Jeffrey Graves

6/7/2007

Facebook Research and Political Impressionability

Jeffrey K. Graves
6/7/2007
PLSC 2701- Political Inquiry
Professor Earnest Wellhofer

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 Jeffrey Graves
6/7/2007

Facebook Research and Political Impressionability

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
- Arthur C. Clarke

Remarkable innovations in information technology have ushered in a new era of societal

perceptions. Modern day students (and most everyone else) cannot imagine life without a cell-

phone and laptop. Electronic interface has become an integral part of the way individuals view

the world and process information. Pop culture is defined by the clips on YouTube, news is

ingested in the form of podcasts, and social networking sites like facebook. These new

technologies open up new channels of research into the activities and habits of its users. Social

networking sites, such as facebook, take in a significant amount of personal data which could be

used to identify trends within a specific constituency. The advanced search feature on facebook

makes it possible to identify trends within broad groups (i.e. male v. female; class of 2007 v.

class of 2010). By using advanced search, it will be possible to develop a composite political

score for each class which will demonstrate the differences in political composition. These

differences may be explained by the liberalizing effect of education (especially college).

However, since the data does shows a linear increase, the popularity of the ruling party at the age

of political impressionability (either in college or high school) may also play a role.

Initial Criticism and Literature Review____________________________________________

An initial criticism of using facebook as a research tool is that the sample obviously self-

selects. Not only is the research limited to those who choose to use facebook, but also the

students within your network and those who list their political affiliation. However, facebook

may conquer that flaw due to the large majority of students who log on regularly. Michael

Bugeja’s article, "Facing the Facebook," recounts the story of a journalism professor who was

shocked to note that while only a few students had views PBS’s NewsHour last night, almost all

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of them had logged onto facebook.1 Moreover, students are not afraid to put a large amount of

personal data online including birth dates, addresses, telephone numbers and consumer

preferences.2 The false sense of anonymity lulls users into a sense of security. Students have been

expelled or disciplined over information and photographic evidence they post online.3 Overall,

an estimated 85% of students nationally have accounts on facebook.4 The author of this paper

can only think of one student at the University of Denver that does not use facebook.

While the University of Denver boasts a total student body (graduate and undergraduate)

of 10,4005, facebook includes a whopping 8,818 users.6 While some of those users may have

graduated, that still means between 70-85% of students use facebook. Of those 8,818 users 51%

list their political association.7 Therefore, between 35% and 42% of the students at the University

of Denver advertise their political association, a large enough sample size to get accurate data.

Furthermore, since gathering data on facebook does not require interaction with individuals, the

potential for researcher bias or unconscious selection is greatly reduced.8 This methodology

admittedly selects individuals who are politically aware. However, it also weeds out those who

do not have strong, formed opinions, emphasizing the differences between groups. A major and

irresolvable flaw with this method is that students are under no obligation to tell the truth in their

profiles. In other words, they may provide a political view antithetical to their own as an inside

joke or list incorrectly their class year. This flaw may skew the data, however, it should be noted

1
Bugeja, Michael. "Facing the Facebook." Chronicle of Higher Education. EBSCO. 4 June 2007

2
Brock, Reed. "INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY." Chronicle of Higher Education. EBSCO.
3
Maloney, Patrick. "The Facebook Effect." The London Free Press 7 July 2007. 7 June 2007
<http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2007/06/07/4241201-sun.html>.
4
Thiel, Peter. "85% of Students Use Facebook." Tech Crunch. 7 Sept. 2005. 2 June 2007 <http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/07/85-of-college-
students-use-facebook/>.
5
"Statistics." The University of Denver. 1 June 2007 <http://www.du.edu/city/static/pdfs/2007CITYSPCatalog.pdf>.
6
"Denver Network Pace." Facebook. 1 June 2007 <http://du.facebook.com/networks/?nk=16777419>.
7
Ibid.
8
Babbie, Earl. The Basics of Social Research. 3rd ed. Belemont, CA: Thomson-Wadswoth, 2005. 193-194.

