ABSTRACT
The 2020 presidential election campaign coincided with a once-in-a-century global pandemic during which voters relied on social media to organize and structure their lives. According to deliberative democracy theory, democracy depends on citizen political knowledge and participation as well as a healthy media system. In this chapter, data from a national cross-sectional survey (N = 1,260) that was administered online after the U.S. presidential primaries in July 2020 is analyzed to better understand how social media use influenced political participation and political knowledge during this time of increased social media dependence. According to the results, increased social media use was associated with a decrease in political knowledge, but an increase in political participation. In addition, the results examined the influence of social media political talk and perceived opinion leadership on knowledge and participation. The implications of these findings are discussed as they relate to media repertoires and deliberative democracy.
