Social media’s role in the election

Despite election fever cooling down, it appears emotions on social media have not ended.

One SU Professor tells us how social media played a major role during the election and offers some analysis on the resulting reactions and opinions online.

With one little click, it’s easy enough to unfriend someone on social media, if you happen to disagree with their political opinions.

It was commonplace during the election and even though a president elect has been chosen, it is still happening.

Salisbury University’s Assistant Professor of Communications, Dr. Jennifer Cox, says it’s concerning.

Cox says due to the effects of the election, we see people unfriending each other. She states that we have people not being respectful on both sides of the platform and it’s really dangerous to try and judge people in just 140 characters.

If you scroll through your newsfeed, it’s a safe bet, you can find plenty of people openly airing their views about the results of the 2016 election.

Cox says this makes sense since social media played such a major role in this election, “The candidates made themselves more personally available on social media than in any election we’ve ever seen before. It allowed us to have a forum for our perspectives and for talking about these things and using it as almost a voting recruiting tool.”

Despite the potential for online ugliness, Cox says social media is a great tool to create positive change.

She states that we can use it as a tool to launch conversation, to organize things that would lead to change, positive change. But we shouldn’t use them as a weeding out tool to say you’re worthy of my friendship, and you’re not.