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that any research method on a large quantitative scale will encounter a similar problem of

verisimilitude.

Furthermore, industries that count on data as a means of targeting products have deemed

facebook reliable enough to pay for access to data. Facebook now offers companies the ability to

buy their information for research purposes. While facebook will not “guarantee results, nor

verify the accuracy or statistical significance of response data,”9 the existence of that service

demonstrates the potential value in facebook research.

Method and Research for Facebook Data__________________________________________

The advanced search feature on facebook allows users within a particular network to

filter the field of people by certain criteria. For example, it is possible to view all the students

who are male, liberal and in the class of 2007. While users cannot view the actual profile of the

individuals who appear unless they are friends or the individual’s privacy settings are set low, the

total number of matching cases reflects the total amount of students with matching criteria. The

political classifications that are available for facebook users are “very liberal, liberal, moderate,

conservative, very conservative, libertarian, apathetic and other.”10 While these distinctions do

not break down exactly on party lines, for the sake of this paper, those who are very liberal and

liberal classify as “leaning democratic” and those who are very conservative and conservative

will be “leaning republican.” To demonstrate the differences in political tendency in each class at

the University of Denver, users were filtered by college graduation year. Since facebook

primarily caught on starting with this year’s graduating class and incoming freshmen tend to

9
"Facebook Offers Poll Access to Its 25 Million Users." Daily Research News Online. 7 June 2007
<http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news6872.htm>.
10
Facebook. 1 June 2007 <http://du.facebook.com.

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register for facebook primarily during June and July11, this study deals with the class of 2007,

2008, 2009 and 2010.

The advanced search was executed for all 32 possible permutations of political

classification and class year on May 23rd, 2007 (figure 1)*. 2576 cases are represented, which is

approximately in line with initial estimates (undergraduates at DU=aprox. 5000 students*50%

reporting rate). Since the amount of cases differs from class to class, the raw data was converted

into percentages of the whole (figure 2). These percentages can now be compared to view the

constitution of each class in relation to each other. Several trends emerge from this comparison.

On average, 76% of students place themselves within the categories of “Liberal, Moderate or

Conservative.” The extreme positions (the “very” groups) are significantly less popular.

Furthermore, the “very liberal” option is significantly more popular than the “very conservative”

option, meaning that students are more willing to identify themselves on the extreme side of

liberalism as they are conservatism.

Compositing the scores for each class on an ideological scale demonstrates the

differences in composition between the classes. For the sake of this paper, the respective political

distinctions were assigned a numerical value corresponding with its contextual ideological

position. For example, “very liberal” was assigned -2; “liberal”, -1; “moderate”, 0;

“conservative”, 1; “very conservative”, 2. Since the moderate position falls directly between the

two political affiliations, their zero value cancels out any effect on the composite score.

Furthermore, the position of libertarian, apathetic and other do not plot onto a single dimensional

classification and are thus not included in the composite scoring. These ideological values were

multiplied by the percentage of each affiliation for each class. For example, 7.57% of students in

11
Stutzman, Fred. "Student Life on Facebook." University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 3 June 2007
<http://ibiblio.org/fred/facebook/stutzman_fbook.pdf>.
*tables and charts are attached in the appendix.

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the class of 2007 identify themselves as “very liberal.” The ideological value of very liberal is -2.

Therefore, the composite score is -15.14 (see figure 9 for a visual explanation). The sum of these

values for each class represents a composite score which indicates its overall political tendency

(see figure 4, 5). The more negative the number, the more liberal the class; conversely, the more

positive the number, the more conservative the class.

Analysis of Facebook Data_______________________________________________________

A variety of trends and differences emerge from the data using the compositing method.

