It is science Friday (Wednesday edition), and I am off on an electronic sabbatical after a very difficult week. Therefore, I am admitting right now that I am lazy and this may be the laziest post ever written for Science Friday, but that is still no excuse NOT to bring you a study in the field of politics.
I came across this post on twitter, and I thought it was PERFECT for Science Friday.
Does social media tell us anything about voting behavior?
Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? We answer this question using a random sample of 537,231,508 tweets from August 1 to November 1, 2010 and data from 406 competitive U.S. congressional elections provided by the Federal Election Commission. Our results show that the percentage of Republican-candidate name mentions correlates with the Republican vote margin in the subsequent election. This finding persists even when controlling for incumbency, district partisanship, media coverage of the race, time, and demographic variables such as the district’s racial and gender composition. With over 500 million active users in 2012, Twitter now represents a new frontier for the study of human behavior. This research provides a framework for incorporating this emerging medium into the computational social science toolkit.
The most interesting thing from the working paper to me is the following:
First, the data do not include any information about the meaning or context of a name mention (e.g., “I love Nancy Pelosi” vs. “Nancy Pelosi should be impeached”). The relative share of attention compared to the opponent is all that is needed.
I say interesting because of the calls we received since the release of the study.
These calls generally fall into two categories:
1) Politicians who want to improve their social media outreach, but have political consultants who are not or can not help them with the project.
-or-
2) Fellow Political Consultants calling under the guise of “Hey man, interesting research….I disagree with….” but then guiding the discussion to ask about improving their clients’ social media outreach.
Frankly, we were expecting calls from the press NOT calls from politicians or other political consultants.
I guess the number one thing we discuss during these calls is that a robust social media outreach is not easy, free, or able to be put in the hands of the intern. Digital Media needs a spot at the table with its own goals, measurements, budget, and strategy.
On these calls, we talk about the different kinds of digital outreach: video, social, websites, micro-sites photos, fundraising, email outreach, newsletters and how each one of these should match the politicians branding archetype. We talk about conceptually how a social media program could be worked into a communications calendar. We talk about data list building activities. How these digital communications differ from communication channels they are more comfortable with. For example, is a messaged photo on facebook the equivalent to digital direct mail?
At some point, in my excitement, I realize I have lost many of them. They know in their gut they should be doing more digital, but I think they honestly had NO idea that a robust digital program would be so much work or this labor intensive. I mean one should just be able to snap their fingers and create a web video that “will go viral”, RIGHT?
So in this discussion just about the time when all is lost, Ozean receives “Boy, Ozean really understands this stuff, thanks for the information. Can I call you in the future?”
It has happened so much in the past months that I am considering re-positioning Ozean Media to:
Ozean Media: The digital agency other political consultants and politicians call when they don’t understand digital.
What do you think? Yeah you are right, needs to be shortened up a little.
Ozean Media wins the ‘Oscar of Political Advertising’ for Political Radio Spot
GAINESVILLE, FL – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – On Friday, April 5, 2013 Ozean Media was awarded a 2013 Pollie Award by the American Association of Political Consultants. The AAPC Pollie Awards recognize the best of the best in political communications for 2012.
The award was announced at the 21st Annual Pollie Awards & Conference held April 3-5 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington, DC.
The Pollie Awards are awarded annually to recognize excellence in political advertising, are billed by Esquire Magazine as the “Oscars of Political Consulting”, and the Pollie Awards are generally considered to be the most prestigious awards in the field of political campaign and public affairs industry.
“This Pollie Award is the fourth time in the past two election cycles that Ozean has received national recognition from our political consulting peers, and Ozean is greatly satisfied knowing that our agency is not only competing but winning on a national stage against DC & Tallahassee consultants,” said Alex Patton, owner of Ozean.
The Pollie was awarded for a radio commercial produced in conjunction with Push Button Productions of Orlando, FL for Jeff Siegmeister’s (Rep) victorious campaign for State Attorney for Florida’s third judicial circuit. Jeff Siegmeister became the first Republican elected to the third judicial circuit since reconstruction.
“When we first drafted the radio spot for Mr. Siegmeister, I got the impression that he thought we were certifiably insane. To his credit, Mr. Siegmeister placed his faith in Ozean’s political expertise and his trust allowed us to take creative risks that paid off in a victorious campaign,” continued Alex Patton.
“Ozean is not resting on our laurels, we are busy honing our skills to achieve our mission of “navigating to victory” for our clients in the coming election cycles,” concluded Alex Patton.
About Ozean Media
(https://ozeanmedia.com) – Ozean Media is a political consulting & digital media agency specializing in Republican candidates, conservative issue campaigns, and various trade associations.
About the American Association of Political Consultants
(www.theaapc.org/) – Association membership consists of political consultants, media consultants, pollsters, campaign managers, corporate public affairs officers, professors, fund-raisers, lobbyists, congressional staffers and vendors and is open to everyone associated with politics from the local level to the White House.
