By Deniz Sonmez-Alpan
It’s pretty safe to say that the use of social media and its popularity have changed drastically throughout Barack Obama’s presidency. In 2008, it seemed as though the “big deal” in the presidential race then was that we could possibly elect the first African-American president in the nation’s history—and of course we did. It is relatively overlooked, however, that everything from viral emails to user-generated videos to MySpace and fact-checking websites undoubtedly shaped the race for the presidency and allowed for numerous locales through which the public could evaluate both the media and political brands. And today, social media is playing a bigger role in the presidential elections than we ever could have imagined.
Obama and Romney both have a prominent social media presence. Both candidates can be found on Facebook and Twitter, though Obama’s popularity on the sites is certainly higher. He has more than 18 million followers on Twitter and over 27.5 million “likes” on Facebook. Romney, on the other hand, has about 829,000 followers on Twitter and is just shy of three million “likes” on Facebook. Of course, this is no dead giveaway for the November results—Obama has had his outlets up and running for just over four years now. 
Fair enough, a couple of Twitter and Facebook numbers don’t mean that much. But the following numbers do. Digitas conducted a survey in October 2011 of adults 18 years and older to gauge just how big of a role social media would be playing up until the November election. Six out of ten of those surveyed said that they expect the presidential candidates to have a social media presence, and 38 percent indicated that information found on social media outlets would help them determine who to cast their vote for.
Still not sold? That’s fine. How about the fact that 94 percent of social media users of voting age watched some sort of political message entirely through one of those social media sites (and many went on to share it after viewing)? It’s simply unavoidable. These online tools that are so readily available to the candidates give them even more leverage in gaining support and votes than they would have with just TV and mail.
On July 31st, (yes, just days ago!) President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney both launched new smartphone apps for campaigning, announcements and engagement with voters. While the Democrats’ app seems to focus on growing voter turnout, the Republicans’ will be used to make a big announcement: who Mitt Romney’s VP pick will be. This type of engagement with the body politic is simply unparalleled—and with this type of campaigning, candidates eventually wouldn’t need a target audience due to the widespread nature of the gadgets.
And we can’t be quick to rule out the “old people” either. By age, 40 percent of social media users aged 55+ are turning to social networks to learn more about Obama and Romney. It’s fair to say that Obama won in social media use in 2008, but the Democrats aren’t the only ones on the bandwagon. Just two months ago, the GOP released its Facebook app “Social Victory Center” to allow users to engage in campaign efforts like volunteering and distributing voter-registration materials. The target audience? Young people and women—the two groups who use Facebook the most.
It really is anybody’s guess who will be in the White House come January. But from now on, with the instantaneous nature of the craft, proper knowledge and manipulation of social media will be a deciding factor for who ends up in the Oval Office. And if it already isn’t, it will come to be valued as much as a multi-million dollar campaign ad.
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Deniz Sonmez-Alpan is an intern for WordWrite Communications.