First of all, all of the composite scores demonstrate the composition of the undergraduate

population to be more liberal than conservative. Ostensibly, this fits in line with the view that

colleges tend to be bastions of liberalism (yes, even DU). Furthermore, the differences between

classes were not too extreme as all scores were between -23 and -30. This suggests a mild degree

of homogeneity within the student population. However, the differences between the classes

suggest either a change in political association over time or the latent effect of political

impressionability.

In general, the classes become more liberal as a function of the amount of years spent in

college. Figure 6 demonstrates a moderately strong linear relationship with an R2 value of 0.62.

This seems to indicate that the college environment (perhaps education in general), has a

liberalizing effect on students. In support of this view, the General Social Study demonstrates

that as level of education increase, there is a general (although not perfect) liberalizing trend

(figure 7).12 This trend is also visible in figure 8 as a product of the highest degree reached. In

order to directly compare that sort of trend with the facebook data, it is necessary to apply the

same composite criterion to the GSS data. Since they broke their scale into “Extremely Liberal,

Liberal, Slightly Liberal, Moderate, Slightly Conservative, Conservative and Extremely

12
The General Social Survey. University of Berkley. 6 June 2007 <http://sda.berkeley.edu/>.
* I realize this is really confusing. For a visual representation of the scales, see figure 9.

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Conservative” the original ideological scores cannot be used. For the sake of consistency, we will

employ the same ±2 scale. The two extremes are therefore +2 and -2 respectively; liberal and

conservative will be +1.5 and -1.5, respectively; slightly liberal and conservative will be +.5 and

-.5 respectively.(see figure 9)* When the composite scores are calculated and plotted on a graph,

there is again a moderate linear relationship between the amount of education and the liberality

of the composite score (R2 of 0.5).

Both the facebook data and the GSS do not completely vindicate the theory that more

education always leads to a higher degree of liberality. For example, the class with the highest

level of conservatism is the class of 2009 and the class with the highest level of liberalism is the

class of 2008. If the linear theory was conclusively correct, then the most conservative class

would be the class of 2010 and the most liberal would be the class of 2007. Furthermore, in the

GSS data, those who completed high school are more conservative than those with little high

school. This irregularity could be the product of one of two phenomena: either the data is an

incomplete sample of the classes or there are other forces affecting the political sensibilities of

the students.

Another possible factor which affects the political sensibilities of the respective classes

may be the popularity of the political parties at the time of impressionability. In other words, if a

specific ideological position is extremely popular during the time span in which a student is most

likely to form opinions, this position would be unduly reflected in the class composition. The

popularity of the president will serve as the measure of the popularity of ideology. Many

individuals in the United States see the president as the face of politics on a day-to-day basis.

Therefore, his popularity ought to have a large effect on the perception of the ideological

positions. George W. Bush’s popularity differential (popularity minus unpopularity) over time

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can be seen in figure 11. The data pictured is a combination of the FOX News/Opinion

Dynamics Poll and CBS News/New York Times Poll,13 with an approximate author generated

trend line to emphasis the general direction of the polling data. A few select major events are

labeled, including the elections and the Sept. 11th attacks. While liberal and conservative are

admittedly different distinctions than republican and democratic, for the sake of this study, those

on facebook who were liberal or very liberal will be considered democratic leaning while those

whoa answered conservative or very conservative will be considered republican leaning.

The original hypothesis of this project was that students were particularly politically

impressionable during their freshman year in college. Therefore, the political composition of the

classes would reflect the popularity (or unpopularity) of President Bush during the fall of their

freshman year. The class of 2007 were freshman in 2003; 2008, 2004; 2009, 2005; 2010, 2006.

However, this pattern did not materialize. For example, the most conservative class (Class of

2009) were freshmen in 2005. While Bush’s popularity experienced a small upswing right before

they entered college, the overall direction of his popularity differential was negative.

Furthermore, the class of 2008 is the most liberal class and entered college when Bush’s

popularity rating was significantly higher than the class of 2009 and 2010.