In a relatively new study released by the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication titled “The ‘Nasty Effect:’ Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies”, an interesting theory emerges.
The study measures subjects’ understanding of a science topic after reading online comments posted on the story.
The study has wide ranging possible effects. As noted by others:
Now a study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggests that rude comments on articles can even change the way we interpret the news. – NPR
In other words, just the tone of the comments . . . can significantly alter how audiences think about the technology itself.
Researchers found that even knowledge of science did not seem to mediate the effects of the comments. – JS Online
So basically, as political actors who are attempting to affect public opinion, the comments on a news article are almost, if not MORE important than the article itself.
My guess is this has a relationship to the social norm of highlighting the behavior one would like to see adopted and by making a thought public – no matter how vile the thought is – allows others to think that this thought is ‘normal’ and not out-of-line.
For politicians and campaigns, this study is important and your political efforts must now include rapid response to on-line articles whether newspaper, blogs, online TV stations, etc.
“Overall, Republicans earn a C and Democrats an F in twitter usage; however, when we grade on a curve Florida’s Republican officials perform better than the Democratic officials. The good news is there is room for dramatic improvement,” said Alex Patton (@alex_patton), the study’s author.
Questions:
The study researched over a two week period set out to answer the following questions:
Are Florida’s elected officials using Twitter?
Is there a digital divide that separates Republican and Democrat elected officials in Florida?
How are Florida’s elected officials using Twitter?
Which of Florida’s elected officials could be considered to be embracing Twitter?
Are there recommendations to be made to Florida’s elected officials in their use of Twitter?
The study represents the most comprehensive look at twitter usage of Florida’s elected officials, aggregating data from multiple sources and comparing the data to twitter superstars such as the University of Florida, President Obama, and Justin Bieber.
Findings of Study:
As a whole, Florida’s elected officials are using Twitter in greater percentages than the general public.
Florida’s elected Republican officials are using social media more than Florida’s elected Democrat officials – 57% of Republican elected officials are active users (defined as at least 1 status update in past 7 days) to 34% of Democrat elected officials.
Republican elected officials are doing significantly better than Democrat elected officials using twitter.
If not for Florida’s Democratic Congressional Delegation — more specifically @DWStweets who alone accounts for 85% of the number of followers for Democrat elected officials — Florida’s Democrat elected officials would have little social media reach.
Florida’s elected officials score well on influence, on authority; however,
Florida’s elected officials score very low on outreach.
A handful of Florida’s elected officials are embracing Twitter. They are:
category
Twitter name
name
district
party
USREP
@RepDennisRoss
Dennis Ross
15
Republican
USREP
@DWStweets
D Wasserman Schultz
23
Democrat
USREP
@treyradel
Trey Radel
19
Republican
STSEN
@Rob_Bradley
Rob Bradley
7
Republican
STSEN
@DwightBullard
Dwight Bullard
39
Democrat
STREP
@sethmckeel
Seth McKeel
40
Republican
STREP
@repclayingram
Clay Ingram
1
Republican
STREP
@JimmyPatronis
Jimmy Patronis
6
Republican
STREP
@mattgaetz
Matt Gaetz
4
Republican
STREP
@jasonbrodeur
Jason Brodeur
28
Republican
“Bottom line, when you look at how Florida’s politicians are actually using Twitter, they are forgetting the ‘social’ in social media. The vast majority of Florida’s elected officials appear to be misunderstanding or misusing Twitter by using it as primarily as a broadcast media channel,” continues Mr. Patton.
“For Florida’s elected officials to truly realize the power of Twitter and social media, they must embrace the social part by talking with people, not only talking to people,” concludes Alex Patton.
The study, an executive summary, the study’s methodology, and complete data-set are available for download below.
All are invited to comment on the report using the Twitter hashtag #socialgrade.
Pew Research Center recently released a study finding that minorities are increasingly outnumbering whites in their use of certain social media platforms.
The study entitled, “The Demographics of Social Media Users — 2012”, shows that in general, Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to use social media sites than whites (percentage wise)and almost twice as likely to use twitter & Instagram.
Social Networking Sites
% of internet users who use social networking sites
Use Social Networking Sites All internet users (n=1,802) 67%
Race/ethnicity
a White, Non-Hispanic (n=1,332) 65%
b Black, Non-Hispanic (n=178) 68%
c Hispanic (n=154) 72%
The study goes on to make a point that Urban users are using all social media channels more than suburban or rural users.
Guess what? Republicans can do better among all minorities and Urban dwelling voters.
This study makes no mention of HOW minorities or anyone for that matter are using social media to interact with politics; however, the high use alone should be a further wake up call for changing Republicans’ political outreach strategy.
If Republicans are to get serious about minority outreach, as a Party we must study and understand how these new social media channels can assist us in the effort because it would appear the digital divide exists more in Republicans’ mindset than in actuality.
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