IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE BEHAVIOR OF TUNISIAN VOTERS: 2014 ELECTIONS

Abstract

In the era of Web 2.0, social media are becoming more and more popular among politicians as well as their institutions as an indispensable tool for political messages broadcast, federation and mobilization of voters. Considered as means of communication, these social networking sites offer now real opportunities for innovative interaction (Dewing, 2010) . The use of these forms of social web quickly invaded the political arena, and drastically altered the political scenery.Thus, the main objective of this paper is to study the impact of online social media on voting behavior of the Tunisian voters in the 2014 elections. Through the data from a survey of a sample of 564 Tunisian voters, it was possible to unveil the debate about the political uses of social networks and identify their effect on the voting behavior of the Tunisian voters.