I'm interested in this topic because I know how much I'm directly affected by it. Even though I'm one of the biggest offenders, I believe that social media has too big of an influence on how people form their political views. The websites are often full of bias and sometimes it's tough to know when the source is being biased. As someone who has always on my phone I know that social media is a major news source for me. Between taking classes, doing homework and studying, and running quite a bit I feel as though there's little time to sit down and watch multiple news sources to get my political information. Because I know I'm so directly affected by this, it leads me to believe others are as well. In addition to that, literally anyone can put anything on the internet, making many sources unreliable and untrue. In my experience I've found multiple articles on the exact same topic that argue the exact opposite idea. This has led me to not know who to trust as there's likely only one right answer. With all of this first-hand experience, it makes me feel as though I'm qualified to write about this topic. Not only that, but I've grown up in the era in which technology has become so prominent. With these reasons in mind, I am certainly qualified to write a paper on this topic.

This first article, written by Monica Anderson, reveals different ways in which social media has an increasing role in politics. Throughout this article, data is given showing the increase of social media in the political world. In addition to this, examples of how social media is now part of politics are provided, the most notable of which is the fact that the President of the United States now has an official Twitter account.

Some of the values and interests at hand in this article deal with the affects that social media has on politics. For example, social media now changes the way in which the people get their information; and now it's often coming directly from the politicians themselves through their own social media accounts. This is so important because it helps the people feel more connected to the politicians in or running for office.

Seeing that the author of this article is a research analyst for the Pew Research Center (the website from where this article found), I'm inclined to find her to be very credible. My reasoning for this is that her claims are backed up my data that's often found by surveying a random sample of Americans.

The second article, written by Andrea Chang and Samantha Masunaga, demonstrates the ways that the influence of social media on politics has grown. Because of social media, more people went to vote in 2008. Another impact of social media is that people can now voice their opinions on political events like debates between potential candidates. With social media, the people's access to new information widens and ability to share their thoughts has become much easier.

Social media's allowance for more accessible news and a more convenient way to voice political opinions seem to be the main values and interests at hand here. Being able to advertise something as simple as voting, which is something that everyone should know about anyway, is a huge tool that the government should utilize from here on out, as the article mentioned how lots of voters were attracted to vote by a Facebook add in 2008.

The Seattle Times is a major news source, so I find this source to be very credible. No matter who the writer is for any of these articles, I trust that the company's process for having articles proofread and making sure all articles have at least a little bit of validity is a sound process.

This final article, written by Michael Shue, discusses other ways that the ever-growing social media has affected our politics. In some specific cases, potential candidates have hired people to their staff to only focus on the social media aspect of their campaign. Throughout this article, the changes occurring in politics due to social media is discussed and it isn't only limited to the US (the effects are worldwide and as mentioned in this article, similar changes are occurring in Europe, Australia, and South Africa as well).

The values and interests mentioned in this article are centered on the structural changes caused by social media. Between candidates adding social media specialists to their staff and leaders across the globe creating and maintaining accounts from various social media providers, it's clear that times are changing in favor of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Overall, this site seems to be fairly reliable. Although it doesn't have the name recognition of the Seattle Times like a previous article, there don't seem to be any outrageous claims being made and that leads me to believe most of this article is fairly reliable. Also, there seems to be a fair amount of evidence to back up the claims being made in this article.

This is an arguable topic because some may contest that social media isn't as influential as I may believe. It's very possible that the data provided is some of the articles aren't enough to persuade some people. Most of these articles seem to agree that social media is becoming increasingly more important in the political world, but that may be due to the fact that I was looking for articles that would support my thoughts on the subject. I also think these articles gave me a new perspective on the topic as a whole because the more I research it, the more new things I learn about it. Finally, I think I could reword my question to one that isn't leading me to find exactly what I'm looking for. Using the phrase "Why has the role of social media become so big in politics?" seems to force me to only look for an answer that supports the idea that it is such a big part in politics.

