The effect social media is having on the micro-foundations of our models of party systems and voting behaviour

My research direction is to analyse the effect social media is having on the micro-foundations of our models of party systems and voting behaviour. The way people behave as political actors has been fundamentally changed by social media, whether through the way political information is accessed, or how political discourse is carried out. These changes have significant ramifications for theories of voter behaviour, which in turn has implications for theories of party system change.

At the micro-level (or individual level), I hope to draw on theories, such as affective intelligence, which analyse how people decide whether they like or dislike certain parties or candidates. Affective intelligence presents a psychological model of voting behaviour through an emotional and intermittently rational process, where dispositions and anxieties develop over time, and are coped with by voting. Social media has changed how people engage with political news and discourse, altering the trends in when and how political anxiety develops, and the sources of information (from fake news to tweets by public figures) to inform the intermittent rationalism when it occurs.

At the meso-level (or group/social level), how people's networks are shaped and how they form is changing due to social media: people are more interconnected, less clustered, and because of this are differently homogenous or heterogeneous (e.g. often less geographically homogenous, potentially more politically homogenous through selection). Studies on attitudes towards immigration have shown the relevance of this factor to dispositions on that issue, but exposure to other demographics and other beliefs is relevant to issues across all of political opinion. Also on the meso-level, how parties campaign and how political movements organise has changed: whether through targeted advertising, or through ad-hoc movements and petitions. Social media also serves as an immense raw data source on people's political expression, engagement with political media, and provides potential for experimental methods.

At the macro-level (or aggregate level), how political 'cleavage' divisions form and shift has therefore changed from the bottom up. Whether it's how people develop opinions about issues, how their opinions spread or how they are mobilised, the theory has to be re-evaluated in light of this. With social media ethics and modern campaigning techniques coming ever more into the spotlight, we still know little about what effect, exactly, social media is having on our politics. I hope to contribute to building this understanding with my research.