Public Opinion and Online Communication

Pew Research Center

 The form of online communication "battles" that I see / hear about the most would be on twitter, or X as it's now called. Now I don't have twitter but based on this article from Pew Research Center, its says that 1/3 of adults tweets are political, and that adults over 50 post 78% of the political tweets in the US. Because so many people worldwide use twitter / X posts made by people with a substantial following their words can be very influential for the general public. Now, many online fights between celebrities aren't political but some are, based on the article by People News that recounted the craziest twitter fights between celebrities. 

When I looked at successful online political campaigns, I found another study by the Pew Research Center that compared Barack Obama's and Mitt Romney's digital media activity for the 2016 presidential race. 

They found that Obama used digital media a lot more than Romney did and not only connected with people through posts but also through direct messages. Obama also focused on more than just the economy, which is what the race was mainly about. Another thing was Obama targeted specific voter groups. In one of the ending paragraphs of the article it stated that "throughout modern campaign history successful candidates have tended to outpace their competitors in understanding changing communications." 

To answer the last question about what ethical considerations should people take when posting online in regards to public opinion is people with platforms should have more thought when posting controversial opinions because nowadays the public's opinion means a lot. Cancel culture is everything and one bad post can mean the end of everything. They should also consider the fact that online communication can turn into in person communication very quickly and what's put on the internet never leaves the internet.