Final Research Project

University of Hertfordshire
Research Methods in Media Communications
The impact social media
platforms such as twitter and
Facebook had on the last UK
Generals Elections.
Mollie Neal

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Title
The impact social-media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook had on the last UK
Generals Elections
Introduction
This study focuses on computer meditated communication (CMC) (Thurlow, Tomic and
Lengel, 2004:31) via social-networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and if these
platforms influenced the last UK General election (UK GE) that took place in May 2015.
A study conducted by Twitter, showed that
‘45% of Twitter users aged 18-34 said they had become interested in or joined
a political or social cause that they learned about through their site, and 37%
said they used the site to actively look for information about politics or the UK
general election.’ It was also found that ‘one in three 18-35 year-olds users
had changed their vote from one party to another.’ (The Guardian, March
2014).
This shows that the majority of young adolescents are influenced by social media,
particularly Twitter and Facebook.
Background of research topic/problem
GE in the UK give individuals an opportunity to decide how their country is run. They
consist of 650 individual elections that take place on one single day, across The United
Kingdom. Britain's three biggest political parties are the Conservative Party, the Labour Party
and the Liberal Democrats. These parties will support a candidate in most communities
across the country.
To get votes, candidates campaign in their community. They broadcast their policies that will
guide them when making decisions if they are elected. They join together with other people
who share the same ideas and interests as part of a political party. Voting for a political party
is also a vote for that party's guiding principles.

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Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-
based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications
dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation,
and wikis are among the different types of social media.
Facebook has reached up to 1490 million users and Twitter 304 million users (Statista, 2015).
There is no wonder we constantly interact with social media and it is part of our day-to-day
activities. It would seem ignorant to disregard the detail that it has no effect on our minds,
opinions and interests.
Voter apathy affects British politics, as many people regard their vote as un-influential and
will not make a difference according to (Barker, 2014). 18% of the people that were
surveyed, said one of the reasons they did not vote was because ‘Not enough information/
knowledge to choose’. As a generation, we are more interested in what people are ‘tweeting’
and ‘posting’ on social networking sites, we choose to ignore serious issues within our
country. We have the ability to choose how our nation is run and yet we choose to not
research about it and simply – disregard it.
Until recently, politicians did not use social media to their advantage to make their policies
aware and as most of our spare time is spent on social media, we are not surrounded with
political information.
‘The average user logs 1.72 hours per day on social platforms, which
represents about 28 percent of all online activity.’ (Bennett, 2015)
This shows we would not be able to learn about politics, because it is not available where we
mostly spend our free time. Until recently, it was shown that politicians took to social media
to spread their policies, to reach out to a wider audience, particularly the ‘uninterested’ ones.
Literature Review
In today’s technology driven world, social media has become an avenue where society can
express opinions and thoughts within the World Wide Web. This study has looked at social
networking, rather than social media as a whole.

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‘Social networking software is, more or less, programs that capture such
information and make it usable in various ways.’ (Treese, 2006:16)
(Fleischmann, 2015) study found that Twitter and Facebook users have grown ecstatically in
recent years with an increase of 6% in relation to active social media accounts. It was also
found that 38 million of the 64.1 million UK residents have a social media account. (Casale,
Greenwald and Hoffman, 2009) journal article found that 88% of the teenagers they surveyed
said they use social networks every day, with 70% saying they participate in social
networking an hour or more daily.
The 2010 American election was the first campaign where new media technologies such as
the internet over shadowed traditional media such as television, radio and newspapers
according to the scholar (Noor Al-Deen and Hendricks, 2012). This could have impacted on
the new terms that have been found in (Rideout, 2013). It was said that the landscapes of
politics has drastically changed because of the mass adoption of digital technology and
because of this new terms such as: ‘campaigning online’, ‘digital elections campaigns’,
‘Facebook election’ and ‘digital politics’ have been found because of this. However, in
(Herman, 2001) it has been found that GE have been influenced before 2010 and actually
dates back to 1997. The 1997 UK GE was the first to allow parties to use the internet as a
medium for campaigning.
‘Although political use of the internet was clearly in its infancy, many parties
(national and local) did establish themselves in cyber space and made
creditable efforts in terms of web design, interactivity and the use of
multimedia features.’ (Herman, 2001: 340-35).
Although a lot has changed since 1997 regarding the internet, it shows that politics has been
influenced since the beginning when the internet was first established. Closer to the present,
the 2010 UK GE showed social media becoming a phenomenal impact on how parties
campaigned to the public. It was seen in the previous UK GE (2010) that
‘Individual candidates with Facebook sites tended to use the wall, information,
and photos features most frequently. Just 14 of the 73 candidates used the

