Information on Facebook and satisfaction with democracy

A study involving Portuguese students

Abstract

The article questions the impact of information on Facebook in shaping opinion on political issues among higher education Portuguese students. It first evaluates the use of Facebook as a tool for expressing opinions and for obtaining information. It then seeks to characterize the discursive environment on the most common political issues in this social network. From a questionnaire applied to 160 higher education students in Portugal, the study finds that just over a third of students publish on Facebook, which is in turn consulted daily by almost all students, for whom it is the most widely used online platform for information. The existence in this space of an environment marked by negativity and dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy is identified. The data collected suggest that there is a peer information phenomenon (consistent with the two-step flow of communication model), in which a majority is exposed to a hegemonic environment fed by a minority (generating a spiral of silence phenomenon), creating the conditions for the existence of a pseudo environment of negativity and dissatisfaction, which may favor a public perception hostile to the functioning of democracy.