The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released a study this week detailing the use of mobile devices for political purposes this election season. Turns out, about 27% of registered voters use their phones for political ends. Three-fourths of these folks use their phones to text, and of those texts:
- 19% sent campaign-related texts
- 5% signed up to receive politics-related texts
- 5% are receiving political texts they don’t want
But the really interesting stuff is at the intersection of cell phone ownership (48% of those in the survey owned smartphones) and social networking:
- 45% used their smartphone to read others’ comments on a social networking site about a candidate or the campaign
- 35% used their smartphone to fact check a candidate’s statement
- 18% used their smartphone to comment on a social networking site about a candidate or the campaign
You can read the rest of the report here.
The upshot is that, as with most technologies, the more prevalent smartphones become, the larger part of the political process they will become. This is particularly interesting for Latinos because, according to a recent study, 57% of Latinos own smartphones.
[Image Via Luke Hayfield Photography]
Sara Inés Calderón is a journalist and writer who lives between Texas and California. Follow her on Twitter @SaraChicaD.