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events feature to announce forthcoming campaign activities, and while 17 had
attempted to encourage online debate using the discussions feature, these
efforts had largely proved fruitless.’ (Baxter, Marcella and Varfis, 2011:464-
483)
The impact of social media can be seen through the theory of the Web 2.0. The theory is
based around the use of a more user generated content. This links with social media platforms
such as Twitter and Facebook, as you are able to post, tweet, like, anything you are interested
in. According to (Gainous, 2013) people who use user-generated content (web 2.0) are able to
personalise webpages such as entertainment and news, they do this to indicate what they want
to see, hear and read. This shows the link on the potential impact social media had on the UK
2015 GE as active users on this social networking sites can choose on whether or not they
click on a page and in this case it could have been to do with the GE campaigns. (Pătruț, B.
and Pătruț, M 2014) discussed Web 2.0 in relation to politics in saying that Web 2.0 has been
lauded as a great opportunity to energise political participation by enabling easy integration
between political parties and voters. It seems that political campaigns are easily accessible
through the use of web 2.0, particularly social networking sites.
However in (Treese, W, 2006:15-17) journal article, it discusses a more basic idea of social
networking and more of the basic qualities it has, rather than the impact it has. It states that
social networking is not a technology so much as web facilitating the tying together of social
groups.
‘Social networking software is, more or less, programs that capture such
information and make it usable in various ways.’ (Treese, 2006:16)
In relation to this journal article, (Shuen A, 2008) book suggest a similar opinion. It
suggested that Facebook was for helping college students keep up with high-school friends in
other colleges as well as peers from sports, music, extracurricular and volunteer activities.
There have been many discussions relating to the debate that people feel their vote will not
make any change, when voting in any General Elections, UK or not. (Henn, M and
Weinstein, M, 2006: 517-534) discussed the possible reasons into why people do not vote in
General Elections. The main reason they found was because government initiatives may be

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failing to tackle the real problem which is that the electorate appears to find the business of
politics uninviting and irrelevant. Whereas (Blais, A, 2000:1010-1012) study contradicts this
by saying that people are motivated to vote as people feel that if one truly believes in
democracy one has a moral obligation to vote. Ipsos MORI is a research company in the UK,
and they conducted research regarding young people using social media and politics. Their
results showed that more than a third (34%) of those aged 18-24 said that reading something
on social media was likely to influence their vote (Sedghi, A, 2015). These study’s and
scholars show that in the present time, digital technology development such as social
networking sites are having an impact on voting in GE.
Another discussion is whether broadcast media is more influential than social media and if
people rely on more than the other to gain information when GE are on-going. (Rozell, M,
Cornfield, M and Mayer, J, 2003:138) stated that newspapers devoted less than 18% of their
stories to reporting about state and local news t politics and television was even less with only
14% of all state and local news stories on television addressing politics and or government.
Whereas (Graber D, 1989:2) stated that news media is crucial in democratic society because
citizens need information about ongoing problems and policies. By looking at different
scholars discoveries of what society use more at gaining information regarding politics, it has
determined how influential social media platforms are.
An important theory relating to this chosen research subject is technological determinism.
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society’s technology
drives the development of its social structure and cultural values. (Jones and Holmes,
2011:218-220) stated that
“There are four different ways of discussing communication technologies in
which the struggle of technological determinism and social shaping
alternatives are significant.” (Jones and Holmes, 2011:218-220)
The four different ways being, Industrial-instructional, Qualitative transformations of social
relations, further projections and emancipatory-democratic norms.
Overall there has been much research about social media’s influence on politics, particularly
General Elections. It is clear that the debate on whether or not social media is influential has
many arguments for it and against it. It’s been made evident that it was likely that social

