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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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American Politics

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Theses/Dissertations

2023

Social Media

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The New Media Frontier: How Social Media Affects Partisan Attachments, Candidate Evaluations, And Political Emotions, Justin Allen Rose May 2023

The New Media Frontier: How Social Media Affects Partisan Attachments, Candidate Evaluations, And Political Emotions, Justin Allen Rose

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to further our understanding of individual social media use on polarization, evaluation of political candidates, and political emotions. Three separate articles are utilized to illuminate the effects of individual social media use. The first article pushes forward a theory which argues that social media is uniquely positioned to affect partisan feelings due to its propensity to lead individuals into echo chambers—online places that reinforce their existing opinions and attitudes. The second argues that social media plays into the hyper-partisan nature of the American political landscape, and by way, putting forward an atmosphere which will lead individuals to …


Examining If A Candidate’S Presence On Facebook And Twitter Creates Favorable Public Opinion And Is A Predictor Of Vote Share In City Council Elections, Pranaav Jadhav May 2023

Examining If A Candidate’S Presence On Facebook And Twitter Creates Favorable Public Opinion And Is A Predictor Of Vote Share In City Council Elections, Pranaav Jadhav

Masters Theses

Although a considerable amount of research has proved that the use of social media by candidates fighting national elections has resulted in success, like the Obama campaign of 2008 (Hughes et al., 2010) and the Trump campaign of 2016 (Williams et al., 2018) it is still unclear whether the use of social media by candidates has any impact on local city council elections in the U.S. Focusing on the 2021 Knoxville City Council election, this study investigates whether candidates that had a social media presence, posted on social media more frequently than their opponent in the four weeks before Election …