“Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee.” – Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of Huffington Post, in theNew York Times (11/7/08)

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill coined the phrase, “All politics is local” which illustrates the principle of a politician’s success is directly tied to his ability to connect with his or her constituents. My argument is the phrase should now be “All politics is social” by the ways in which social media has impacted politics. No campaign is complete these days without a presence on a Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, a Twitter account, not to mention Android and iPhone apps and a plethora of targeted web sites. The power of social media enables the modern campaign to operate at a much higher level and it allows anyone to connect one-on-one with the campaign itself. Social media creates tools for fundraising, voter outreach, and most importantly for gathering information on individual voters.

Let’s examine how news is functioning in the social media universe. Facebook reaches far more Americans than any other social media site; overall, three in ten adults get at least some news while on Facebook. The range of news topics on Facebook is rather broad. Entertainment news tops the list followed by ‘people and events in my community’, sports, national government and politics, crime, then health and medicine; even international news reaches one in four Facebook news consumers. News plays a key role in the social media experience; about half of social networking site users have shared or re-posted news stories, images or videos and around 45 percent have discussed a news issue or event. As you can see, social media is greatly consumed by news and news spreads very quickly via Facebook.

Who exactly is on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube? With Facebook, 42 percent are male while 58 percent are female; 34 percent are in the 18-29 age group and 30 percent are in the 30-49 age group with 27 percent are above 50. With Twitter, it is split evenly between men and women but 45 percent fall between the ages of 18-29, 38 percent are between the ages of 30-49 and only 16 percent are above 50. With Google+, slightly more females are on than males. Within the 30-49 age group, it makes up 37 percent of total uses and 26 percent lay between the ages of 18-29 and 38 percent are over 50. LinkedIn is two-thirds male and one-third female. Half of the users are 30-49 years old and 18 percent are 18-29 and 32 percent are over 50. YouTube is 57 percent male and 43 percent female. YouTube has the second highest percentage of people between the ages of 18-29 behind Twitter with 39 percent. Thirty-four percent are between the ages of 30-49 and 27 percent are over 50. LinkedIn users are also high earners and college educated while Twitter users are significantly younger than users on Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn. Facebook users are more likely to be female than users on YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. This data shows how different age groups and genders are distributed among the variety of social media which provide news.

Now what does this have to do with politics? You might have seen an “Impeach Obama” ad to the left of your Facebook news feed or an ad to sign up for Obamacare on Twitter but do social media affect politics? A brief history of social media in government might answer this dilemma. The first election which had an Internet presence was the 1996 election where both major party candidates developed websites though the promotion and advertisements of these sources were not great. During the 1998 midterm elections, more than half of the Senators had websites for their campaign while only 35 percent of House candidates had one. Fast forward eight years and the social media had a relatively big presence on the 2006 midterm elections. This was the first election in which social media websites were embraced by lots of campaigns. Since the election was a victory by the Democrats, it’s easy to believe Democrats had the upper hand in utilizing social media for political purposes. Nine of the ten Facebook profiles with the most supporters were Democrats. Campaign staff also uploaded favorable videos to YouTube while also posting negative videos of opponents on their profile pages. Statistically, only ten percent of candidates for Senate used YouTube by having a channel to upload videos and none of the 1,102 House candidates had one.

The 2008 Presidential Election is also known as the “Social Media Election” because of all the groundbreaking tools Obama used to win the presidency. Most campaigns at this time used more targeted messaging strategies with user-generated content. The Obama campaign had over 13 million email addresses by the end of the election with over a billion emails sent. On the other side, Republican candidate Ron Paul set a single day record of raising over $6 million online. By November 2008, Obama had more than two million supporters on Facebook compared to McCain’s 600,000. Obama had a more personalized Internet profile with Facebook likes such as Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, and Stevie Wonder whereas McCain liked fishing and Letters from Iwo Jima. Obama’s YouTube channel had attracted more than 97 million video views across 18 million visits compared to McCain’s channel with 25 million video views across 2 million visits. Lastly on Twitter, Obama netted over 125,000 followers where McCain had only 5,300. In the end, Obama won 10 million more popular votes and 192 more electoral votes. Obama’s social media presence definitely contributed to his victory.