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media did have an impact on elections as it was shown in the American 2010 Election –
however it was to an extent. Social media is growing as time passes and it is important to see
the relationship between active users and how-they obtained information about politics to see
whether or not Twitter and-Facebook had any impact on the 2015 UK GE.
Key ResearchQuestions
1. Do people’s identity (e.g. gender, age, ethnicity and location) follow similar patterns
to whom they voted for?
2. What was the impact on the UK General Elections amongst young people?
3. Is social media a major importance for political party’s election campaigns?
4. Are there any voting patterns that can be gleaned and associated with these two social
networks?
Methodology
The methodology within this project is the mixed-method approach. Both quantitative and
qualitative paradigms has achieved a statistical analysis of the data gathered from the survey
and the meanings behind the interviews. The Mixed method approach
‘Takes the best of qualitative (QL) and quantitative (QN) methods and combine
them.’ (Bergman, 2008:11)
Quantitative paradigms are often presented through statically language, for example: tables
and graphs. Data is the objective and is more focused on the statistical analysis. The first of
the key research questions has looked at people’s identity (e.g. Gender, Age, Ethnicity,
gender and location) and if their identities followed similar patterns to whom they voted for
in the UK GE. A focus in this study has been the quantitative content analysis.
This utilizes a variation of tools and procedures to study media content.
"Any technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively
identifying specified characteristics of messages." (Holsti,1969:597-692)

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Data was gathered for this research project using an online survey asking specific questions
to a large audience. As seen in appendices 1-7 a total of 52 applicants answered the survey.
The survey was answered by a large number of people because it was posted online to social
media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The reason as to why in Appendix 1,2,3 and
4 asked about the applicants identities was to see if there was any similar patterns in whom
they voted for. This was because of a graph that was conducted showing the different
outcomes of the UK GE, if it was based on social media votes. (Gardiner, 2015)
There were some difficulties with quantitative paradigms as it
‘Traditionally involves exclusively cross-case comparison. Because they work
with large-N data sets, quantitative scholars often know little about most of
their cases. In survey research for example, the scholar virtually by definition
knows almost nothing about the individuals responding, beyond their answers
to the specific questions asked.’ (Goertz and Mahoney, 2012:87).
This may have seemed as a disadvantage but it was one of the reason why this study took on
the mixed method approach. Quantitative paradigms was essential for this study as in order to
analyse the impact social media had on the last UK general elections, a collection of data was
required.
Qualitative-research is predominantly exploratory research. It is used to gain an
understanding of underlying reasons, opinions and motivations. It provides an insight into the
problems and helps to develop ideas or hypothesis for a particular study. This refers to
discourse analysis as it is based on the understanding that there is a much more going on
when people communicate than merely the transfer of information. It focuses on more of
what individuals or cultures achieve through language rather than the literal meaning of what
is said.
‘Focuses on meaning, both as an object of study and as an explanatory
concept.’ (Jensen, 2015:266).
. Within qualitative research, face to face interviews have been conducted with a variety of
different people of different ages, genders and opinions. Specific questions were asked as

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seen in appendices 8- 17. The face to face interviews explore the reasons behind the answers
given.
There are some difficulties with using a qualitative approach as
‘Qualitative studies also often include a cross-case component. This is true for
both small-N studies, which are relatively common in the social sciences, and
the medium-N qualitative studies, which are not common. While some
leverage can be gained by increasing the N of qualitative studies, if the total
number of cases remains small, the main basis for casual inference must
derive from within-case analysis. Small N- comparison usually does not
permit strong cross-case tests of hypothesis.’ (Goertz and Mahoney, 2012:88).
This could have been a disadvantage, but as previously mentioned, mixed method approach
has enabled the study to receive a large number of data gathering as well as in-depth analysis
of meanings behind the interview answers, meaning the methodology for this project is
balanced.
ResearchFinding & Analysis
Appendices 1-7 show the questions asked on the online survey that was posted on social
media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to gather respondents. The questions asked were of
a simplistic nature and did not contain political jargon, this meant it was targeted at everyone
and did not confuse or single out respondents, meaning the likely hood of people not
continuing answering the survey were unlikely.
Referring to appendix 1 of the results collected from the online survey, it is clear that the
majority of people who answered the survey were female. A staggering 69.23% were female
and 30.77% were male. These results did not come to a shock as in (Smith, 2008) work, it
discussed the gender influence on online survey participation with results of
“The response rate for female faculty members was 36%, compared to a
response rate for male faculty members of 24%” (Smith, 2008:9)

