The FINANCIAL -- Social media sites play an important role in providing information about the Republican primary races and the upcoming presidential election in general.

A Digitas survey conducted by Harris Interactive found that the majority of social media users turn to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to learn more about the presidential candidates.

The younger the social network user, the more likely he or she is to check in on political events with an electronic social group—62% of 18- to 34-year-olds say they use social networks to get election information. But even 40% of the over-55 set rely on the networks for political discussion and updates.

With social networks now a mainstream way for gathering information about current events, it’s not surprising that 92% of ad agencies are likely to use Facebook in their client’s political ad campaign. In STRATA’s December survey of 13 agencies with political clients, some 46% said they were most likely to use Twitter.

When it comes to what voters themselves are saying about the candidates, a detailed study of more than 20 million tweets by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which examined campaign coverage and the online conversation from May 2 through November 7, 2011, showed that both blogs and Twitter differed “markedly” from the political narrative that people experience in traditional news coverage.

The political discussion on Twitter is “more intensely opinionated, and less neutral” than both blogs and news, according to Pew. “Tweets contain a smaller percentage of statements about candidates that are simply factual in nature without reflecting positively or negatively on the candidate,” a Pew statement said.

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