All of the supporters/followers I numbered above were able in 2008 to break down the barriers between the average citizen and the presidential nominees. Social media have changed political discourse and it has brought the White House into the palm of a hand or to a table in a coffee shop. Recently, President Obama participated in several Google+ Hangouts which were streamed live so anyone could watch anywhere. Anyone was able to ask the President any question and his answer was streamed around the world. We are in a new age in which a politician can easily be viewed by a large population whether he is in a town hall or in the House Chamber. C-SPAN was created to bring what was happening in Washington to the home; and social media take this same idea and accelerate it to endless destinations.

Adam Sharp, who is the Government, News and Social Innovation Head at Twitter, discussed at a forum in September 2012 the new ways Obama connected with voters. He said the still single best way in campaigning is to shake someone’s hand, look them in eye and say ‘Hi, I’m running for Congress and I’d like your vote’ but he said that doesn’t exactly work in today’s politics as much as it used to and especially not in a population of 300 million. Sharp said more and more voters are saying those who are on Twitter and follow their elected officials have a relationship which is almost equal to seeing the official in person and shaking his or her hand. He mentioned how for people who make less than $100,000 a year, a simple tweet from an official can be more influential than friends and family members persuading their vote. The Internet is public property and for political discourse, it’s a public forum. People have just as good a chance of getting their question answered on Twitter or Facebook, as they do in a town hall meeting or attending a rally. In the summer of 2012, Obama gave a speech in Des Moines, Iowa. Afterwards, Obama answered questions on Twitter, while being recorded for YouTube. People might not ever meet their elected official, but through social media channels have the opportunity to connect with them like at no other time in history When someone has a one-on-one relationship with an official, this greatly increases the probability of voting for that person.Social media has solved the impossible task of politicians having meaningful connections to the multitude of potential voters. Twitter and other social channels allows politicians to quickly connect real-time with 300 million United States voters and gain immediate feedback as to what those voters think.  No longer does a politician need to wait weeks and spend thousands on polls, in today’s media, is out of date by the time the data is collected, recorded, analyzed, and reported.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4495632/social-media-campaign-today

in this video Adam Conner who is the Privacy & Global Public Policy Associate Manager of Facebook states what he thinks what social media is for a campaign today. He says social media is where voters are. Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide and over 130 million users in the United States. To have a successful campaign, officials must work and connect to where voters are. Campaigns today have an online director, they have a Facebook link on webpages which allows voters to keep an updated log on officials running for office. Conner says when officials connect with voters on social media on a personal level that will affect how they govern and legislate their office. For example, State Representative Justin Amash of Michigan would post online what he voted on in the legislature and his rationale on why he voted that way. Authenticity is carrying campaigns today and social media not only surrounds politics but it is changing politics.

Later in the video, Matthew Hindman who is an Assistant Professor at George Washington University who teaches about Media and Public Affairs ran a Politico-George Washington University survey asking likely voters if they used social media in politics such as following a candidate on Facebook or Twitter or some other social media site. The study showed 89% said never, 7% said occasionally, and 2% said often. He predicts however in 2012 those numbers will be much higher in the often-occasionally category because there is a growing gap between the 18-29 year old age group and everyone else and one-third of that age group answered they often or occasionally used social media to follow a campaign. Politics is becoming a very social topic among friends and family. It’s not necessarily people are more educated about politics or what’s happening around the world but since people have so many more outlets to learn about these topics it’s becoming an open discussion for many people. More and more people are learning about politics through the links that are posted on Facebook or simply by conversing with a friend or family member due to the idea of politics becoming a social atmosphere.