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Adding to this, the link to the survey was posted onto social media, meaning it could have a
balanced response from both genders.
Appendix 2 shows the age ranges of the 52 participants who responded to the survey. With
16-18 year olds totalling to 67.31% being the majority and because it was posted via social
media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, it means that social media has the most
impact on the younger generation, which was expected when planning this research project.
However, basing evidence from the qualitative part of the mixed method approach, the
interview revealed that some of the younger generation were not impacted by social media
regarding the General Election (appendix 9 and 17). The interviewee in appendix 9 and 17
are the age of 20, fitting into the younger categories in the survey, stated that they believed
their vote would not make a difference. This seems as if the younger generation are not
interested, nor want to learn about politics.
Contradicting this, it does not just seem it is the younger generation who are uninterested in
politics, but the older generation too. In appendix 12, a woman ages 34 admitted she did not
vote due to not having time. This was unexpected for this project as parents and the elder
generation are normally more likely to vote as the policies of the parties appeal to them,
rather than the younger generation who still live at home with their parents. However, most
of the interviewees above the age of 25 voted in the General Election, but because of
different reasons. Some interviewees admitted they were influenced by social media
(Appendices 10,13 and 14).
The results from the surveys and the interview all show an indication that the majority of
people questioned, were influenced by social media, some more than others (appendix 20).
With the time spent on social media increasing, it has enabled Facebook and Twitter users to
be manipulated and influenced and in this case, the General Election.
Discussion
A problem that was expected within the project was the interviewing and whether or not people
were willing to discuss about their vote. However, surprisingly the 13 interviewees were
willing to go into depth about how they felt when answering the questions that were asked.
Some of the interviewees were quite abrupt when answering the questions, particularly
appendix 17. It caused some difficulty because it created an awkward atmosphere. Nevertheless

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as the interview was semi-structured, meaning a list of questions were prepared, it meant that
difficult answers were expected, meaning the questions could change and in the case of
appendix 17, I asked questions which would critically engage them, rather than feeling singled
out, by not participating in the vote of the General Election.
I was able to answer three out of the four key research questions, however some of the answers
were unexpected. After the survey that was conducted and the interviews, it was clear that
ethnicity (regarding question one) did not mean they had similar patterns to whom they voted
for. As seen in appendix 3, the majority of people who participated in the survey were white (a
total of 78.85%). There were people with different ethnical backgrounds such as Asian, Pacific
Islander (5.77%), Black or African American (1.92%), Hispanic or Latino (1.92%), and other
ethnicities (15.38%). Looking at their individual responses, each person in each category had
a majority of different selected answers.
Particularly of those with a White ethnicity, the answers varied the most. This was a different
answer to what was expected, as when this research project was planned out, it was assumed
that people of the same ethnicity would most likely, have similar opinions regarding whom to
vote for in the UK 2015 General Election.
Question 2 was the most difficult to get an answer for. This was due to the fact that all of the
young people that participated in the survey and interviewees had a variety of different
answers. It was expected for this research project that young people would not have voted
within the UK General Election as it was found in the literature review that young people do
not know enough about politics and are just not interested.
However, as seen in appendix 2, the majority of the people who participated on the survey,
were 16-20 year olds. This could be because the survey link was posted on my own personal
social media accounts and they have a majority of people of that age range on there who
would have seen the link. Nevertheless, the answers that were given by this age range, nearly
80% of them voted in the UK General Election and 5% did not because of the fact they were
not old enough to vote. This meant that all assumptions before the research was carried out
differed to what was expected.

