The pre-election race in Serbia is in full swing, but the elections in the United States of America (USA) are still not many (only a few) months away. Research shows that most individuals are ready to accept some differences in relation to their own political preferences, but a significant part of the population is sensitive to content that politically offends them.
A survey from February of this year, conducted among users of social networks in the US, showed that individuals on social networks do not always agree with their friends and that online friendship is not an indicator that they share the same views, opinions and interests.
Nine out of 10 respondents said that they at least sometimes agree with the content of their friends’ political posts. However, the opposite often happens.
The fact is that the population of those using social networks has increased significantly, as well as that the election campaign has heated up considerably on the Internet, so the results of this research are very interesting. As many as 38% of social network users in the US said that they discovered that they had serious political disagreements with their close friends through a post on Facebook or a similar platform.
This discrepancy, surprisingly or not, has resulted in nearly one in five (18%) social media users taking some action about it, whether it’s blocking, unfriending or some other form of ignoring.
Among self-identified liberals, that share is the highest and rises to 28%, while it is lower among self-identified conservatives at 16% and moderates at 14%. Among liberals, the most common reason for taking some steps was when someone posts something they disagree with, while among moderates and conservatives, the fact that others post political content too often prevails.
As the election becomes the focus, social media users can expect these kinds of disagreements to emerge and manifest, and brand managers should pay close attention to them. For now, most users of social networks do not resort to the measures of removing friends from the “friend” list or the “hide “ option. However, if political dissent becomes widespread, social and other networks will begin to shrink, limiting the power and power of the living word for marketers.