS, rather than face-to-face or telephonic communication. As a result, they were surprised of their friends political stance - 38% of SNS users discovered throught their friends posts that their political stand was different from what they thought.
Friends disagreeing with friends about political issues is a given. But on SNS, they usually let their disagreements pass without commenting. Among the 73% of the sample who only 'sometimes agreed' with friends political posts, 66% usually ignore the posts.
Along the political ideological spectrum of Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals and Republicans, the most active and engaged peope on SNS are Liberals and Conservatives with the former being 74% and the latter, 60%. These users are often the most likely to have acted for and against others on SNS.
The findings seem to imply that people don't customize their friendships and friendship circles on SNS with respect to friends political beliefs, but they are on alert when differences of opinion regarding politics, come up. It shows the impact SNS have on broad American political culture.