Facebook and Self Efficacy

This campaign cycle is going to get ugly.  There is just no getting around that.  Personal attacks are already being launched from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney and vice versa.  This is not atypical of campaigns nowadays.  In fact, most campaigns, from state races to national presidential elections, feature negative, personal attack ads.  The latest round of volleys in this campaign cycle has to do with the issues of politicizing the death of Osama bin Laden.  This is a very sensitive issue and has become an important issue in the campaign.

Romney, and others including former and current Navy SEALS, have called the president's recent campaign ad touting his decision making regarding the killing of bin Laden. The ad suggests that Mitt Romney may not have made the same decision.  Many have called this highly inappropriate because the real heroes are the SEALS that carried out the operation.  In the minds of many, the president's decision is not what is important in this case.  Nonetheless, the president decided to use the ad and now he must deal with the political consequences.

This topic is very interesting to look at because it is a fairly big deal in the current political world.  However, I have not seen this topic pop up on my Facebook news feed at all.  This is very interesting to me, seeing as this story is one that is all over the news sites.  This is a good example of the situational political knowledge that we've been discussing in class.  The argument is that Facebook doesn't necessarily make people more engaged in politics, but it may increase their situational political efficacy.  Thus, Facebook and social media can increase people's knowledge about certain issues, if they so desire to inform themselves.  It is interesting to me that some issues of political importance consume Facebook news feeds, while others are hardly ever mentioned.  This phenomenon is a little strange for me, but it goes along with the argument regarding situational political efficacy.

In the future, there is a chance that Facebook, and other forms of social media, could help people become more involved in politics in general. However, for now it seems as though Facebook is only as good as the people that use it.  What trends, what's followed, what's important seems to be at the discretion of the people.  Framing and agenda setting by the mainstream media can't be seen on Facebook and maybe that is a good thing.

Article