“Talking about” Obama and Romney on Facebook
When President Obama marked the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death earlier this week by unexpectedly addressing the nation from Afghanistan, several commentators cited it as an example of the ”advantage of incumbency”: the president’s visibility and ability to dominate the news are greater, just by virtue of being president, than those of challenger Mitt Romney, and he should be expected to benefit from the groundwork his campaign laid during the 2008 campaign, particularly its vast network of supporters, donors, and social media connections.
Indeed, across a number of social media platforms, Obama’s following dwarfs Romney’s: Obama has 26 million Facebook ”Likes” to Romney’s 1.7 million; while Obama has nearly 15 million Twitter followers, Romney hasn’t yet hit half a million; on Google+, Obama has just over a 1 million users in his circles, compared to Romney’s just over 500 thousand; on Instagram, Obama has 636,790 followers to Romney’s 9,695. In absolute numbers, Obama seems to own a towering advantage over Romney.
But on Facebook at least, sheer number of “Likes” may not tell the whole story, or even the most important part of it. Last fall, Facebook launched ”people talking about this,” a metric that counts interactions with a Page — things like “liking” a Page, commenting on a post, or sharing a photo from a Page — over a seven-day period to measure user engagement.
Here, too, Obama leads Romney in absolute numbers, with a “talking about” total more than twice as high as Romney’s – 283,819 versus 126,990. Yet, as a percentage of overall “Likes,” engagement over the past week is much higher for Romney, at 7.6 percent, than for Obama, at 1.08 percent.
For comparison’s sake, the activity of Romney’s Facebook followers appears to surpass those of Ron Paul, known for his passionate internet following: of Ron Paul’s 949,319 “Likes,” 24,943 — 2.6 percent — are ” talking about” his Page. And the percentage of Newt Gingrich’s fans who are engaging with his Facebook Page this week – 4,887 out of 295,289, or 1.65 percent — falls short of Romney’s — though it is still higher than Obama’s.
At the party level, too, Republicans seem to be more engaged on Facebook: while the “talking about it” score for the Republican National Committee — which this week launched a new app for Facebook called the “Social Victory Center” — is 6 percent of total likes (312,462), the Democratic Party’s Facebook page, which has a roughly equal number of “Likes” (336,951), is just 2.2 percent.
Note: The “talking about” numbers on Facebook Pages tend to fluctuate on a day-to-day basis. The Facebook stats cited in the sample above were collected on just one day — May 3, 2012 — and reflect only the week prior.
Washington Extra – Tweet tweet
President Barack Obama’s Twitter Townhall would have been more interesting if he had answered tweet for tweet.
Instead it looked a lot like an old-fashioned interview except the questions came over the transom on Twitter.
Of the tens of thousands of questions posed at #AskObama the ones chosen allowed the president to chew over long-standing talking points but offered little new insight. It might have been worth asking at least one fun question off the well-trodden policy path.
The White House did get into the novelty of it, inviting 140 guests to match the 140 characters allowed in a tweet. And Obama started off the event by tweeting from a laptop with a presidential logo set up on a stand.
But that was the last time during the event that he issued anything so brief. If his spoken answers had been tweeted in full they would have gone way past the red zone that signals over the limit on Twitter.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer on Twitter
The U.S. Supreme Court does not have an official Twitter account, but this just in — Justice Stephen Breyer is on Twitter and Facebook. But he is not revealing details of arguments or rulings.
He told a congressional hearing on the Supreme Court’s budget that he has a Twitter account because of his interest in the protests in Iran after the 2009 presidential election. Twitter represented one of the best ways of learning what was happening in that country.
Since then, Breyer said he has received requests to follow him on Twitter, but has turned them down. The same applies to Facebook.
“It’s probably not a good idea,” he said of making public comments on social media sites. Breyer said judges generally should be anonymous and that he only communicates with his children through Twitter and Facebook.
At the hearing, Congressman Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas, brought up the issue of social media and asked whether the justices can tweet if they wanted to.
Justice Anthony Kennedy did not answer that question, but said he had the sense that the Supreme Court’s work was discussed in social media. “That’s good,” he said.
Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson, the appropriations subcommittee chairwoman, said the questions showed how the times have changed. “I never thought we would ask Supreme Court justices about their tweeting,” she said as the hearing ended.
from Summit Notebook:
So how plugged in is the SEC chair? (technologically speaking)
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro says her agency has its work cut out to compete with the massive amounts of money that private firms, policed by the SEC, pour into the latest technology.
