The Direct Benefit Effect/Information Cascades: Women, Politically Active Individuals, and the Social Media Craze
One cannot deny that social media plays a prevalent role in the daily activities of modern day society. Social media provides people with a platform to communicate as well as a means to share information. According to the article, “Social Media Usage on the Rise for Women and Likely Voters,” women and politically active people have shown an increase in social media usage since Spring of 2014. Many social media platforms target women more so than they do men, so it would make sense why women are using these platforms more frequently. Social media also provides people with an easy way to share political opinions and ideas, which also explains the increase in politically active users. The article also discusses how if one person uses one type of social media, they are very likely to also use another type of social media. The end of the article discusses how the increase in women and politically active people correlates to the increase in politically active women as well, which would statistically make sense.
One can look at the topic presented in this article and question how women and those that are politically active have become more involved in the social media craze. This increase in usage can be analyzed using two different principles: the direct benefit effect and information cascades. Social media may have seen an increase in usage by women and voters because they may feel like they would directly benefit from joining or being more active online. For example, a politically active person may feel like he would directly benefit from using Facebook because he would receive current and updated information during Election Day. Therefore, this person will in turn use Facebook. On the other hand, this situation can be analyzed with regards to information cascades. It is quite possible that this politically active person one day sees that his other politically active friends have joined Facebook. He could believe that these people must have outside information that gave them insight to join, i.e. they must have joined because Facebook must provide them with something valuable that this person cannot initially see. Therefore, this new person will join Facebook as well. The same sort of scenarios can be applied to the increase of women becoming more active on social media, as well as the increase in politically active women as well. Both the direct benefit effect and the information cascade principle can be used to model how this increase in social media usage has occurred.
http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/social-media-usage-rise-women-likely-voters/