Why do most of the candidates running in the 2020 election have a twitter account? Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff explain it well in their book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies when they hypothesize that Twitter users are among the most influential people you will come by. Take a look at this chart from Li and Bernoff's book below that outlines the average demographics of Twitter users. You can see why politicians might want to tap into Twitter and it's groundswell.
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| Groundswell, 2008 |
Donald Trump's tweeting habits have been the subject of many a conversation these past few years. His posts on the site have led the general public and many critics to take note of and question his online presence, motives and ethics. There is no doubt that Trump uses the platform for his political and personal agendas. Here are two posts from Trump's Twitter during the 2016 election.
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These tweets were from three years ago when Hillary and Trump were running against each other. Now take a look at some of Trump's recent tweets and retweets from earlier this month.
Ahhhh good times. Happy third anniversary to one of the great comebacks of all time. pic.twitter.com/KbSos1UApS— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 9, 2019
Why would Donald Trump want to post about Hillary's email scandal again, three years later, especially considering she is not even running against him in this upcoming election. You could speculate that he's trying to draw attention away from his own recent scandals or possibly his aim is to encourage his supporters to distrust other democratic candidates simply because they are in the same part as Hillary. Whatever his intent, Donald Trump is effectively utilizing Twitter to energize the groundswell in his favor. And he is certainly not the only candidate to do so.
Pick your favorite 2020 Presidential candidate and go on their Twitter. Does the frequency at which they are tweeting surprise you?
Since Li and Bernoff published Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Twitter, like other social media platforms, has only become more relevant. Proof of this is in recent complaints from candidates running for Congress 2020 who can't get verified on Twitter. These new and lesser-known candidates will have to wait until after they win their state's primary to get the blue verification mark from Twitter. This could actually affect their chances of winning in the first place, a catch-22!
Twitter continues to be an important resource for all advertisers including politicians. But for the public, this can mean more discretion is needed when sourcing and consuming news. Political news or content you see on social media should always be fact checked or at least taken with a grain of salt. The video below is CNN's take on Twitter, Russian bots and the 2016 election.
The report highlights Twitter as a tool in a propaganda campaign during the 2016 election. Does this concern you? Do you think Twitter should figure out a way to curb propaganda or are users solely responsible for fact-checking content? Do you think this video itself is a credible or bias source?
The use of Twitter in politics has really changed the methods of communication in general between politicians and the groundswell. It is hard when the president uses it so much to communicate, to then figure out the appropriate response. Should we take his phone away? (Tempting) should we continue to let him tweet so that we are at least informed as to what's going on? A dilemma of free speech for sure
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I think deciding how much responsibility a site should have regarding what users post on it is always really hard, but I think for me that line is drawn at hate speech as opposed to untrue claims, and that we live in a cultural atmosphere where unfortunately (or maybe it's for the best) people have to do their own research to decide whether or not to believe what they're being told. And I also think it's important to remember that all news sources are biased and have some sort of an agenda.
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