If you ’re a Facebook substance abuser with strong political opinions about the 2016 presidential race , you might be wonder if you ’re going to have fewer Facebook supporter by the metre the election ( last ) wander around .
In addition to all the name - vocation and negative ads raising passions and adding to the res publica ’s polarisation between Hillary Clinton supporter , Donald Trump traditionalist and the rest of everyone else , several medium vent have admonish about the phenomenon of election - related unfriending . Politico , for example , enjoin the storyof business adviser Brent Blackaby , a Democrat , who severed ties with his Republican uncle and got into an argument that enveloped numerous congeneric .
" OK , if any of my Facebook friends are still voting for Donald Trump , do me a favor and unfriend me now , " Blackaby posted , grant to Politico .
But is there a bigger moving ridge of unfriending this year than in 2012 or 2008 , because Trump and Clinton wind up such raw feelings ? There ’s no style to know for sure . Unfriending is hard to track in real time from the outside — sometimes , it ’s not even immediately manifest to the people who are dropped — and Facebook itself says it does n’t know either .
" It ’s a good interrogative sentence , but we really do n’t know the answer , " saysJenny Stromer - Galley , an associate prof at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University .
Stromer - Galley , who is studying usage of societal media in this safari , said we actually have more qualitative data point than quantitative , and know strong belief occur . premature research show that hoi polloi tend ware on-line contentedness and link communities that reinforce the view they have , she explained . That makes them all the more strident — and vulnerable to getting mad about someone who sock them or their campaigner .
" When you have strong Clinton supporters going on social medium , for example , and being exposed to people who hate Clinton , that can produce anxiousness , " says Stromer - Galley . " The polarisation is exacerbated . We tend to cover the other side as speculative guy , rather than someone with whom we have difference of opinion . "
A2014 studyby Hebrew University communications prof Nicholas John looked at pace of unfriending among Judaic Israeli Facebook user during an armed conflict in Gaza that summer . John ’s study feel that one in six had unfriended or unfollowed someone during that period , and that one in 12 had cut off as many as three former admirer .
The study found that young Israelis were more probable to cease Facebook friendships than quondam one , and that the further to the political left or the right that a Facebook user was , the more they were disposed to drop Facebook friends . Interestingly , the conflicts did n’t have much to do with theactualimpact of events on a someone . Facebook users in southern Israel , where the threat of actually being harmed by a Eruca sativa fuel in the conflict was highest , were no any more probable to unfriend than people from other , safer parts of the land .
