PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD The role of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in political campaigns has long been clear. Twitter now has ten times as many users as it did in 2008—and a growing online population will mean a growing influence on the 2012 campaign.
A recent article in the New York Times highlights the role that social media is playing in the process of nominating a Republican candidate.
“Twitter has changed the whole way that politics works,” Teddy Goff, the digital director of President Obama’s re-election campaign, told the Times. “Not just the press element, but the organizing element and the fund-raising element and the relationship building that all campaigns try to do.”
Especially on Twitter, where news travels at light speed and campaigns can interact directly with voters, small comments can become massive political debates. Fans of Mitt Romney, for example, recently created the account @GrandioseNewt, poking fun at Newt Gingrich’s claim of “grandiose ideas.”
According to the Times, Romney’s campaign keeps a particularly sharp eye on the universe of Twitter. His team watches the streams of journalists especially closely, in hopes of spotting potential biases. It then responds to posts and comments that it feels are unfair or untrue.
This year, analysts expect Twitter and Facebook to serve as more effective predictive tools for political campaigns than in past years.
One way that Web 2.0 can predict results is by measuring the sentiments expressed by users. Kanjoya, a tool than analyzes the emotional basis of tweets, reported increasing “joyfulness” in tweets about Romney. After his recent win in Florida, that “joyfulness” factor has only increased. On the other hand, Kanjoya reports increasing amounts of surprise in tweets about Newt Gingrich.
In past elections, analysts have found direct correlations between the number of a politician’s followers and his/her success with voters. What light does that shed on upcoming elections? As of February, Romney’s Twitter account has over 300,000 followers, while Gingrich’s has 1.4 million and Obama’s has more than 12.2 million.
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