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r replies or reactions by leaving comments, which are allowed by the SNS. These usually spark online debates, intellectual discussions and may affect other people's views. The extent of how a person's point of view or stand on an issue is affected by blogs and the like could not be easily quantified or qualified.

“While there has been extensive study on the effects of Web-based campaigning on campaign participation, much of the focus has been on specific forms of participation in the political system, such as donations or working for a campaign, and has been drawn away from two of the strongest indicators of participation, that is, interest in the political campaigns and the physical act of voting itself (Romano 2009.)”

This study was inspired by the lack of local studies on how these social network sites and their contents affect the voting public. Also, this study wants to focus on one of the two “strongest indicators of participation” (Romano 2009), “the physical act of voting itself” but will not limit to the act itself, but the voting behavior as well.

Traditional media such as newspapers, television networks and radio networks are of course continuously affecting the campaigns and voting behavior but the form of communication is not as intimate as that being offered by SNS.

A blog entry from Campaign U.blog (November 2008) states that “the influence of social networking could be significant. Unlike a newspaper article or television broadcast, the information presented on sites like Facebook and MySpace is filtered through a user's circle of friends and acquaintances. ‘They may trust those people more than they would a media organization or a campaign,' Mr. (Paul) Haridakis (Kent State University) said.”

The effect of traditional media on voters vis a vis the SNS's effect on the voting behavior could not be concretely compared in this study.

研究的问题与目标——Research Problem and Objectives

This study aims to determine if political participation in Soc研究范围ial Networking Sites affect UP Diliman undergraduate students' behavior toward voting during the recent USC Elections.

Research questions

1. Are UP Diliman students getting involved in the campus political scene through SNS?
2. Is there a direct relationship between the levels of involvement through SNS to the physical act of voting?

选题意义——Significance of the Study

This study does not cover a very large sample but will be able to provide an overview and insights on how the voting youth of today are affected by SNS. Trends, if any, will be studied by the researchers. Also, this study may serve as a peg for more in depth studies on the effect of social networking sites on voting behavior.

Students, academic and media institutions may find this research as an insightful source for classroom discussions, forums or future fields of study. This study is also timely because of the upcoming 2010 elections.

范围及局限——Scope and Limitations

Foreign studies of the effect of social networking sites and the Web in general have been done by some academic institutions but so far, no known study on how social networking sites in particular affect the voting behavior of the young voting population in the Philippines. To fill