Press Theory & Democracy Blog

Lately there have been a lot of theories as to why Hillary Clinton lost the election. Multiple reports have come out saying that the Russians put negative ads up making Hillary look bad on Facebook. I'm not sure what substance their is behind these claims. Hillary seems to be fully behind them as does the investigation committee. To me, it seems highly irrelevant whether or not the Russians were paying for negative ads about Hillary on Facebook. It seems like 99 percent of political ads I see nowadays are negative. Everything on TV slams the other candidate. It's all pointing fingers at the other person and saying what they did wrong. Don't get me wrong, it's a bit weird that the Russians were interfering in the election. They have no place to do so and the fact that Trump won when he was behind in all the polls leading up to the election was suspicious. He was projected to lose, and lose big, in several polls. But during the election he came back and won. Are...

This blog is primarily dedicated to examining how social media affected the voting process of U.S. citizens last year's election. But I would feel that I did an injustice if I didn't explain my voting process. Last year was my first chance to vote. I didn't vote. There are a lot of things you could say to that immediately. You don't care about politics! You have to vote as a U.S. citizen, it's your obligation! You're the reason why Trump one! You had the ability to do something important and you didn't! You're the problem with America, young people don't participate politically! All of these were statements I heard when I told people I didn't vote. I heard them from friends and family. I heard them from professors. But I stand behind my decision not to vote. It was a decision. It wasn't because I was too lazy or anything like that. I do care about politics. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but I recognize the significance ...

It seemed like every time I went on Facebook from November 2015 to November 2016, there were literally dozens of posts by my friends on the election and presidential candidates. Twitter was more or less the same, but the other two big social media outlets, Instagram and Snapchat, were all but silent.  I have around 500 friends on Facebook, which is down some 50 or so friends from two years ago. I deleted these friends because all they ever did was post about politics- including how terrible both Trump and the Republican party were. I personally identify with the Republican party, although I didn't vote for Trump. These friends were making me feel awful about my beliefs and my opinions. Their words and posts were nothing but hurtful even as they claimed Trump was the hurtful one. It seemed so ironic to me that they used hideous words to describe a man's behavior who they were imitating. They ranted about how Trump shouldn't be allowed to use social media, mainly Twitter,...

Twitter is a creative social media outlet that forces you to condense everything you want to say into 140 characters. This can sometimes cause people to leave out valuable things that they want to say. For others, they sometimes tweet some things they didn't mean. President Donald Trump uses it for other reasons entirely. Trump tweets more than most people, he averages around 12 tweets per day, according to an article on Mashable. That means that every two hours, the president of the United States goes on Twitter to share his personal opinions about major topics. That's about the same rate that most people use the bathroom throughout the day. But it's not just how often Trump tweets that is disturbing. It's what he says, almost every time. Just 40 minutes ago Trump sent out a two-part tweet that said: "Wouldn't it be great to Repeal the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate in ObamaCare and use those savings for further Tax Cuts......for the Middle...