Digital Smarts - Can Social Media Change People’s Minds?

Reading through posts and comments on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can make it easy to convince yourself that social media is just a giant echo chamber where users with specific political views talk to each other and different viewpoints are ignored. That may not always be the case. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, being exposed to differing views via social media can sometimes cause people to rethink how they view a political issue. The Pew study found that 20% of those surveyed reported that their stance on a social or political issue was changed because of something they saw on social media, and 17% said that social media had changed their views about a specific candidate.