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The overarching point of our research is that media can be almost too influential when it comes to people making decisions about what they read and see on the internet. This has a significant impact because social media is something that is used so frequently by people, that they are bound to be influenced without even knowing it, and without checking the credibility of the information.

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How social media influences individuals opinions 

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How social media influences individuals opinions 

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39.13% of our survey takers chose the option of 'sometimes' when asked how often they use media as a way of forming opinions, while 33.33% said 'often', and 20.29% said 'very often'. According to Romero, in 'Influence and Passivity in Social Media', "Massive participation in social networks is reﬂected in the countless number of opinions, news and product reviews that are constantly posted and discussed in social sites such as Facebook, Digg and Twitter, to name a few. Given this widespread generation and consumption of content, it is natural to target one’s messages to highly connected people who will propagate them further in the social network. This is particularly the case in Twitter, which is one of the fastest growing social networks on the Internet, and thus the focus of advertising companies and celebrities eager to exploit this vast new medium. As a result, ideas, opinions, and products compete with all other content for the scarce attention of the user community." (20)

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According to a study done by Kiousis,  9% of people believed that the newspaper had low credibility, 74% believed it had moderate credibility, and 18% believed that it had high credibility. 15% believed that television had low credibility, 75% believed that it had moderate credibility, and 10% believed that it had high credibility. 12% believed that online news had low credibility, 75% believe that it has moderate credibility, and 14% percent believed that it had high credibility. (Kiousis 392) Most of the people that participated in this survey leaned to moderate credibility in all of the outlets. This leaves room for media bias according to the average user, but it also allows for news to be telling the truth. It is hard to tell which is why people tend to say something somewhere in between.

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As of November of 2016, about 69% of U.S adults use at least one social media site. 86% of these Americans are ages 18-29, near the same age group used in the charts (from our survey) above. Displayed below, are some connections between gender, the age previously discussed, and social media outlets. The graph below also shows that Facebook is the most used social media outlet, which is the same leading result we found from our survey.

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According to an article from "The Journal of Consumer Behavior",  the more people use social media, the more influenced they are to promote and share the social networking site itself. Author John H. Heinreichs writes,  "It is important to recognize in the perceptual differences among the usage groups that organizations utilizing these social networking sites can encourage the high-usage users to become opinion leaders and influencers in promoting the social networking sites."

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With over half of the participants saying that they use social media for their news outlet, it shows that social media dominates our views on politics. This is one of the easiest ways to be misled by media bias.

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96.4% of survey takers reported using Facebook the most, with Instagram in second at 53.96%, and Twitter in third with 46.76%.

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19.42% of our survey takers were male, while 79.86% were female. According to Teresa Correa's article "Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users' personality and social media use", it is stated that gender plays a role in dimensions of media use. Correa writes, "While extraverted men and women were both likely to be more frequent users of social media tools, only the men with greater degrees of emotional instability were more regular users."

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94.24% of our participants were white. Some may believe in media bias due to the way that the media generalizes the race as a whole, and how they implement them into the news.

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50% of our survey takers were ages 38 or older. Most adults are still becoming acclimated to incorporating media into their everyday lives. According to the journal "Use of the Media by Older Adults", media skills have been adapted to by older generations, but it can still prove to be difficult to understand. Author Thomas J. Young writes, "The elderly have acquired the necessary media skills to gain access to most of the major media. However, maintenance of skills throughout the latter segment of the life cycle would appear to become problematic for at least a portion of the aged audience."

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31.73% of our survey takers were ages 18-22. According to the article "Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: A review and research agenda"it is said that Social Media influences "organizational decisions about service customization and productivity, the design and implementation of interactive services as well as customer relationship management practices. Social norms and behavior  may be changing due to Generation Y's use of of social media."

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Romero, Daniel M., Wojciech Galuba, Sitaram Asur, and Bernardo A. Huberman.                      "Influence and Passivity in Social Media." SpringerLink. Springer, Berlin,                     Heidelberg, 05 Sept. 2011. Web. 03 May 2017.

Correa , Teresa . "Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’        personality and social media use." Computers in Human Behavior 26.2 (2010): 247-53. Web.

Young , Thomas J. "Use of media by older adults ." American Behavioral Scientist 23.1 (1979): 119-36. Web.
Bolton, Ruth N., A. Parasuraman, Anike Hoefnagles, Nanne Migchels, Sertan Kabadayi, Thorsten Gruber, Yuliya Komarova Loureiro, and David Solnet. "Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda." International Journal of Service Industry Management 3rd ser. 24 (2009): 245-67. Web.
Heinrichs, John H., Jeen-Su Lim, and Kee-Sook Lim. "Influence of social networking site and user access method on social media evaluation Authors." Journal of Consumer Behavior 10 .6 (2011): 347-55. Web.

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In our survey, 48.2% of survey takers said they use social media the most, as their main news source.

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The general public uses media as a source of citation and forming opinions without checking its credibility.