Social Media and Elections in America
Social media refers to electronic communication that helps users to create online communities for sharing ideas, videos, messages, pictures and music. Most users of social media are youths. Corporations are adopting the trend of using social media to advertise their products. Election candidates have discovered the impact that social media has on election outcomes. Using social media, they are able to reach majority of the youth voters. Social media has influenced America’s elections by helping candidates to conduct their campaigns, raise funds, conduct interactive communication and win young voters.
Candidates vying for American’s 2012 elections are using social media to win the votes of the young generation. Most users of social media sites are aged between 18-30 years. The biggest percentage of America’s population constitutes the youth. Candidates vying for election seats have discovered the importance of using social media in an attempt of wooing young voters (Sayre, Bode, Wilcox and Shah 18). Obama’s campaign adopted the strategy of using social media by asking supporters using social media to share what was important to them during the election season. In addition, the campaign encouraged supporters to post pictures showing their hands placed over their chests to social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Obama has about 17 million Twitter followers. Romney has also acknowledged how important social media is in winning the votes of young people. Currently, he has 2.5 million Facebook likes and 667,000 Twitter followers.
Candidates participating in America’s national elections are also using social media to conduct their campaigns. Elections candidates post their manifesto in social media sites. The public view these manifestos and comment whether they support them. In addition, election candidates post strategies that they propose to adopt while conducting their campaigns in social media sites (Just, Crigler, Metaxas and Mustafaraj 11). It enables people to follow easily the campaign calendar of their favorite electoral candidate. Political analysts argue that the main reason that caused Obama’s 2008 campaign to be successful is because he used social media. Before 2008 elections, candidates mainly relied on broadcast advertising, debates and political rallies to communicate their campaign messages to the public. However, Obama used social media to communicate his campaign messages to the public. He formed the Obama application that allowed supporters to share his videos, speeches and inspiring quotes. He also used Twitter to update his followers where his campaign trail was. Furthermore, he used live video streams posted on Twitter to spread his campaign messages.
Election candidates are also using social media to conduct interactive communication with the public. Studies have shown that election candidates use social media sites to correct any mis-statements (Medvick, 53). During election campaigns, rumors are very common. There are very many instances where opponents in an election race spread false information about each other. An election candidate may spread propaganda about his/her opponent in order to reduce the support that this candidate has from the public. Using social media sites, election candidates clear any mis-statements in order to win back the support from the public. Mitt Romney claims that Twitter helps him to conduct real time communication with the public. This helps him to know whether the public supports all the policies that he proposes to introduce.
Social media has also affected elections by influencing fundraising of elections. One of the main reasons that Obama won the 2008 elections is that he used social media sites to conduct fundraising campaigns. He raised $410 million through individual contributions. Most of these contributions came from donations given by social network users. On January 2008, Obama raised $32 million. $ 28 million of this donation came from social media users (Harfoush, 36). Most politicians have discovered the impact of social media on fundraising. Due to this, they concentrate on online fundraising campaigns instead of relying on traditional fundraising events. Political analysts argue that social network users donate more funds because they are politically engaged.
Social media offers an interactive platform through which candidates participating in the election can interact with the voters. For example, candidates are integrating social media in their communications strategy through engaging the public in live discussions on chat rooms and other communication tools provided by social media. According to Just, Crigler, Metaxas and Mustafaraj (12), candidates are increasingly depending on social media to improve their engagement level with the voters with the hope of turning them to be supporters. Thus, it is apparent that the patterns of voting are likely to be shaped by the social media activity of the candidates. Surveys point out that 60 percent of social media users expect candidates to have at least some form of online presence through avenues such as social media. Of this, about 40 percent assert that the information they access via the social media will play an instrumental role in determining their preferred candidates. Thus, candidates are utilizing the influential characteristic of social media to enhance their engagement level with the public. For instance, Facebook fans and Twitter followers offer a platform for social interaction with prospective supporters, and candidates can convert fans and followers into votes. The viral nature of social media helps increasing the exposure of a candidate among social media users. An ideal example of a candidate who uses social media to increase the level of engagement with supporters is Mitt Romney, who states that Twitter offers him an avenue for real time and personal communication with his supported. In addition, Mitt Romney asserts that Twitter helps him in assessing how the public perceives his policies.
Apart from influencing the outcome of an election process, social media can be utilized to evaluate the election trends during the run up to the election process; this can be done by conducting data analyses of the information gathered from social media websites. An example is the joint efforts by Politico and Facebook to analyze the comments and status messages in order to evaluate the degree of sentiment among several regions and voting ages. It is apparent from this observation that social media can be a potential data source of polling data to identify election trends in the run up to the election.
In conclusion, social media has influenced elections in America by helping candidates reach young voters. Most youths have Facebook and Twitter accounts. Using social media, candidates are able ask the opinion of young voters what on changes they would like to experience after elections. Moreover, social media help election candidates to conduct their campaigns. Such candidates post information concerning their campaign trail, speeches and quotes on social media sites. Social media also help election candidates to conduct interactive communication. Candidates are able to clear any mis-statements about their election campaign. It also helps candidates to raise funds for elections. Obama raised $28 million in one month by using social media. Social media also help election candidates to conduct interactive communication. Besides influencing the election outcomes, data from social media can be helpful in determining voter trends during the period leading to an election.
Works Cited
Harfoush, Rahaf. Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand. California: New Riders. 2009. Print
Just, Marion R, Crigler, Ann N, Metaxas, Panagiotis Takis and Mustafaraj, Eni. ‘It’s Trending on Twitter’ – An Analysis of the Twitter Manipulations in the Massachusetts 2010 Special Senate Election. New York: Social Science Electronic Publishing. 2012. Print
Medvick, Steven K. New Directions in Campaigns and Elections. London: Taylor & Francis. 2011. Print
Sayre, Ben, Bode, Leticia, Wilcox, Dave and Shah, Chirag. Agenda Setting in a Digital Age: Tracking Attention to California Proposition 8 in Social Media, Online News and Conventional News. Policy & Internet. no. 2,2, pp. 7-32. 2012. Print
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