Overall, the concept that students undergo a dramatic political impression in their first

term at college is not demonstrated by the evidence. This conclusion mirrors that of a different

study which tracked the political changes of incoming freshman over facebook for the first 16

weeks. According to Stutzman’s study, there is not a demonstrable change in political

composition over that time span14 (see figure 12). These results suggest either that students

13
Cbs/new York Times, and Fox News/opinion Dynamics . "Bush: Favorability." PollingReport.Com. 1 June 2007
<http://www.pollingreport.com/BushFav.htm>.
14
Stutzman, Fred. "Student Life on Facebook." University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 3 June 2007
<http://ibiblio.org/fred/facebook/stutzman_fbook.pdf>.

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develop their political tendencies before college begins, or the process of liberalization in college

is a long process.

However, the composite scores for each respective class match up much more efficiently

with the popularity of the president when the classes were freshman in high school. The class of

2007 were freshman in high school in 1999 (during the last years of Clinton); class of 2008,

during the 2000 election; class of 2009, during the Sept. 11th attacks; class of 2010, during the

2002 election and lead up to Iraq. There is a much stronger correlation between the political

composition of the classes and those events. For example, the class of 2009 has a dramatic

conservative upswing. This correlates with the dramatic rise in popularity of President Bush after

the September 11th attacks. The class of 2008 demonstrates the highest liberal score; accordingly,

they were freshmen in high school during the controversial 2000 election. If students have a

heightened political impressionability during their initial year in high school, the differences in

class composition may be explained by these external factors.

There are a variety of different theories in the world of psychology which may help to

determine the age of political impressionability. According to the theories of Erick Erickson,

children enter the “fifth stage” of development (Learning Identity Versus Identity Diffusion)

around age 13-14.15 During this stage, “the adolescent seeks leadership (someone to inspire him),

and gradually develops a set of ideals (socially congruent and desirable, in the case of the

successful adolescent).”16 If Erikson’s theory is correct, that would imply that students are

forming their political ideas around the same time that they are freshmen in high school. Perhaps

for the Class of 2009, the conservative upswing is as a result of a group of politically

15
Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton, 1950.

16
"Stages of Social and Emotional Development in Children." The Child Development Institute. 7 June 2007
<http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/erickson.shtml>.

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impressionable students looking for “leadership (someone to inspire them)” during the tragedy of

Sept. 11th. Jean Piaget also suggests that from the age of 11-15, children obtain “The ability to

generate abstract propositions, multiple hypotheses and their possible outcomes.”17 When

individuals develop the capacity for abstract thought in conjunction with the exposure to new

lines of thought in a new environment, it is at least hypothetically possible that students develop

their political opinions partially based along the popularity of political parties. While psychology

does not provide a concrete time when all individuals become politically impressionable, it

seems to indicate that students likely form opinions in early adolescence.

Conclusion, Questions and Possibilities for Further Research__________________________

Due to the small and self-selecting sample size that can be gathered on facebook, there is

no way to rule out the possibility that the differences in political composition are not merely

coincidence. Furthermore, it is not possible to rule out that the only factor at play is the

liberalization of students throughout the course of their university education. However, the

differing compositions of the classes reflect the historical popularity of President Bush during the

freshman year in high school, by chance or otherwise. This data does not provide proof of

causation; however, it demonstrates a correlation which could be proven with further research.

The most effective way to prove the age of political impressionability of students would

be a study that followed a set of individual students from middle school through college. In this

manner, the progress of an individual student could be tracked through time, showing the

progress of political development. To the knowledge of this author, such a study has not yet been

conducted. The results of this study provide compelling reasons for further research into the

topic.

17
"Stages of Intellectual Development." The Child Development Institute. 7 June 2007
<http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/piaget.shtml>.

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However, the most important result of this paper is the demonstration that facebook

generated data can be used to discover trends within the student population. In order to

completely validate the utility of facebook, it would necessary to conduct a survey of political

identification in the undergraduate population. If the data collect via traditional means correlated

strongly with the facebook generated data, facebook could be considered a valuable social

research tool.

