The Facebook Effect: Political News in the Age of Social Media

Abstract

This dissertation extends the media effects literature into the realm of social media. Scholars have long known that partisan news contributes to political polarization, but claim that such effects are often limited to those who tune into politics. Social media, however, can filter political information to those typically uninterested in politics. Because social media feature entertainment and political news in the same space, entertainment-seekers may inadvertently see political news that they normally avoid in traditional media contexts. Through a combination of observational research, survey experiments, and field experiments, I demonstrate that social media facilitate personal influence, drawing new audiences to political news. This increased exposure to partisan media contributes to political polarization, regardless of the ideological congruence between source and receiver, or of news- or entertainment-seeking habits of the audience. But the most important contributions of this dissertation are how it demonstrates the need for scholars to use innovative methods that incorporate personal influence into social media studies, and that it draws scholarly attention to inadvertent media effects for entertainment-seeking audiences. Social media bring political news to new audiences numbering in the millions. Political communication scholars would be remiss not to investigate their influence.