Abstract:
Currently, the intention of use social media is drastically different from the use of social media in past. In 2015
Sri Lankan presidential election, a large-scale political communication campaign was conducted through social
media, and its role is highly emphasized by politicians and supporters. The main purpose of this study was to
investigate the influence of social media political communication content on the voting behavior of young voters.
The population of this study was young voters who use social media and data were collected through online
distributed self-administrated structured questionnaire. The study was conducted by selecting 120 young voters
based on convenience sampling method. Social media political communication content was the independent
variable whereas dependent variable was voting behavior. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and
regression analysis were applied to analyze the data by employing SPSS 21.0. The results of the correlation
analysis and regression analysis showed significant positive relationship between the independent and dependent
variable. Findings of the research emphasize that social media has great power to influence voters’ behavior as a
communication tool in the political context of Sri Lanka.
