Political Consumption on the Edge of the 2024 Election
Author:
Isabella Levin ’28Co-Authors:
Faculty Mentor(s):
Dr. Gulay Guzel, Markets, Innovation & DesignFunding Source:
Presidential FellowshipAbstract
This study explores social media behavior, specifically political consumption and polarization. Political Polarization is a system that results in the division of a country’s entire population into two diametrically opposed political camps (Duignan, n.d.). In the project, we focused on the 2024 election, highlighting the binary opinions of content creators based on the United States two candidate electoral system. The content on the social media app TikTok will be analyzed as it intersects with this election. TikTok currently represents one of the most successful Chinese social media applications in the world, attracting young users to engage in viewing, creating, and commenting on “LipSync-Videos” on the app (Montag et al., 2021, 1). Therefore, the question is posed: What does political polarization look like in the climate of a popular social media platform, where users are encouraged to share their opinions throughout the course of a two candidate electoral election? Over the span of 12-weeks (6-weeks before election results, 6-weeks after election results), the top two videos under each hashtag were collected every Monday and Thursday located using the hashtag feature, in which three hashtags were chosen (#Trump2024, #Harris2024, #2024election). Following collection, videos were transcribed and coded to view emerging themes, and analyzed qualitatively by comparing, contrasting, and drawing parallels between the literature and the data. This project is at the stage of data analysis and literature review. In the presentation, the preliminary findings will be presented and the implications surrounding political polarization in social media will be discussed.