{"id":744,"date":"2024-11-11T14:53:05","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T14:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=744"},"modified":"2024-11-15T15:32:06","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T15:32:06","slug":"aliens-americans-and-everyone-else-who-would-extraterrestrials-side-with-if-they-were-watching-us-on-social-media","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-6-digital-campaign\/aliens-americans-and-everyone-else-who-would-extraterrestrials-side-with-if-they-were-watching-us-on-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Who would extraterrestrials side with if they were watching us on social media?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Taewoo Kang<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctoral Researcher in Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. He studies political sophistication within digital infrastructure, holds a research master\u2019s in communication sciences from the University of Amsterdam, and is a former media producer at SBS in Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email: kangtaew@msu.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prof. Kjerstin Thorson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University. She is a political communication scholar specializing in digital platforms\u2019 civic impact. She previously served as Associate Dean at Michigan State University, leading strategic initiatives in education and outreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter: @kthorson
Email: k.thorson@colostate.edu<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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64. Reversion to the meme: A return to grassroots content<\/a> (Dr Jessica Baldwin-Philippi)
65. From platform politics to partisan platforms<\/a> (Prof Philip M. Napoli, Talia Goodman)
66. The fragmented social media landscape in the 2024 U.S. election<\/a> (Dr Michael A. Beam, Dr Myiah J. Hutchens, Dr Jay D. Hmielowski)
67. Outside organization advertising on Meta platforms: Coordination and duplicity<\/a> (Prof Jennifer Stromer-Galley)
68. Prejudice and priming in the online political sphere<\/a> (Prof Richard Perloff)
69. Perceptions of social media in the 2024 presidential election<\/a> (Dr Daniel Lane, Dr Prateekshit \u201cKanu\u201d Pandey)
70. Modeling public Facebook comments on the attempted assassination of President Trump<\/a> (Dr Justin Phillips, Prof Andrea Carson)
71. The memes of production: Grassroots-made digital content and the presidential campaign<\/a> (Dr Rosalynd Southern, Dr Caroline Leicht)
72. The gendered dynamics of presidential campaign tweets in 2024<\/a> (Prof Heather K. Evans, Dr Jennifer Hayes Clark)
73. Threads and TikTok adoption among 2024 congressional candidates in battleground states<\/a> (Prof Terri L. Towner, Prof Caroline Mu\u00f1oz)
74. Who would extraterrestrials side with if they were watching us on social media?<\/a> (Taewoo Kang, Prof Kjerstin Thorson)
75. AI and voter suppression in the 2024 election<\/a> (Prof Diana Owen)
76. News from AI: ChatGPT and political information<\/a> (Dr Caroline Leicht, Dr Peter Finn, Dr Lauren C. Bell, Dr Amy Tatum)
77. Analyzing the perceived humanness of AI-generated social media content around the presidential debate<\/a> (Dr Tiago Ventura, Rebecca Ansell, Dr Sejin Paik, Autumn Toney, Prof Leticia Bode, Prof Lisa Singh)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

One of the social sciences\u2019 longest-running, if unprovable, imaginings is that aliens might one day arrive on Earth to observe us. In the 1950s, the questions were refreshingly straightforward: \u2018What might Martians think of all the love and sex in modern mass media<\/a>?\u2019 Today, while we feel fairly confident there are no Martians, the answer to that question remains elusive. We\u2019ve yet to meet aliens watching TV (at least not to our knowledge!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s entertain another hypothetical: suppose Martians\u2014or something close enough\u2014had secretly landed in 1950s America. We can\u2019t know what conclusions they might have drawn back then, but imagine they left and recently returned to make another covert visit to the U.S. If nothing else, one observation would be undeniable: Americans have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time around, they wouldn\u2019t waste time with TV antennas; instead, they\u2019d dive into the internet, creating social media profiles to blend in.\u00a0With diligent preliminary research<\/a>, they might craft two personas: one, a U.S. citizen, Black woman in her 20s, Democrat, college-educated, living in an urban, middle-income area; and the other, a white man in his 50s, Republican, high-school-educated, rural, upper-middle income. Soon, they would notice\u00a0how fiercely opposed these two profiles<\/a>\u00a0seem to be on many issues. They might wonder: “What on Earth makes it possible for these people to live together?