Social media and political communication in the United States

Democrat Howard Dean is credited with being the first politician to use the Internet for political purposes.[6] Dean served as the Governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and decided to run for president for the 2004 election. Dean is credited with organizing the first campaign website, acting as a virtual headquarters for fundraising and volunteer recruitment.[7] Dean’s website had a number of online metrics of success including the hits on his homepage, weblogs, campaign sign-ups, house parties and meet ups.[8] Dean’s supporters hosted house parties and invited individuals to learn about Dean’s campaign. Dean also encouraged use of the website Meetup for his upstart presidential campaign in 2002, making it easy for people "with a common interest to find each other and arrange to meet, face to face".[9] Individuals would attend face-to-face meetings to learn more about his campaign.[10] The number of people coming out to Dean's Meetups in 600 location across the country ultimately reached about 143,000.[9] About 75,000 individuals attended these meet-ups and more than 96% of respondents reported that they wished to become actively involved in Dean's campaign. The engagement in face-to-face local groups "dramatically affected how involved volunteers got with the campaign. The more Meetups people attended, the higher their average donation to the campaign".[9]

Dean won a "digital" primary election that was held on MoveOn.org with 44% of the votes. His success in the primary generated positive coverage by the news media. This early victory was important to the momentum of the campaign. Dean's campaign was able to raise large amounts of money in small increments. In January 2004, his campaign had raised $41 million from supporters mostly online. A total of 318,884 individuals contributed to his campaign, with over 61% of the contributions under $200. Less than 1% of individuals gave $2,000, which was the federal limit.[11] Dean's fundraising behavior was opposite of his rivals. George Bush raised $130.8 million in 2003 and 68% of his donations were the maximum donation limit.[12]

Facebook is a place where people can freely interact with each other. "This means, for example, on Facebook, an individual creates multimedia content like a video on the cognitive level", which allows for mass interaction between hundreds of people.[13] This free interaction between people on Facebook allowed the use of social media by political figures to help promote their own ideals. The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, served as a field organizer for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.[14] Zuckerberg was responsible for Get out the vote and mobilization efforts. Facebook was launched the same year. The Facebook Platform relies on group formation and constant communication, both of which are goals for any political campaign.[14] Chris Hughes, a founding member and developer at Facebook, left the company to work as an adviser for President Barack Obama. While working at Facebook, Hughes designed a Facebook profile for the then presidential candidate. Following his departure, Hughes worked on Obama's Facebook page and utilized his knowledge of content management and new developments to outpace other candidates in relation to their online presence.[15] Hughes created the website MyBarak0bama.com which had a similar layout and concept as Facebook.[14] In the 2008 elections Facebook was used by candidates. The main user during this election was former president Obama. The other user Mitt Romney used Facebook as well for his campaign, but not as much as Obama had. It is reported that well over 1,000 groups on Facebook were created supporting one of the two sides.[16] In recent years, political figures have been using Twitter more often, but Facebook still remains to be a much used social media platform.

The 2008 presidential election was the first election in which candidates utilized the Internet and social media as a tool for their campaigns. Nearly three quarters of internet users went online to learn about the candidates in the election; this equates to 55% of the entire adult population.[17] Then President-elect Barack Obama was the first to use the Internet to organize supporters, advertise, and communicate with individuals in a way that had been impossible in previous elections. Obama utilized sites like YouTube to advertise through videos. The videos posted on YouTube by Obama were viewed for 14.5 million hours.[17] Obama led McCain voters in all categories of online political activism, which is considered by some to be a major factor in his victory.[17]

Young voters are much more active in online politics.  30% of all those who posted political content online were under the age of 25.[18]  66% of that same demographic voted for Obama while 33% voted for McCain, showing that Obama's prominence in online politics greatly increased his chances of winning.[18]

In the aggregate, the Democratic websites got more views than the Republican websites (at least in the primaries).  This was due in part to the younger voters being more inclined to be in favor of the Democratic candidate as well as being more likely to go on the internet and research or show support for a candidate.[19]

By the 2012 election more candidates were utilizing a wider array of social media platforms.[20] Politicians were now on social networking sites like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other new social media tools and mobile apps. Some of the candidates used social media sites to announce their candidacy. Barack Obama emailed a video to 13 million when he announced his intention to run for re-election and Mitt Romney sent out a tweet.[20] Obama produced a seventeen-minute long video, composed of video clips and interviews that documented Obama's first term in the office. This video was published on YouTube, allowing the audience to contribute to the campaign by donating without having to leave the website. This efficiency and convenience was the key point to further extend his fundraising target. This target would not have been achieved without the existence of YouTube, as sharing the link would have been more challenging. The campaign also heavily relied on social media sharing the video that included the donation link aiding in the fundraising.[21] Other candidates posted on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to announce their candidacy.

Each candidate ran their campaigns with more of an emphasis on the internet.  Obama and Romney each hired third party companies to pull, track, and analyze data from their websites.  This data drove them each to spend nearly $100,000 on online advertisements (Obama spent $93,400 and Romney spent $82,200).[22]  Though these numbers are close, in the aggregate, Obama spent more than Romney did on digital campaigns by a factor of ten. Romney spent $4.7 million and Obama spent $47 million.[23]

There is a clear difference between the Obama and Romney campaign's presence on social media throughout the 2012 campaign. In October 2012, President Obama had over 20 million followers on Twitter and Romney had 1.2 million. On Facebook Obama had over 29 million likes on his page and Romney had 7.9 million. On Instagram Obama had 1.4 million followers and Romney had 38,000 followers. President Obama had higher followers on all of his other social media accounts including Spotify, Pinterest, and YouTube,[24] though research suggests merely following Obama or Romney on social media sites such as Facebook may have had little influence on voter behaviors.[25] President Obama also utilized his social media accounts more than any other candidate online.[26] He actively posted more on Twitter, YouTube and on his personal website blog.

President Obama's campaign thrived on online donations in both 2008 and 2012. In 2008 3.95 million people donated to president Obama's campaign.[27] That number reached 4.4 million people during his 2012 campaign. The total online donation also rose from $500 million in 2008 to $690 million in 2012.[27]

Political figures can use social media to accomplish tasks such as raising donations for their campaign. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tweeted his support for Barack Obama in the 2012 election. He, at the time, boasted an 80% approval rating which led voters who were on the fence to support President Obama.[28]

The presidential elections of 2016 saw heavy use of social media across all candidates. The main three candidates were Donald Trump (Republican), Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton (Democrats). Research reports that, " In January 2016, 44% of U.S. adults reported having learned about the 2016 presidential election." [29] At this point, social media was being heavily used across all platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Specifically in the 2016 elections, Twitter was the main source which Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the 2 potential presidents, used to convey various things. Several reports and statistics show that several people received information about the election via social media.[29] Roughly, "24% say they have turned to the social media posts" for information regarding the election.[29]  All presidential candidates used social media in a different way. While Trump's posts focused on links to news sources, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders focused on "highlighting official campaign communities." [29] During the campaigns of these main 3 candidates, Trump had a lot more response from users compared to the two democratic candidates. This is most likely due to the fact that Trump already had more followers at the beginning of the campaign. This election showed that several strategies could be used with social media. This is reflected in Trump's, Clinton's, and Sanders' use of social media. On Twitter, Trump mainly retweeted tweets from the general public, and Clinton and Sanders mainly retweeted tweets about their own campaign.[29]  The main two rivals of the campaign, Trump and Clinton, made several tweets directly talking about each other, Clinton used the @ feature of Twitter linking users to Trump's page. Trump referred to Hillary Clinton several times, but he almost never used the @ feature.[29]  You can see that Trump's main focus in his campaign on Twitter was the media such as Fox news or New York Times. On the other hand, Clinton and Sanders mainly focused on their own campaign. Another part of the strategy used by the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders, is that some of their posts in Spanish.[29]  These two candidates had a focus on reaching out to the minority community which is reflected in these posts in Spanish. Donald Trump did not make any posts in Spanish. The use of videos on Twitter were used in different ways in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders mostly posted videos sponsoring their own campaign while Donald Trump posted videos related to news media (a very common theme in the candidates' strategies).[29]

Overall, Donald Trump (Republican) focused his strategy in social media in news media. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton (Democrats) focused their social media strategy on promoting themselves. Social media such as Twitter continues being used by politicians today, and continues to grow more popularity in American politics.

Social media has been used in political campaigns ranging from small local elections to larger-scale presidential elections. According to Wael Ghonim, social media can reinforce pre-existing beliefs rather than promote new ones. While social media can be used to raise donations, several candidates focused on using it to promote their own campaign.[30] Politicians cannot control the conversation in social media. According to a study by Miguel del Fresno García, Alan J. Daly, and Sagrario Segado Sánchez-Cabezudo, regular friends and followers hold high levels of influence on social media, instead of blogs and campaign pages. Users with the most influence over social media fall into three different categories: users who disseminate knowledge, those who engage other people, and those who lead conversations. These three types of users are the ones who others tend to follow and listen to through social media. Therefore, for political campaigns to truly reach as many people as possible, political groups first need to get those three users talking about their campaigns on social media.[31]

People worry that too much use of social media might cause less policy making in government. Instead of doing things such as making new laws, presidents might focys too much attention on social media to try to win over more supporters.[32]