Social networking research could play a tangible role in the future of politics and

marketing. Companies will undoubtedly start to tap into the large amount of data which can be

mined off facebook (if they have not already started to do so). For example, on the Denver

Network page, users can view the networks top 10 movies (Wedding Crashers), top 10 TV shows

(Grey’s Anatomy) and top 10 music choices (Jack Johnson). By analyzing student interests,

businesses can effectively target the profitable college market. Furthermore, networking sites

already play a role in politics. On facebook, students can “friend” candidates they like or join

groups in support of political causes. By examining these groups, political interests can target

their message to the “new media” generation.

A generation that cannot conceive of itself without electronic interface must be dealt with

on its own terms. Since social networking sites, mobile phones and laptops have become vital in

the experience of the college student; to accurately gather data on political affairs one must

investigate these new mediums. The world is changing at an expediential rate and to stay

relevant, political inquiry must adapt along with it.

Appendix: Charts, Graphs and Tables__________________________________

Figure 1: Raw Data from Advanced Search Pairings (5/27/2007)

Very Very
Liberal Liberal Moderate Conservative Conservative Apathetic Libertarian Other Total

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Class of
2007 48 218 155 114 10 14 14 61 634
Class of
2008 74 234 193 141 12 21 10 53 738
Class of
2009 56 226 149 154 12 16 16 49 678
Class of
2010 41 181 111 114 10 12 13 44 526

Figure 2: Percentage of Each Class from Advanced Search Pairings (5/27/2007)

Very
Very Conservativ
Liberal Liberal Moderate Conservative e Apathetic Libertarian Other
Class of
2007 7.57 34.38 24.45 17.98 1.58 2.21 2.21 9.62
Class of
2008 10.03 31.71 26.15 19.11 1.63 2.85 1.36 7.18
Class of
2009 8.26 33.33 21.98 22.71 1.77 2.36 2.36 7.23
Class of
2010 7.79 34.41 21.10 21.67 1.90 2.28 2.47 8.37

Figure 3: Comparison of the Political Composition of Each Class

Percent Political Composition of Each Classes

100%
90%
80%
70% Other
60% Libertarian
50% Apathetic
Very Conservative
40%
Conservative
30%
Moderate
20%
Liberal
10% Very Liberal
0%
Class of Class of Class of Class of
2007 2008 2009 2010

Figure 4: Comparison of the Political Composition of Each Class

Composite Score
Class of 2007 -28.39
Class of 2008 -29.40

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Class of 2009 -23.60
Class of 2010 -24.52

Figure 5: Composite score for each class

Liberal-Conservative Level of DU Students

0.00
Liberality (the more negative, the more

Class of Class of Class of Class of

-5.00 2007 2008 2009 2010

-10.00

-15.00
liberal)

Series1
-20.00

-25.00

-30.00

-35.00

Figure 6: Composite Scores for each class with line of best fit.

Liberal-Conservative Level of DU Students

0.00
Liberality (the more negative, the more

0 1 2 3 4 5
-5.00

-10.00

-15.00
liberal)

-20.00
2
-25.00 R = 0.6226

-30.00

-35.00

Figure 7: GSS- Political Association versus years of education

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Figure 8: GSS- Political Association versus highest degree reached in percent

100%
Extremly
Conservative
80% Conservative

60% Slight
Conservative
Moderate
40%
Slight Liberal
20% Liberal

0% Extremely
Liberal
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oo

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Sc

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Figure 9: Visual Representation of Ideological Scores used in composites

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Figure 10: GSS- Composite scores with trend line for GSS data

Composite Scores by Highest Degree

Reached

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Composite Score

10

0
0 1 2 3 2 4 5 6
-5 R = 0.5077

-10

-15
Highest Degree Reached

Figure 11: Favorability Differential for President George Bush (1998-2007)

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Figure 12: Freshman Political Orientation (Stutzman 2005)

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