23% of users in U.S. say social media led them to change views on an issue; some cite Black Lives Matter.

However, social media can halt these movements and make them less effective.

Evidence: “Before the Internet, the tedious work of organizing that was required to circumvent censorship or to organize a protest also helped build infrastructure for decision making and strategies for sustaining momentum. Now movements can rush past that step, often to their own detriment.”

Moisés Naím, “Why Street Protests Don’t Work,” The Atlantic, April 7, 2014.

Hi! how would being asked to vote be a plus for social media and democracy? You are underaged so you couldn't vote anyway which could create confusion on who can and cant vote.

About 60 million users (98%) received a 'social message', which which encouraged them to vote, provided a link to information on local polling places and included a clickable 'I voted' button and a counter of Facebook users

I agree that people tend to surround themselves with people of the same thinking or views but this does not mean that opposing sides do not talk at all. As you mentioned only 10 percent of a conversation about the 2012 Israeli-Palestinian clash was from opposing sides but that does not mean it didn't have influence. Those small conversations could have lead to more conversations about other topics and could have lead to marches etc. Those small conversations that they have can still lead to big movements and can lead to more vital conversations. I'm not saying what you said is wrong I'm just saying that the potential is there for more to come out of even the smallest talks.

Sarah Marzouk -

I disagree with this because social media isn't the only place that fake news, news channels also tell fake news or be bias, that is why it is important to get your information from different places to be able to hear the stories from different points of view.

Social media has given political parties the tools to reach large numbers of people. Social media should be seen as an enabler for Democracy, having better-educated voters will lead to a more legitimate government. “Academic research has consistently found that people who consume more news media have a greater probability of being civically and politically engaged across a variety of measures...a 2012 study published in the journal Nature, “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization,” which suggested that messages on users’ Facebook feeds could significantly influence voting patterns. The study data — analyzed in collaboration with Facebook data scientists — suggested that certain messages promoted by friends “increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes.”

( John Wihbey, “How does social media use influence political participation and civic engagement? A meta-analysis” Journalist’s Resource, October 18, 2015)

Facebook can have a lot of false information on it so how do you get around that? People will use false claims to get people on their side and the "victims" won't know right from wrong.

Though it is true that in most circumstances, social media specifically shows you news that is important to you or specialized for your viewpoints, individuals are still able to search outside of what’s recommended to them. Though the way social media targets its users is ‘wrong’, it’s necessary to search for information that doesn’t specifically pertain to your viewpoints in many learning settings. At the library, for example, if you only look at books from one author or under one topic that you’re familiar with, how will you learn about different books that don’t fit under the specific umbrella of books that you usually read. It is true that social media targets it’s users, but to really inform yourself, you have to search for opposing topics and further look into your own personal viewpoints; look beyond what is just recommended.

How is it bad on the poor if it can give them a voice? Also what bad influences does it have on the less educated population?

34% of Americans have taken part in a group on social media that shares an interest in an issue or cause, while a similar share (32%) says they have encouraged others to take action on an issue that is important to them.

I disagree with that because social media is a good way for people to be educated about democracy well in some way social media helps you learn

-marie

I respectfully disagree with you because social media has made websites that prevent these types of things form happening. For example, in a scientifically proven text it was stated that, "To prevent harm, we can build social infrastructure to help our community identify problems before they happen." This shows examples of how social media prevents bad influences from happening.

Wineinger:

I don't agree that it prevents negative things from happening. In a country called Myanmar, people there had lots of problems with social media interference. When people began to post pictures that had misinformation in them about what was happening with the religions and cultures in that country, there was a lot of violence in the community from the social media, and 400 people were killed. Following this, 40,000 Rohingya Muslims were sent to Bangladesh. Social media does lead to problems in other countries and since it doesn't help their democracy, how is it going to help ours? We could someday face the same situation.

Social media is not all positive. It can lead to the spread of misinformation which can be detrimental. In the case of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Circulation of misleading images lead to an eruption of violence in Rakhine state that killed more than 400 people and triggered an exodus of 40,000 Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh. Misinformation can lead to horrible consequences.

I agree with you because it does give you a way to connect with representatives but it doesn't really prevents anything negative happening

I decorously agree with you because in a text I read it said, “To help during a crisis, we’ve built infrastructure like Safety Check so we can all let our friends know we’re safe and check on friends who might be affected by an attack or natural disaster." And by saying this, it shows not only how using sites from social media help you during crisis, but also how you can connect with your loved ones and make sure that they are okay during these rough times.

Yes, I agree that is a big problem but if citizens were actually interested in that they should have done more research In stead of just going off on only the information they got from the media.

I reverentially disagree with you because in a text I read it said that, "...there are even more cases where our community should be able to identify risks related to mental health, disease or crime.” This shows how social media can identify crimes suck as false information, and shut them down, so no one will have to worry about it anymore. And personally I think people have a choice to believe things and to not believe, so really if you want to think about it, it's not the social media's it's the person who's believing it.