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In earlier decades, the answer seemed obvious. The U.S. had democracy as a coordinating system that encouraged people from opposing backgrounds to build coalitions based on shared interests. Urban and rural areas clashed, but the working class found ways to unite, so\u00a0us-and-them lines didn\u2019t always split down<\/a>\u00a0the obvious divides. However, by the late 1990s, things began to shift, and the rift between rural and urban voting preferences for Democrats versus Republicans continued to grow,\u00a0reaching a 21-point difference in the 2020s<\/a>. This gap grew\u00a0even larger in the 2024 presidential election<\/a>. “How can they keep living together?” Aliens might wonder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s too early to be surprised. Then, something unfamiliar appears. The prominent feature on social media isn\u2019t about romance; it\u2019s about gender. This is both baffling and revealing\u2014a new fault line, or perhaps one that was hidden beneath the surface: “What changed?” Like many others, we\u2019ve detected this shift as well. Our team at Michigan State University\u2019s\u00a0Civic Infrastructure Lab<\/a>\u00a0has been conducting a nationwide panel survey to track these changes. Since mid-October, we\u2019ve been gathering data from a representative sample, segmented by geographic units, and have been following the same individuals over time. Data collection is still ongoing post-election, and our preliminary analysis suggests that gender is, indeed, a new front line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken for granted, aliens might have already understood in the 1950s that politicians mobilized existing social cleavages to align voters with their agendas. But the fact that gender<\/a> could be wielded as a political wedge<\/a> might surprise them. It\u2019s not social class, geography, or race; now, women are more likely to support Democratic candidates, while men tend to lean Republican. Former President Donald Trump seemed to enjoy this new crack, famously going on a \u2018Bro\u2019 podcast tour<\/a> leading up to Election Day. And much like carefully coordinated tours that connect various stops and attractions, these bros are forming close-knit networks across multiple social media platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, observing social media alone doesn\u2019t capture the full picture. To gain deeper insights, our Martians might turn to data\u2014like ours\u2014that explores the relationship between social media use and political engagement. Here, they uncover something intriguing: while young users who engage with political content on social media are more likely to vote, this relationship sharply weakens with age. Aliens might ask themselves: “Should this pattern be layered onto other contexts, such as\u2026gender?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patterns begin to emerge. Among voters under 30, the gender divide in candidate preference is especially pronounced<\/a>. Now, aliens could deduce: \u2018Is social media a tool politicians use to deepen this emerging socio-political divide?\u2019 Perhaps\u2014but they\u2019d hold off on conclusions, knowing they still have much to learn about this ever-evolving tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Observing what they see on the surface, aliens would record: First, gender has become a powerful social cleavage in American politics. Second, this chasm is wider among young voters. Third, social media uniquely mobilizes these young voters. Finally, once politicians detect an effective social cleavage and the means to activate it, they won\u2019t leave it idle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expanding their gaze beyond America, aliens would find a consistent\u00a0generational pattern across the globe<\/a>: younger people tend to view the U.S. more favorably than their elders. Then, they might finally wonder: “How might gender influence alliances between young people in the U.S. and their peers on the other side of Earth? Could a shared sense of future be enough to unite them? Who, after all, would refuse solidarity for the future?”\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taewoo Kang Doctoral Researcher in Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. He studies political sophistication within digital infrastructure, holds a research master\u2019s in communication sciences from the University of Amsterdam, and is a former media producer at SBS in Korea. Email: kangtaew@msu.edu Prof. Kjerstin Thorson Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1017,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-744","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWho would extraterrestrials side with if they were watching us on social media? - Election Analysis - United States<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-6-digital-campaign\/aliens-americans-and-everyone-else-who-would-extraterrestrials-side-with-if-they-were-watching-us-on-social-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who would extraterrestrials side with if they were watching us on social media? - Election Analysis - United States\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Taewoo Kang Doctoral Researcher in Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. 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