But what about the other social networks such as Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, and LinkedIn and how did the Obama campaign tailor to those different sites in 2012? Joe Rospars who is the Chief Digital Strategist for the Obama For President organization said those sites are already filled with Obama supporters but each one of those communities has its own tools for reaching out to other supporters. Obama had several moments in his campaign and still today in his presidency where he would talk to a group of citizens via the Internet whether it be a Google+ Hangout or an AMA on Reddit. Reddit, for those aren’t familiar is essentially the front page of the Internet. On August 29, 2012, President Obama did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) where users on the site were able to ask the president anything in the world and he devoted thirty minutes to answer questions from random people. People asked him questions ranging from the recipe to the White House’s beer, what he was going to do to help small businesses, if he is planning on increasing funding for the space program, and who is favorite basketball player was. The front page of Reddit is the most viewed page on the Internet everyday and because the site had so much traffic the site shut down which had never happened before in the site’s history. The goal of sessions like an AMA or a Google+ Hangout is to persuade those involved to encourage their friends and family to support the President and to connect one-on-one with several people at a time. Rospars said his favorite social media site was Tumblr because he said it’s the most fun there, meaning the administration posts fun and exciting pictures or articles which show what the President is doing in a good light. With Pinterest, there are limits to what can be posted so the campaign had to stick to graphical messages to give Obama an existence there. Reddit is basically the homepage of the Internet so those links or photos appear on Facebook or Twitter can be traced back to Reddit where it was first spread. Having a heavy presence on Reddit can reach out to millions because news spreads just as fast through Facebook and Twitter as it does on Reddit.

The 2012 election cycle not only turned out to be about politician’s embrace of social media but also social media platform’s embrace of politics. Twitter launched the Twitter Political Index in the summer of 2012 which was a daily tracking report of aggregate sentiment among Twitter users toward the two presidential candidates. The index was created in partnership with data analytics firm Topsy and polling firms The Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research, and together they searched through 400 million daily tweets and through a variety of different metrics, assigned each candidate a daily score. What they found was President Obama’s daily score often paralleled his approval score in Gallup’s daily tracking poll and even at times the Twitter Political Index predicted where poll numbers were headed. YouTube launched the 2012 Elections Hub where it collected videos from the YouTube Politics channel as well as from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Inivision, Al Jazeera, ABC News, and BuzzFeed. This hub also live-streamed coverage of the Republican and Democratic conventions and the presidential and vice presidential debates. Lastly, the Facebook had its I’m Voting app which worked alongside the CNN app. The app allowed Facebook users to commit to voting, provided information on their views about relevant issues in the election and it let users share thoughts on the campaign with their friends. Campaigns not only had to embrace social media to survive an election race but social media embraced politics to allow their users to freely participate in the election.

In conclusion, I’ve shown you the specific demographics that are on the main social media networks, the history of the Internet in politics, the prevalence social media have had on elections beginning in 2006, the specifics of the “Social Media Election” of 2008, how Twitter can persuade a vote and how Obama used this tool to connect with voters in 2012, how Facebook is fundamentally changing how legislatures govern, and how other media networks such as Reddit and Tumblr have affected election campaigning. It’s clear to see how politics is now more social than ever before. Politicians are also becoming more personable when running for office. Obama, on Facebook, said he liked artists like Bob Dylan and McCain said he enjoyed fishing; plays like these can affect how a voter thinks about a candidate and in turn how they decide to vote. It might be harder than fifty years ago, however, to meet a politician or shake the President’s hand but it’s easier now to communicate and establish a relationship with any government official. People can ‘like’ what the President is doing and those actions are instantly shown to friends and family which can spark a conversation.

In the long run, being part of the social media arena could prove both safer and more profitable than standing outside it. Winning an election today is how you use social media to track public opinion, target potential donors and expose the campaign – the three best ways to gain votes. People are more connected than ever in these new and groundbreaking ways and if a candidate wants to win an election he or she must have a foot in the door of this expanding online universe.