I considerately agree with you and want to add on but in my own opinion. I also think social media is good for the democracy because in an article I read it said, "When someone is thinking of suicide or hurting themselves, we’ve built infrastructure to give their friends and community tools that could save their lives.” This shows how social media saves lives, and gives people a second chance. Most people don't have anyone on their side when they have these certain thoughts, but thanks to social media they've made a way for those who don't have anyone, to communicate with people and by doing this you can save millions of billions of lives thanks to this social media infrastructure.

Social movements just breed more hate and suffering in result of creating catastrophe, as in the recent attack on capital hill and the BLM Lootings earlier this year

In actuality, social media harms social causes and makes what people are fighting against worse. Studies have shown that nonviolent resistance has actually become less successful compared to earlier, pre-internet times. Whereas nearly 70 percent of civil resistance campaigns succeeded during the 1990s, only 30 percent have succeeded since 2010. This proves that social media has worsened social causes over time.

This might not be good that they are because they are seeing such extreme views. in a study they found that "nearly two-thirds of respondents ages 15 to 35 had seen extremist messages within the past three months." if they are seeing such of the extreme then when both sides are wrong they are just pointing fingers at each other and there is no middle ground.

in Iceland, it's common to tag politicians in group discussions so they can take community issues to parliament.

The youth point of view can be very dangerous, in the fact that the young mind is very young taking in new information everyday influential or not. So with the unruly influence could breed conflict and hate.

I am on your side with this and I also want to add on to what you said. In a text I read it said, "Just as TV became the primary medium for civic communications in the 1960s, social media is becoming this is the 21st century. This creates an opportunity for us to connect with our representatives at all levels." This shows how social media leads to powerful movements, let's people speak their mind, and talk to our representatives about the community issues to parliament.

i agree that social media can be hectic, but this day in age social media is such a big platform that people can share opinions and views they have

Sarah Marzouk -

I disagree with this because social media has actually brought lots of people together by a greater amount of number,

For example The Women's March is an example of this, where a grandmother with an internet connection wrote a post that led her friends to start a Facebook event that eventually turned into millions of people marching in cities around the world.

Even though people sometimes target others without social media people won't be able to show their opinions.

im going to respectfully disagree with you, i think the opposite. people focus on race, religion, gun rights, and LGBTQ+ issues because those people feel under powered in society, they should have a platform to speak about their own personal experiences and hardships with people who feels the same and or people who would like to understand and learn.

Though I agree with your sentiment that every person on social media deserves the right to voice their opinion, I believe that freedom of speech doesn't give you freedom of consequences and the spread of backlash and misinformation on social media usually does more harm than good.

If I am reading your post right you are saying that a president can go on, lets say twitter, create a "law" like you can only post once a day as an example and it would be allowed? If that is what you are trying to say then that is not correct. Presidents cannot just "make a law" for the fun of it. There is a very long that potential laws have to go through to become a law. Social media is also a company so if they want to kick out a politician for his ideas they can, like they did with Trump.

I agree because social media has brought a great amount of people together and is a place were we share our thoughts and concerns.

“This is, after all, a generation where a majority agree their life feels richer because they are connected through social media.”(Jeff From, “New Study Finds Social Media Shapes Millennial Political Involvement And Engagement” Forbes, June 22, 2016.)

Sarah Marzouk -

I disagree because

“a majority of millennials had posted in the past week on social media about the issues they cared about.”

That is the main point that people get to voice out there opinions.

With social media the blind leading the blind has become even more common. People also tend to stay with people they agree with and that is even more true with social media. your feed becomes tailored to what you like. people have found that "For all the hope that comes from connecting with new people and new ideas, researchers have found that online behavior is dominated by “homophily”: a tendency to listen to and associate with people like yourself, and to exclude outsiders. Social networks are bad at helping you empathize with people unlike you, but good at surrounding you with those who share your outlook." So the idea that people can find new ideas on social media is generally false.

Connecting people is or was the goal for social media but inturn made it a hub for political ploting and influnce reaching a amount of people no leader has ever reached.

I agree that it can be used for malicious intent but does that mean we should get rid of social media all together and not allow people to share their opinions and views?

in a world that is absolutely without social media and there was a world like that. I think I remember living in it. I'm sure some of you do, too. In such a world without social media, lots of things that we now take as fact might never have happened. The women's march, for example, never would've happened without Facebook. The #The MeToo Movement depended on Twitter. So, did Black Lives Matter and then there's the Parkland Student's hashtag.

Though this is true, it can do the opposite as well. Harmful movements could happen with or without social media and though these hate groups may be able to reach a greater audience, so can groups that promote peace and change.

Although social media can be used to promote hate speech it doesn't mean social media isn't good or informative. Not all social media is hate speech. Social media has done good things. Social media has spread awareness for endangered species, forest fires, and the environment in general. Social media can be more good than bad. It just depends on what your looking for and how you interpret it and handle it.