Social Media's Influence On Elections

In recent years, social media has changed the way individuals spend their time and money. Billions of people wake up each morning, and grab their device to see what they may have missed since they checked it last. More and more people are joining social media, because it is an easy way to stay connected. This also goes for presidential candidates who are trying to reach more voters. In 2008 this trend started with Facebook, with more than a hundred million active members and growing into the billions by the 2012 election stated by Carlisle & Patton (2013). Comparing the two elections with what sites were used to help educate and influence american voters. No one can deny that social media has helped shape the outcomes of each election.

In January, when Hilary Clinton, and Barack Obama went head to head in a debate televised on ABC, they had 10.7 million viewers who watched from their televisions or from their Facebook timelines according to Dutta (2008). With live streaming the event, it made it easier for people to see the debate from online. Using Facebook helped others get more involved in politics that year because of the spread on social media. Young voters who frequently visited the website also did their own part in voting. According to the United States Census, in 2008 the number of voters skyrocketed from the election before by about 5 million voters. Among the voters, there was a drastic change in percentage of younger voters from the age of 18-24. Even though younger voters had a high turnout, the older voters still lead with more of the vote. One of the reasons that Obama won the election was because of how social media savvy he was compared to McCain. In an article from Dr. Pamela Rutledge (2013), she compares Obama understanding social media to JFK and his understanding of television and viewers. This could explain why he received votes from a lot of younger voters. Reaching out to students and younger generations through a platform they use everyday only helped with his campaign. With the higher interest in using social media to express their opinions on

This time the election was based around Twitter. A platform where you can send “tweets” of 140 characters or less. Trying to reach out to younger voters, many candidates had to push and make their own twitter profiles to get their message heard. Even though there was not that much interest from younger voters as the election before, their was still quite a turn out. In 2008, according to Stephen Mills (2012), only 360,000 tweets were related to two conventions in the election. While in 2012, that number reached to fourteen million tweets during the same conventions. Twitter being a microblogging service, allows anyone to say what they want to say about certain candidates. This helps their party gauge what the people truly think about the issues from just a few sentences that the voter has posted online. Twitter also revolutionized how people who have the same interests can connect online. Hashtags are a word or phrase that has hash sign on the beginning of it that is used to identify messages on a specific topic. This means if someone is talking about a certain issue they can use a hashtag, and find other users using the same hashtag. This seems to help candidates and voters finding users that feel the same way about an issue and brings them together. Before in 2008, with Facebook there was no way to show who else had truly posted about the same candidate unless you were