Reuters: Politics: Social sites have modest political impact: poll

Reuters: Politics Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Social sites have modest political impact: poll Sep 4th 2012, 04:14 Tweet Share this Email Print Related News Eastwood, empty chair hijack Republican media coverage Fri, Aug 31 2012 Medicare's political importance goes beyond seniors Fri, Aug 31 2012 Analysis: Things we've learned at the Republican convention Thu, Aug 30 2012 In high-stakes convention speech, Ann Romney connects Wed, Aug 29 2012 Storm Isaac forces Republicans to rework convention script Sun, Aug 26 2012 Analysis & Opinion The inverted hypocrisy of Republicans and Democrats Facebook's market meltdown is far from over Related Topics Politics » Tech » Barack Obama » Election 2012 » The Facebook logo is shown at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California May 26, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith WASHINGTON | Tue Sep 4, 2012 12:14am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Social networking sites play a modest role in influencing most U.S. users' political views, with the biggest impact among Democrats, a survey showed on Tuesday. The poll by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project comes as Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are using Facebook Inc pages and other social media as campaign tools ahead of the November election. "For most of those who use the sites, political material is just a small portion of what they post and what they read. And the impact of their use of the sites is modest, at best," Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project, said in a statement. Thirty-six percent of social networking site users say they are "very important" or "somewhat important" to them in keeping up with political news, the survey showed. The sites are "very important" or "somewhat important" to 26 percent of site users in recruiting people to get involved in political issues that matter to them. A quarter of the site users say they are "very important" or "somewhat important" for discussing or debating political issues, the poll showed. Twenty-five percent of users say the sites are "very important" or "somewhat important" in finding other people who share their views about important political issues. In each case, Democrats are more likely than Republicans or independents to say the sites are important. A third of Democrats and liberals who use social networking sites say their activities on the sites have led them to become more active, compared with 24 percent of site-using Republicans and independents. The survey found that 84 percent of site users say they have posted little or nothing related to politics in their recent status updates, comments and links. The telephone survey was conducted from January 20 to February 19 among 1,407 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; editing by Todd Eastham) Related Quotes and News Company Price Related News Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (0) Be the first to comment on reuters.com. Add yours using the box above.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions