Social media or the ultimate asset

This year’s presidential campaign witnesses the use of a new tool in the race for the White House, social media.

Although President Barak Obama is using them since his 2008 campaign, 2012 shows a significant increase in both candidates’ online presence.

The Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism has published an article comparing the use of social media by Barak Obama and Mitt Romney. They issued two interesting graphs made from their observations. 

This first graph shows both candidates’ presence on four different platforms in June 2012, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs. Obama is clearly more active on his platforms. Twitter is the most significant one. Over a period of 13 days in June, Obama posted 404 tweets when Romney only had 16. Only Facebook’s post were more important on Romney’s side, with 34 posts against 27 for Obama over the same period. 

The research emphasizes how both candidates are actually using social media. As they're saying it, ideally the goal of platforms such as Twitter or Facebook is to generate interactions with the audience through comments, re-tweets or responses. The purpose of social media in general is to create an equal relationship between a sender and its audiences. Although some control over these platforms is necessary, the interaction is still totally different from what traditional media with an ascendant relationship. 

The Pew Research Center’s study reveals that despite the use of social media, this traditional asymmetrical relationship remains, and the “discussion” that should be engaged between the candidates’ platforms and their audiences, is not happening. Candidates are not responding to retweets or comments, and voters’ voices are not meant to be meaningful.

Although the candidates successfully took over Internet and used a lot social media, they are still exerting an important control over these networks. Social media is definitely an asset in this campaign. It's a smart way to reach certain audiences, especially a youth one. However, it seems like it will take a few years, maybe a couple of campaigns, to use these digital media in a symmetrical way where audiences will play a significant role in their candidate’s campaign.

As the Pew’s study summarized it,

“While there may be no simple answer, throughout modern campaign history successful candidates have tended to outpace their competitors in understanding changing communications. From Franklin Roosevelt's use of radio, to John F. Kennedy's embrace of television, to Ronald Reagan's recognition of the potential for arranging the look and feel of campaign events in the age of satellites and video tape, candidates quicker to grasp the        power of new technology have used that to convey a sense that they represented a new generation of leadership more in touch with where the country was heading.” 

Including communication changes are therefore an asset for campaign’s strategies. The use of social media is essential but needs some work to be used at their full potential.