Candidates are increasingly devoting resources to their social media presences. Survey: Social media trusted for info

Voter trust in political information from Facebook, Twitter and other social media services is now on par with that in traditional news sources, according to a new survey shared with POLITICO.

Recent years have seen candidates increasingly devoting time and resources to developing their social media presences, with President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign widely admired by experts in both parties for its massive data and analytics operation.


The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management/ORI survey finds that those campaign efforts are well-placed — social media in some form has reached a critical mass of adopters across age groups, is widely used for sharing political content and is just as well-regarded as traditional news outlets like television, radio and print.

“There needs to be an authentic commitment in social media” by candidates,” said David Rehr, a professor at the school. “They’ve got to take it very seriously.” Social media “is an information source that has to be reckoned with.”

The survey finds that nearly two-thirds of voters reported that political information on social media was either higher quality or on par with traditional media outlets. For users younger than 25, 71 percent put the same or greater level of trust in content.

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Older voters are more skeptical of information shared on social media — with 36 percent calling it less reliable than traditional news sources.

Trust in social media is a bit of a surprising finding given the sheer number of hoaxes and fake news reports that constantly circulate on Twitter and Facebook — but John Kagia, director of strategy and insight at ORI, said the networks come with a built-in correction mechanism.

“I was particularly struck by how social media has closed the credibility gap,” Kagia said. “The speed with which inaccurate or incorrect information gets rebutted is much faster now than when it used to be,” he said, while acknowledging there is now much more information to vet.

Part of the reason that social networks have closed the credibility gap is that those networks are often built on real-life friendships and connections.

“We’re seeing when this content is being posted by people you know, you’re more likely to trust it,” Kagia said.

The survey results show that news about Obama was more widely shared than news about his GOP rival Mitt Romney, with 26 percent saying they saw more Obama news and 38 percent saying they saw both candidates equally mentioned in 2012. More than half of Americans said social media increased their knowledge of the candidates and the campaigns, while 42 percent said it made no difference.

Despite demographers’ worries that Americans are increasingly sorting themselves into like-minded communities, social networks appear to have a certain diversity.

The survey found that 54 percent say that there’s an even mix of people on their social networks who share and do not share their political views. An additional 25 percent say most of their friends and connections share their political views, while 8 percent say most do not share their political views.

Nearly a fifth of respondents said they have blocked, “defriended” or hidden one of their contacts because of their political views. Liberals were significantly more likely to cut off one of their connections because of politics, with 22 percent reporting that had ended a digital friendship over political disagreements. Fifteen percent of conservatives said the same.

Facebook remains the dominant social network, with 74 percent of survey respondents saying they used the platform. Women were more likely than men to be on Facebook, with 81 percent of female respondents saying they had an account. Twenty-four percent of respondents were on Twitter, while 32 percent were on LinkedIn. Pinterest has a heavily female user base, with 23 percent of women saying that they were on the site.

Overwhelmingly, respondents said that they primarily used computers to connect to social media, but tablets and mobile phones saw gains in 2012. Forty-six percent of respondents said they used social networks on their smartphone — up from 37 percent in a survey conducted in 2011. Tablet use jumped to 16 percent — up from 3 percent in 2011.

Campaign fundraisers still regard email and the Web as the primary fundraising mechanism for modern campaigns, but the survey shows that Facebook and mobile donations are on the rise.

While 77 percent of respondents who made political donations used campaign websites or email, 19 percent used Facebook. Eighteen percent reported donating by text messages — something that the Federal Election Commission allowed for the first time in 2012.

The survey — conducted online — sampled 806 Internet users and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.45 percent.