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This was the question I struggled to answer the most. The reason being was because after the
research began it was clear that the project was not going to go down the route of election
campaigns itself, more down the route of what people were saying on social media, than the
political party themselves. However in appendix 18, the interviewee mentioned they had seen
links posted by the official pages on Facebook of the political parties that won their vote
over. However in appendices 8,9,14 & 15 it is clear that social media was a major importance
to political parties, but not in the sense of their elections campaigns. In those appendices, the
interviewees stated their vote was influenced through what other people were saying on
social media, not the parties themselves.
This made it fairly difficult to answer this question in the sense of the election campaigns, but
looking at the range of different interviews it is clear the social media did have a major
importance in relation to the UK General Election.
Question four of the key research questions was the most easiest to answer and gain
information for. This was because the survey in particular showed the individual answers to
each candidates answers and it was clear to see if users of different social media voted for the
same party. In particular (seen in appendix 7 & 9) those on Facebook, were more in favour of
the Labour Party, as opposed to twitter who was more in favour of the Conservative Party.
These results were expected, although were shocking at the same time. This was because, as
discussed previously, Facebook has many more users than Twitter, meaning their vote would
most likely outweigh twitters, but the result of the General Election were the conservatives
(Twitter favourite) meaning people on Facebook did not vote as much as Twitter users did.
For future researching, it would be interesting to see why Twitter were more in favour of the
conservatives and why and to see why Facebook were more in favour of the Labour Party.
This would show interesting answers, as it could be due to financial situations of each person
and to see why those parties appeal to each individual the most.
Conclusion
Overall, the conducted research has enabled the project to not only answer the key research
questions, but look into depth on how social media did have an impact on the UK 2015
General Election. Using the mixed method approach has enabled the project to gather a large

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amount of data from the online survey that was conducted as well as an in-depth meaning of
the answers that were conducted from the interviews.
The interviews had mixed messages but the majority of the interviews held that social media
did influence their vote, whether they did vote or not at all. It is clear social media had an
impact, particularly Facebook because of the tool that allows users to write their own
opinions and in this case it was the General Election. Although some of the interviewees had
said they felt their vote would be insignificant (appendix 8) they later decided that based on
social media and the discussions they read, they would most likely vote in the next General
Election. This shows that social media had a large impact on the UK 2015 General Election,
basing it on the research that has been gathered from this research project.
Word Count: 3,578
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Appendices
Appendix 1

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Appendix 7
Myself: Did you vote in the UK 2015 General Election?
Interviewee 1: Yes I did
Myself: When you voted, what were your main influences for voting your chosen party?
Interviewee 1: Policies of the different political parties were my main influences, I looked at
the different objectives each party hoped to achieve and that’s what made me come up with a
decision.

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Myself: I see, when you looked at the different policies each political party presented, was it
on social media?
Interviewee 1: I looked on social media, Facebook and Twitter mainly for other views to help
me make an informed decision.
Myself: So social media in a sense, influenced your vote?
Interviewee 1: Yes I would say it did, to an extent. I didn’t change my decision on what party
I wanted to vote for after looking at Facebook and Twitter, but it did help me clarify my vote
and inform me on the other party’s policies.
Appendix 8
Interviewee 2: No I did not.
Myself: What was the reason you did not?
Interviewee 2: To be honest, I do not see the point in voting, it is not like my vote would
make a different.
Myself: I see, when the elections were on going, did you look into it? If so where?
Interviewee 2: I did have a quick look on the day of the voting, there were lots of people on
my Social Medias giving their opinion
Myself: Did it make you question on whether or not to vote?
Interviewee 2: It did make me think but not enough to do something about it.
Myself: Have you considered voting in the next UK General election? Or any voting for that
matter?
Interviewee: After the party I dislike the most winning the election, I think next time I will
vote.
Appendix 9
Myself: Did any social media influence your vote? As in anything that was said on there?
Interviewee 3: I wouldn’t say that the political campaigns on social media influenced my
vote, more the fact what people were saying on social media, a lot of people, like a lot of my
friends are very political and the things that they were saying weren’t really publicised in the
news, like that would kind of make me think and second guess things and then I did actually

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look at their manifestos after seeing my friends talk about it, otherwise I would of voted for a
different party if I hadn’t looked on social media.
Myself: So what party would you have been more in favour for, basing just on the news and
other broadcast media?
Interviewee 3: I think the conservatives looked better on the news, so just on that, I would
have gone for them. But because of a lot of people were saying different things on social
media, it made me actually pay attentions and look at the different parties and because of that,
I actually voted for labour instead.
Myself Were you and your friends in a similar mind set of which party to vote for, or was it
varied?
Interviewee 3: Erm, from the people that I spoke to, we all voted for different people,
Myself: Do you know anyone that got involved on social media regarding and during the UK
General Election?
Interviewee 3: Well on Facebook, you could write this status saying “Just voted in the
General Election” similar to the status people did when they were checking themselves in
safe when that earthquake happened. And a lot of my friends, more on Facebook than any
other social media, were writing all their opinions and stuff on everyone’s status, so it seemed
that social media did get a lot of people involved and discussing their opinions and in a sense,
had a huge impact on the general election.
Appendix 10
Myself: Did anything influence your vote? Or change your decision on who to vote for?
Interviewee 4: Nothing really influenced me, I always knew who I was going to vote for
Myself: Did you get involved with voicing your opinions on social media?
Interviewee 4: Not really, I didn’t want to embarrass myself, I mean, I don’t know enough
about politics to feel I can voice my opinion, all I knew Is which party would benefit me
more, and that how I voted.
Myself: Do you think social media played a big part during the general election?
Interviewee 4: Yes, I believe it did have a big part. I mean a lot of my friends as well as my
children and their friends were all putting status’s on Facebook saying who they are going to
vote for and why, and I believe someone who didn’t know a lot about the different campaigns
for each party, it may have influenced their vote, but it did not influence mine.
Appendix 11

