Twitter In Presidential Elections

The form in which political parties campaign has changed over time. And, there are many explanations historians provide describing the evolution of campaigns over time. In the present days, there is no doubt social media such as Facebook and Twitter has changed the game; these tools allow presidential nominees to reach far more people than ever before. It also allows the candidate to talk to people without filtration. In the last decade, the goal of the campaign focuses more on demoralizing the contestants than addressing real issues.

In the past ten years the way we as a people communicate has changed greatly. No longer is it uncommon for conversations to not be face to face and now more so than ever conversations take place through text. As with any change there will be and is push back to it. The conflict over the consequences of the social media dependent society have now intensified as a result of social media playing ever greater roles in how politics is seen and even conducted. This has been a major societal question since the presidential election of 2008 and the debate has been written about, discussed, and argued by thousands of different politicians,

Does Nicolas Carr, author of “How Social Media Is Ruining Politics” provide enough evidence that social media is ruining politics? The answer is a very obvious yes. Overtime, social media has slowly polarized the political perception of the American people. Social Networking is a new, popular medium that has changed the nature of political conversation. Therefore, it has become both a good thing and a bad thing. It has encouraged those who once did not partake in the political process to participate. Social networking is very useful to find out news and information ahead of the news media.. “It has become an easy way for political candidates to connect and communicate with the American people.” (Carr 1) While social media might provide the candidates with a form of convenience because it simplifies and speeds up the communication process, it also provides many ways for their campaigns to be easily and deliberately attacked. Unfortunately, what receives the most attention on social media is outrageous statements. Some candidates like Donald Trump know how to use this to their advantage. The danger in this is that candidates tend to use abrasive soundbites to grab the attention of the social media user. Unfortunately, the abrasive soundbites are often taken out the intended context. Other candidates like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush did not come to this realization as quickly because they did not want to take the chance of hindering their image. They understood that a

However, political communication has experienced a great deal of change within the past ten years. Now, politicians have caught on to using social media in order to connect with younger demographics of voters who are participating in elections and political conversation more than ever. Successfully integrating yourself into pop culture is a political

Barrack Obama’s tenure as President of the United States is coming to a close and voters should understand how to gather reliable information on new candidates, such as Jeb Bush. Even though paying attention to all four major types of media platforms; digital, legacy, a candidates’ own media, and social media, creates a sound informative opinion on Republican Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, digital media provides voters with the most holistic view. The benefits of digital media, throughout the week of September 15th through the 22nd, created an opportunity to construct a different point of view on Bush and what he stands for.

Although the 2016 presidential election was over one month ago, many people still can’t believe the surprise result. Behind being upset about the result, some populations start to think the role of social media during the election. They aware the power of social media is very strong. But at the same time, only a few of them realize that they live in filter bubbles.

Overall, our theory that social media use is a cause for voter turnout was not supported through our tests. Our results from our hypothesis chi-square test, our regression analysis, and also our predicted probabilities test show that social media use does not have a significant effect on voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election. Our theory may have been flawed in thinking that less people are dependent on social media than we originally thought. This can been seen in our graphic that a majority people do not use social media at all for obtaining political information. Social media sites are still on the rise and are not as widely/frequently used as we previously anticipated. The millennial generation and generation z are the most common

These assumptions raised many questions to research as well. Moody, Cohen, and Fournon (2013) raised the first question of “What types of messages did candidates disseminate utilizing tweets during the 2011-12 Presidential Primaries” (p. 3). The next question brought up by Moody, Cohen, and Fournon (2013) was, “Were runner-up candidates more likely than front-runners to include a negative tone in their tweets” (p. 3). Then the third question stated by Moody, Cohen and Fournon (2013) was, “Were runner-up candidates more likely than front-runners to attack their opponents in their tweets” (p. 3) Finally, the fourth and final question raised by Moody, Cohen, and Fournon (2013) stated, “What interactive units did politicians use within their tweets. To what type of content did they link? What was the tone of candidate hashtags” (p. 3).

Craig Allen Smith’s 2015 update of Presidential Campaign Communication details every aspect of a Presidential campaign from start to finish. Taking into account the trialogue between campaigners, reporters, and citizens, the roles each of them play differ, but come down to the citizen. The citizen is exposed to campaign ads, candidate appearances while they try and weed through the information in order to make a decision on their political beliefs. Campaigners have a different agenda because they most surface, gain their parties nomination, bring the party together of the primary season, and then go on to win the electoral college with 270 votes or more. The third and final part of this ‘trialogue’ are the reporters, which can be on any platform that his an audience.

Throughout history, media has played a significant role in how an individual obtains power. The Presidential campaign of Donald Trump utilized specific aspects of modern-day media to ultimately win the election. Although the medium upon which people communicate has changed over time, the message itself has stayed relatively the same. The world’s latest medium however can be seen in the exponential growth of social media as well as news media outlets. Through the use of social media, Trump captured the world’s attention and garnered international headlines.

Appearances on entertainment shows, gives candidates an escape from the highly critical national press to a much more friendlier environment for them. A great example would be interviews on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show or Colbert Report. Another beneficial outlet for campaigns is social websites that were mainly used in the 2008 election and continued through 2012 elections. “For example, nearly six million people viewed the New York Time’s posting of the first Obama-Romney debate on YouTube”. (Dunaway & Graber. 2009. Pg. 316) In 2012 the Obama campaign turned to Twitter to target direct messages to voters and contributors, they also had more than sixteen million e-mail addresses. Others sources of direct social media that campaigns use are candidate-sponsored websites, campaign websites, and special interest pages for groups such as senior citizens, veterans, college students, or young

The media, one of the lead influencers in political election history has taken today’s active social media users by storm. With the spark of social media, it is increasing citizens political awareness at the cost of factual - bipartisan review of the content. The media is still a heavy influence, the platforms are just changing. I believe that it’s okay to have partisan media, however, they shouldn’t be labeled factual nor should they be non-transparent about their information.

The efficiency of Twitter as a social media platform has been noticeable, as it remarkably affected the Mayoral election results than any other platform, including Facebook and Instagram. By a simple feature offered by Twitter that can enable voters to engage with the candidate through direct messaging, mentions and hashtags, Twitter excelled in influencing the decision of the electors by real-time interaction rather than just reading about the Candidates and their activities. As described in the book Twitter and Society in 2014 by

The media’s most notable negative effect on elections has been its biased coverage of political candidates. The 2016 U.S. election is a perfect example of the media’s

Television has had a huge impact on political elections since the 1950’s. They used television to reach out to the people to try and persuade them to pick their side to get into office. Nowadays social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram are taking over and getting their messages across to certain groups. Social media has dramatically changed the way campaigns are run and how Americans interact with the elected officials. The way social media has impacted politics are: