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Do Americans put more stock in what they feel they know rather than actual facts? A New Mexico State University communication studies professor’s recently published study shows the influence of social media on public engagement turns the traditional belief about voter participation on its head. The study points to increased political participation by uninformed voters, considered the “dark side†of political participation. It finds uninformed voters can actively engage in politics thinking that they know enough about politics and current affairs. Sangwon Lee, assistant professor in N.M. State University’s communication studies department, is the lead author of a paper published in the September issue of the journal Human Communication Research titled “Rethinking the Virtuous Circle Hypothesis on Social Media: Subjective versus Objective Knowledge and Political Participation.â€
“For a long time, scholars have posited that news consumption informs people about politics, which subsequently leads to political participation,†Lee said. “But, in this article, we found that such a ‘virtuous circle’ doesn’t hold anymore in the current social media environment. “Rather, news consumption via social media tends to create a ‘sense of being informed’ rather than actually being informed, which drives political participation. In other words, it is ‘an illusion of knowledge’ that drives political participation.â€