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With the conclusion of the Republican National Convention (RNC) we thought we would bring you ‘The Friday Roundup’ with a Republican political twist. This week we have a look at how Republicans have been using social media to win back the hearts of Americans.
Romney spends big on social media
The GOP (Grand Old Party) officially announced Mitt Romney as its presidential candidate this week and he has wasted no time in starting to spend his campaign war-chest. The former Governor of Massachusetts’ campaign is the first ever to purchase a trending topic on Twitter, the minimum price of which is around $120,000 a day.
This makes us think that the social media experts on the Romney campaign don’t understand that trending generally happens organically. Especially at times when, oh I don’t know, the GOP convention is on and the Republican party announces its presidential candidate…
Will Twitter change speechwriting forever?
Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan became the most rapidly tweeted man during his RNC speech reaching a whopping 6,669 tpm (tweets per minute) and achieving 474 tpm more than Mitt Romney in his first speech. According to Mashable ‘The shorter, punchier and more stackable quotes from Ryan’s speech drove the conversation’.
Romney then went on to smash the political tpm record (set at the last state of the union) during his closing speech by reaching 14,289 tpm. So the question begs to be asked, will this be a pivotal point in campaign speech history, as speechwriters have to create more and more sound bites to hype up the buzz on Twitter. I can already see West Wing’s Toby Ziegler pacing in his office and throwing his rubber ball at the window in frustration.
Twitter polling sees Romney storm into the lead
Wednesday saw Romney take a huge lead in the Twitter Political Index. The Republican’s Twitter stats went up to 60, his second highest ranking ever, but more importantly gave him a 28-point lead over Obama.
Romney has managed to overcome the 35-point lead Obama held on 4th August. This is in no small part down to the interest around the GOP convention and with the Democratic National Convention just around the corner.
All these figures are based on Twitter’s analysis of every tweet mentioning one of the candidates. Twitter then weighs those figures up against millions of tweets about other trending topics, to give the candidates a sentiment score. Is this possibly a new and innovative way of predicting the outcome of elections? As this is the first time Twitter has experimented with these statistics, the jury is still out. But it will be interesting to compare the results on Election Day.
Clint Eastwood speaks to an imaginary President
And finally…the Twitter-verse is buzzing with the video of Clint Eastwood’s speech at the RNC. The multi-Oscar winning actor and director interviewed an ‘invisible’ Barack Obama onstage and seemingly kept on being interrupted by the imaginary president.
Clint is quoted as saying ‘I’m not going to shut up, it’s my turn.’ And then exclaiming ‘what do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him to do that… he can’t do that to himself’. Is this theatre acting or has Eastwood just gone completely insane?
What do you think about the integration of social media and politics, is it a dangerous tightrope or an innovation that will create transparency in politics?
Let us know your thoughts…
I found tweets per minute an interesting idea. I’d definitely like to see a chart of some kind comparing where we are now with the previous election though.
I think an integration of Social Media and Politics is inevitable as most things seem to be connected or interacting via Social Media, it’s users and the Social Media companies themselves are finding interesting ways to collaborate and again connect with each other and newcomers alike- for example the London 2012 Olympics with Countries teams tweeting and even the BBC showing #’s and the athletes own twitter address’s, feeds and posts.
I think that social media will play an increasing role in politics, but will be balanced with popular, ‘modern’ opinion. For politicians who seem out of touch with mainstream opinion it may be detrimental, but for those who already generally popular hugely beneficial.
Padraig – We would find that interesting too but this is the first American election Twitter has provided this level of information, so it will be interesting to compare results in the future.
Scott G Robertson – I agree it is inevitable. I personally feel that there is a huge opportunity for MP’s to use social media to their advantage and show transparency in their activities, thus creating a new relationship with the electorate.
Stiruppe – It will be interesting to see where the trend leads. People may not expect politicians to have a ‘finger on the pulse’ but that depends on how much the current trend develops. That said I agree that those that use it properly will find it hugely beneficial.