of 29
Interviewee 5: No I did not
Myself: Why did you not vote?
Interviewee 5: If I am honest, I didn’t have time to get to a polling station to vote, with
looking after my children and everything
Myself: I see, did you plan on voting? Did you look into any of the political campaigns by the
different parties?
Interviewee 5: Yes, I did plan on voting, and I did look at the political campaigns.
Myself: Where did you look into it?
Interviewee 5: I saw a lot of it on television, like news channels, I have the television on all
day when I stay at home with the kids, and I learnt a lot.
Myself: I see, was there any other media platforms that talked about the election?
Interviewee 5: Yes, I saw a lot on my Facebook about the election. Mostly my friends talking
about which party was better and lots of discussions about it
Myself: Did you get involved on social media?
Interviewee 5: I did write a status about which party I felt was better, and lots of my friends
commented on it saying they disagree and agree, a lot of mixed opinions
Myself: Were you happy with the outcome of the General Election?
Interviewee 5: No I was not, I did not want to conservatives to win, and next time I will make
sure I make time to go and vote, it might not make a massive difference, but I will feel better
knowing I did vote for the party who I want to win.
Appendix 12
Interviewee 6: Yes I did, I was very happy with the outcome as the party I voted for won.
Myself: I see, did you always plan on voting for that party, or was it influenced by anything?
Interviewee 6: I had always planned on voting for that party, but on social media, it did make
me question on whether or not I should vote for them. A lot of friends of mine wrote so many
status’s about why the party I wanted to vote for, was bad and how they shouldn’t win.
Myself: So would you say that social media had an impact on the General election?
Interviewee 6: Yes definitely, I mean, all my free time I go on social media, because I am a
strong minded person, I was always going to stick with the conservative party, but for people
who were unsure, could have definitely been influenced to change their vote.
Appendix 13

of 29
Interviewee 7: Yes I did, although the party I wanted to win, didn’t.
Myself: I see, were there any particular reasons in why you wanted what party to win?
Interviewee 7: If I am honest, I didn’t look into it very much. I based my vote on what other
people had told me about the party and how I would benefit if that party won.
Myself: When people told you about the different parties, where did they tell you, like face to
face? Over the phone? Social media?
Interviewee 7: Facebook of course! Facebook is where everyone discusses everything about
anything. During the election, I wrote a status saying “I don’t know who to vote for!” and so
many of my friends and family were saying who they wanted to win and why, it was like our
very own campaign, once I read through all the different comments, I decided which reason I
liked the most, and went for that party.
Myself: Did you do any research about the different campaigns after that?
Interviewee 7: No! Who has the time to research about it? I based my vote on the majority of
what people were saying on my Facebook, although they did not even win in the end!
Appendix 14
Myself: Was your vote influenced or changed by anything?
Interviewee 8: As a matter of fact it was, originally I was in favour for the conservative party,
and that was because I watched all about the election on my tele. However, when I looked on
my twitter, a lot of people were in favour of UKIP. This made me read into their policies and
see how it would benefit me, and when I discovered I was more in favour of their policies I
changed my vote for that party.
Myself: I see, do you consider social media to be influential then?
Interviewee 8: Definitely! How can we not, I mean, every one of my friends is on social
media, whether it’s for socialising or expressing opinions, we would be very silly to think it
isn’t influential. It sure influences me and my opinions.
Appendix 15
Myself: Did anything influence your vote?
Interviewee 9: No, I’ve voted for the same party since I turned 18, and I am now 47.

