For my overall final research paper, I chose to research and document the effect social media has had on American democracy, for better or worse. In 2016 and 2020, the election was undeniably altered by the usage of social media as both a source of news and a propaganda machine. The extent of this impact has major implications for the way any democracy continues on in the modern era, as social media’s dominance will only continue to grow and individuals will keep finding new ways to weaponize it. This is a variation on my original research goal of social media’s impact on individual mental health; however, I feel it is a far more important question to be asked.

In general, I am interested in learning about how much social media has grown over the past decade and a half, and the extent to which it can and has influenced individuals, specifically in the context of politics and elections. In short: how has and can American Democracy be impacted by social media? The American democracy is the oldest and was the first of its kind. It is something that must be protected and an awareness of threats posed to it can help the nation from slipping too far from its path. This is why a secondary question to research is: Are social media companies now just propaganda machines, that have little concern about their impact on society? Combined, these goals are meant to determine if America’s democracy is under serious threat from disturbed individuals or private groups/nations, where their goal is to either destroy our democracy by dividing us or simply elected sympathetic politians.

As a nation, we already are aware of how Russia played a role in the 2016 presidential election, and likely again in 2020, but it is difficult to determine to what extent their role was. It is believed that social media companies such as Facebook were utilized as mass propaganda machines meant to deceive Americans and feed them false information. Whether the goal was to elect specifically Former-President Donald Trump or simply disrupt American democracy is still largely unknown. With the presentation of this issue, it is easy to begin wondering if other groups have been attempting to sway or alter other elections. While no significant fraud that can actually impact the elections has occurred, there’s no way for the public to know if there are groups trying who might succeed someday.

The three main research databases I chose are The Gale Research Library (specifically Gale In Context: Global Issues), EBSCOhost’s research on Communication and Mass Media, and lastly the Homeland Security Digital Library. Collectively, I feel these databases present the broadest means of gathering data regarding my research topic. The Gale database is a great way of finding more obscure articles I may not think of that could provide fantastic insight, as well as the Homeland Security library which can potentially provide government findings regarding interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Lastly, EBSCOhost can be a great means of finding information about social media’s growth of its lifetime and how that has begun to affect individuals.