Multimedia component to research paper.

1. How will
Social Media
affect the
2012 Election?
By: Shannon Roche
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2. Introduction
-Social media is a huge part of society today.
-Plays a huge role in people’s personal and
social lives.
-Also used for professional reasons.
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3. Who can we learn from?
• President Barack Obama is known to be the
“creator” of political social media.
• A company’s CEO quoted on the company
blog >>>
“The sheer scale of the President
Obama’s social media marketing
platform is huge and could benefit the
Democrats for years to come even
after the elections and his
presidency.”
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5. What influences people
to vote?
•commercials
•billboards
• articles
•newscasts
•radio
•interviews
•fliers
•interest groups
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6. The Issue of Non-voting
•One reason people don’t vote is
that they feel uneducated. Social
media helps with this because it
exposes some candidate info.
•Another reason some people
don’t vote is that they simply
forget. Social media helps remind
users to vote by showing that
their friends voted via
statuses/tweets or even PSA’s via
candidates social media
networks.
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7. Watch out for group think!
With sites such as Facebook and Twitter, users
have the opportunity to “friend” or “follow” a
candidate or “like” a candidate’s page.
This can cause a “group-think” mentality
where the user feels a sense of belonging to
the group they are a part of because all
members are in support of the candidate
together. Users can also “follow” or “friend”
news channels such as Fox news and CNN.
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8. What can go wrong
Another case in which social media can be challenging for a candidate is if a
candidate’s words get taken out of context and the twisted phrase goes viral
via social media. For example, when Mitt Romney spoke about how the
lower class has safety nets and the upper class can fend for itself, people
took the statement as Romney stating that he only cares about the middle
class. There were several tweets, blog posts, and status updates on the
statement with wording similar to “Romney doesn’t care about the lower
class”, or “Romney admits he will be focusing on the middle class”.
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9. Targeting your audience
with social media
•The 2008 election is remembered
to have pushed African Americans
and young people to vote.
•In the Canadian election, young
voters were told to “do the
unexpected and vote.” Social media presents these
political requests in creative ways
such as viral messages and
entertaining memes.
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10. Examples of social media used
during election time
Viewing Foursquare check-ins from political rallies or
conventions influences the viewer to get more involved
in his/her political action and personal vote.
During election times, official campaign ads flood the
YouTube channels. Independent political ads go viral as
well.
QR codes are beneficial because they allow the
candidate to connect with the public easily.
Anything that a user can access on their mobile
phone is very popular during election time because
the public prefers quicker methods of finding info.
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11. Related theories
•3rd party credibility relates because social media channels, such as a
candidate’s Facebook page, act as a voice for the candidate and attempt
to accurately represent them.
•The systems theory relates because there is a relationship between the
candidate (organization) and the public/voters (subsystem).
•The 2-step flow theory relates to the fact that messages or ideas go
through an opinion leader before they reach the public and biased news
networks such as CNN or Fox news (via social media) act as opinion
leaders about political topics related to the election.
•2-way communication is a prevalent theory related to social media’s
effect on the election because candidates can give the public a message.
An example would be “follow me on Twitter” and if the public responds
with an action like “re-tweeting” a candidate, then there is 2-way
communication present.
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12. PR Relevance
-Social media’s role in the election relates
closely to public relations because PR
aims to change the opinion of the public
and that is the same goal of social media
during the presidential campaign.
-PR practitioners try to convince the
public of their brand, product, or idea
and the elections are all about which
candidate can best influence and
persuade the public.
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13. Conclusion
-There is no doubt that social media has a huge
part in the outcome of the presidential election.
-I agree with experts’ view that Obama
“introduced” campaign social media in 2008.
-We must remember that when there are great
benefits to something, there may also be great
threats: a threat within this topic is the danger of
a candidate having negative or false information
about them going viral.
- After the conclusions of a variety of research, I
believe that if a candidate doesn’t have
outstanding social media networks, it can cost
them the entire election.
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14. References
D Laurion. (2012, January,4) Republicans seriously trailing democrats in
social media marketing. Retrieved from
http://blog.ovrdrv.com/republicans-seriously-trailing- democrats-in-
social-media-marketing/
Reilly, I. (2011). "Amusing Ourselves to Death?" Social Media, Political
Satire, and the 2011 Election. Canadian Journal Of
Communication, 36(3), 503-511.
Unknown Author. (2012). 5 ways social media could impact the 2012
election. Retrieved from
http://socialmediamagic.com/blog/5-ways-social-media-
impact-2012-election/
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