of 29
Myself: I see, that’s interesting. Is there a particular reason into why you vote for the same
party?
Interviewee 9: I am quite political, and most parties these days are full of lies and I have
always known this party to be the most truthful.
Myself: I see, when you do your research into the parties policies in which you voted for,
where you obtain that research?
Interviewee 9: Normally the party’s online websites
Myself: I see, are you on social media?
Interviewee 9: Yes, I have a Facebook account
Myself: On the days leading up to the election, did you see a lot of people talking about the
election?
Interviewee 9: Yes I did, I found it quite amusing, because a lot of people who were voicing
their opinions the most, seemed to be the people who did not have enough knowledge about
politics
Myself: Do you think this is a problem, like do you think social media is causing problems
regarding to important events happening without our country
Interviewee 9: I do not think it is a problem in that sense, however I do feel people spend too
much time on social media such as Facebook, when they could be doing something with
much more importance
Appendix 16
Myself: did you vote in the UK 2015 General Election?
Myself: Why is that?
Interviewee 10: I just don’t see the point, I am twenty years old, I have never been taught or
interested in politics. I would not have a clue on who to vote for, and to be quite honest, I
only know two parties.
Myself: Do you think this is a problem within our country that not enough of our future
generation are taught about politics?
Interviewee 10: Thinking about it, yes it probably is a problem, if I had more knowledge on
politics, it would have made me think about voting
Myself: do you think next time round, you would do some research about it and vote?
Interviewee 10: Maybe, but I cannot guarantee it
Appendix 17

of 29
Interviewee 11: Yes I did, Politics fascinates me, I’ve always been interested, when the voting day
happened, I could not wait to vote, it’s such an honour to live in a country where you choose who runs
the country!
Myself: What do you think of people who have the power to vote in the election, but choose not to?
Interviewee 11: I think it’s absurd! Why would you miss out on an opportunity to make a very
important decision regarding your welfare and benefits!
Myself: Do you think being un-educated on politics and the stigma in the news on politicians could be
a possible reason for people not voting?
Interviewee 11: Definitely, people are always hearing negative things about politicians and how they
lie to win the vote, but personally I would still vote because it gives you power to choose
Appendix 18
Myself: I see,why is that?
Interviewee 12: I hate politics, they all say the same thing in different ways to trick you into giving
them power they just waste
Myself: When you say “trick you” what do you mean by that?
Interviewee 12: Well the last time there was a General Election, I voted for a party that said they
would benefit me, and when they won, they did the opposite, you cannot believe a word that comes
out their mouth.
Myself: I see what you mean. Had you set yourself on not voting completely, or did you contemplate
voting?
Interviewee 12: I did think about it briefly because my wife kept bugging me about it, but I just
thought there is no point, I didn’t want neither parties to win, so I wouldn’t of known who to vote for
because I dislike them all.
Myself: That’s a far point, yes. Would you ever consider changing your mind next time round?
Interviewee 12: If a new party came along and stuck to their word, then yes, but that seems very
unlikely, so probably not.
Appendix 19
Interviewee 13: Yes I did actually, I didn’t plan to though
Myself: Oh? Why is that?
Interviewee 13: I don’t know anything about politics, it wasn’t until my friend told me I should vote,
that’s why I did.

of 29
Myself: I see,so that was your biggest influence on voting then?
Interviewee 13: That and Twitter
Myself: Why twitter would you say?
Interviewee 13: Well all my friends were posting tweets about who they were voting for and when
they voted and it made me think, I should do the same
Myself: Right I see,what other things did you see on Twitter on the day of the election?
Interviewee 13: Mostly pictures that were mimicking the party leaders, it was quite funny actually but
serious at the same time.
Myself: What do you mean by serious?
Interviewee 13: Well they are meant to be important figures to our country and people were just sat on
their phones on twitter mimicking them and not taking it seriously
Myself: Would you say that is a negative side to social media?
Interviewee 13: Definitely not! I think it is one of the positive things about it, we can express our
opinions and inform other on what we think. The reason why I voted for labour was because of a
tweet I saw about David Cameron and the fact my friend said David Cameron always lies
Myself: I see,I see, Do you think next time round you will do some more research?
Interviewee 13: Maybe, but it was hilarious reading all the tweets to make up my mind.
Appendix 20

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