Political Campaigns on Social Media and Users’ Behavior in the Context of Spiral of Silence

Abstract

The current research was conducted to study Political Campaigns on social media (Facebook) and the spiral of silence effect on youth. The objectives of the study were to explore how youth use Facebook to determine the climate of opinions related to politics; to examine the implementation of the spiral of silence theory on the issue of politicians’ accountability process in the current regime in Pakistan. The purposive sampling technique was use for the collection of samples from the University of Sargodha and comprised of (N= 300) youth participants,including (n=150) males and (n=150) females. A questionnaire was Well-designed for assessing opinion climate and inclination to share their views on controversial political issues. Results of the current study revealed that individuals are more likely to speak out on controversial topics through Facebook than other communication channel. Findings indicate that social media plays an important role in setting up the direction of the public opinion climate beside the group of close friends, which also important role in the assessment of opinion climate on controversial political issues,including politicians’ accountability process. In Pakistan, political polarization is on the rise. It this context spiral of silence for deviant opinion is evident from the findings.