"Can we keep up with Wall Street? I think we have a fighting chance. We'll never have, under any circumstances, the kind of budgets that would allow us to spend a billion dollars a year on technology as some firms do, I mean that's just not going to happen, and I totally understand that," she said at the Reuters Future Face of Finance Summit.
"If we can build a forensics lab for our enforcement people to be able to download data off of iPhones and iPads and other instruments, then we will be a lot better able to pursue insider trading potentially and other securities law violations," she said.
So how technologically plugged in is the SEC chair personally?
"I have an iPad," Schapiro said.
"No I don't do Twitter, I don't have a Facebook page. You know, in my position it would be complicated," she said with a laugh. "So maybe I'm kind of middling in terms of technology."
Her agency has a Twitter feed and a Facebook page in development.
Tweet like an Egyptian — Hillary Clinton tries it out
Young Egyptians, who famously used Internet services like Facebook and Twitter to launch their recent revolution, turned their focus to Hillary Clinton on Wednesday. They peppered the top U.S. diplomat with skeptical questions about longtime U.S. support for former President Hosni Mubarak and what many felt was its slow embrace of the movement to topple him.
Clinton, taking a personal spin at what she has called “21st Century Statecraft”, fielded a selection of some 6,500 questions that young Egyptians posed through Twitter, Facebook and the Arabic-language website www.masrawy.com — and many reflected deep suspicions about the U.S. role in Egypt.
“My question is: Does America really support democracy? If yes indeed, why the U.S. was late in its support of the Egyptian revolution?” one questioner asked Clinton.
“The attitude of the U.S. during the Egyptian revolution was to support the Egyptian regime first. Then, when the revolution turned successful, the U.S. switched sides and supported the Egyptian youth and the youth revolution, and the U.S. said that we learn from Egyptian youth. Why was such delay?” another wondered.
Clinton gamely took them on, stressing that the United States used its influence in Egypt to help press for a peaceful resolution to the crisis and the launch of a reform process that would lead to “an Egyptian model of democracy.”
“So I think that we were walking a balance, because we wanted to be sure that our messages did not push anyone into doing something that we disagreed with, namely violence, which we tried to, in every way possible, prevent,” Clinton said.
Young people think they are invulnerable. They do not understand that if we had moved in too fast it could have triggered a response not only from Mubarak & company but also from other Dictators such as Iran.
U.S. State Dept. figures out how to say “Twitter” in Arabic
It took a while, but the U.S. State Department is now tweeting in Arabic.
With unprecedented political turmoil rocking Egypt and protesters turning to social media such as Twitter and Facebook, the mouthpiece of U.S. foreign policy wants in on the game.
Its first message? #Egypt #Jan25 تعترف وزارة الخارجية الأمريكية بالدور التاريخي الذي يلعبه الإعلام الإجتماعي في العالم العربي ونرغب أن نكون جزءاً من محادثاتكم
(Translation: “We want to be a part of your conversation!”)
The new State Department Arabic Twitter feed, @USAbilaraby, joins a growing chorus of Twitter feeds describing and commenting on events in Egypt and across the Arab world, where social media is helping to broadcast political ferment.
The feed, which currently has a scant 161 followers, has passed along messages including President Barack Obama’s statement that the future of Egypt is in the hands of the Egyptian people and Vice President Joe Biden’s demand that Egypt immediately stop harassing journalists and scrap its emergency law.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has directed the State Department to spare no effort to harness the power of the Internet to spread the U.S. message, and has repeatedly emphasized that Internet freedom — like freedom of speech — is an inalienable right. She has drawn the lines at Wikileaks, but there the rationale is that the leaked State Department cables are stolen property belonging to the U.S. government.
The U.S. message can be quite snarky. Current top tweet: “Iran’s words regarding Egypt are empty; Iran should give its people the same rights of assembly and speech as in Cairo” (translated, obviously).
Senator Dodd undone – tweeted and deleted
The hazards of the Twitter age became quite apparent for one senator today.
“U love torturing me w this shit” was tweeted on Senator Christopher Dodd’s Twitter account @SenChrisDodd.
Then came the tweet ”From Dodd Staff – Apologies to Dodd’s followers, last tweet was not from Chris Dodd.”
The first tweet has vanished into twitterair with a little help from the delete button, but some followers who were on their toes took screenshots.
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee who did not run for re-election will be leaving Congress after year-end.
