Obama and Romney 2012 campaigns - Assignment Example

Article Summary Of Article Summary The article d “8 Big Social Media Takeaways From The Election Campaign” was authored by Alex Kantrowitz and in this article the author highlights the importance of social media marketing for the election campaign of 2012.1 In the beginning of the article the author states that groundwork is more important for the victory of a Presidential candidate but social media can help in providing support to the groundwork. In this article the author outlines eight important lessons that he learned regarding social media campaign that was carried out during the Presidential elections of 2012.

The author states that using social media to gain attention of the general public is similar to knocking at the doors of the voters. He states that a speech that President Obama conducted in the region of Romnesia was well advertised on social media outlets including Twitter and Facebook and due to this the video of the speech was able to gain more than 0.5 million views. Furthermore, the author states that mostly after the end of the elections those who are with the losing side end up losing their appearance in the eyes of the public.

But social media has helped such individuals including Richard Grenell remain relevant even after the elections. The third lesson that the author learned through the Presidential social media campaigns of 2012 was that on the internet political news regarding events and other political stories spread at a very fast pace and people are thirsty to talk politics over the internet. Furthermore, social media marketing has even benefited the candidates of third party. This is because even after the elections the candidate of the Libertarian party can continue to gain attention of the general public and remain engaged with them.

The fifth point that the author noted is that it is very difficult to measure which of the political party or the candidate has an upper hand in social media at the time of the campaign. The author states that various metrics used to measure victory on social media have failed. For example, if the number of followers is taken into account to measure victory then the individual making the analysis misses the sentiments and other factors involved. Another important point to note is that social media has the ability to spread any mistakes made by the candidate during the campaign at a very fast pace.

These mistakes are highlighted in quite a sarcastic manner. The seventh learning outcome of the campaigns was that the use of GIF images during debates that were used by Guardian as well as Tumblr was quite ineffective although it was quite creative. The author states that the social media tool that came in very handy during the campaign was Twitter. The author states that as a journalist Twitter was quite helpful as it provided up-to-date information which helped in developing stories. He states that he only developed stories based on tweets if he was able to confirm that the stories were confirmed.

ReferencesKantrowitz, Alex. 2012. 8 Big Social Media Takeaways From The 2012 Election Campaign | Mediashift | PBS. Pbs.Org. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/11/8-big-social-media-takeaways-from-the-2012-election-campaign306/.