But looks like that tweet gained him some followers. Dodd now has 12,780 compared with 12,690 when the tweet went out.
Photo credit: Reuters/Richard Clement (Dodd at a Senate hearing Sept. 30)
Happy Birthday, Mr President? Palin takes on State Dept in Twitterburst
Sarah Palin has a beef — and a tweet or two — for the U.S. State Department.
Palin tweeted her outrage following a tongue-in-cheek tweet from State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley that wished Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a happy birthday.
Crowley, who regularly tweets as @PJCrowley to about 6,250 followers, marked the Iranian leader’s birthday on Thursday with a plea for the release of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, two American hikers who have been detained in Iran for more than a year and face trial on suspicion of espionage.
“Happy birthday President #Ahmadinejad. Celebrate by sending Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer home. What a gift that would be,” Crowley’s first message read.
“Your 54th year was full of lost opportunities. Hope in your 55th year you will open #Iran to a different relationship with the world.” he continued.
Palin, the former Alaska governor who has become a favorite of conservative Tea Party activists, was incensed and quickly communicated her outrage to the more than 285,000 followers who track her on Twitter as @SarahPalinUSA.
Andrew,
I see no issue, if someone wants to wish a person from the rival side for thier birthday, at the end of the day, we need our leaders to build bridges and build peace and try negotiation between nations.
Arvind Pereira
http://www.ArvindLeoPereira.co.nr
Twitter opinion analysis shows even split between parties
Social media hasn’t been around long enough for pundits to determine how accurately it reflects the mood of a nation, but Democrats grasping for positive news might take hope from a shift in the tone on Twitter.
Our analysis of some 1.6 million tweets since August, using sentiment analysis software from market research firm Crimson Hexagon, shows a more favorable trend for President Obama’s party in recent weeks.
When we first examined online sentiment back in the summer, we found considerably less enthusiasm among Twitter users for the Democrats than for the Republicans.
In mid-September, however, there was a shift, with the number of pro-Democratic tweets rising to meet the pro-GOP numbers and eventually surpassing them. This dynamic has held relatively stable for the last month as you can see from this graph:
This movement is a continuation of the trend we noticed in mid-September. Pro-Democratic numbers began to pick up then amid the rise in the profile of the conservative Tea Party movement within the Republican party.
There has been an interesting move in negative sentiment as well since late September – the 23rd to be exact. That day saw a spike in anti-Republican tweets, many of which were potshots taken by GOP opponents at the party’s “Pledge to America,” which was officially unveiled that day.
The NY Times published an article on this trend yesterday, but given the new-ness of the sentiment analyisis tools the politcal campaigns are using, gauging public opinion via Twitter is still a bit premature. Here’s the article, and a link to a blog explaining the accuracy of sentiment analysis tools:
http://www.domusinc.com/blog/2010/11/usi ng-social-media-to-gauge-political-suppo rt-and-trends/
Twitter opinion analysis shows change in sentiment following ‘Tea Party Tuesday’
Our analysis of political opinions expressed by Twitter users shows that the ‘enthusiasm gap’ that previously favored the GOP over the Democratic Party seems to have evened out recently.
Our last analysis of the Twitter sentiment data provided by market research firm Crimson Hexagon indicated that while there were similar numbers of tweets criticizing both political parties, there were many more pro-GOP tweets posted on the social networking service than pro-Democratic ones – a result in line with what some saw as a lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters as the midterms approached.
Since that analysis there have been two changes in the trends we’ve been seeing. The first was a divergence in the “anti” numbers with anti-Democratic sentiment far outweighing anti-GOP. This trend was most pronounced in late August – a period that coincided with the controversy surrounding the planned cultural center and mosque near the Ground Zero site in downtown Manhattan.
While anti numbers diverged during this period, the pro-party tweets held to largely the same pattern they had previously, with pro-GOP tweets outnumbering pro-Democratic ones. You can see all of these trends in the chart below.
In recent days though there’s been a change in the look of the graph. As the mosque story faded in prominence the anti numbers seem to have returned to their previous parity – with both sides trading the lead back and forth.
There’s been a major change in the pro-party sentiments however. The number of pro-Democratic tweets has risen enough to erase the gap between the parties. If these results hold they would mark the the dissipation of the enthusiasm gap we saw previously.
This is basically useless info. There is no demo, likely voter or registered voter criteria. I could get as accurate information just by sticking my finger into the wind.
