Introduction

The 2016 US election will take place on November 8, 2016. Candidates have been using many strategies to gain support. One such strategy is the utilization of social media platforms to promote an election campaign. The most popular platforms used are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In the United States, everyday, two out of three people are using these sites (Metaxas and Mustafaraj, 2012 ).This website discusses how politicians manipulate and use social media to their advantage to positively impact their campaign during the 2016 elections. These acts can be simply utilizing social media to promote campaigns and induce a strategic appeal to the general public. On the other hand, some candidates may manipulate social media results to reflect a positive image upon themselves and as a marketing strategy to gain more voters.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Utilization and Manipulation of Social Media

Social Media Actually helps election campaigns!


Social media has changed how presidential candidates and businesses channel their information down to the public. Joe Trippi, the campaign advertiser for former vice president Walter Mondale and Senator Ted Kennedy, describes that contrary to traditional media such as TV, social media has empowered ordinary people to easily voice their opinions to millions around the globe (Patterson, 2016). Therefore, candidates and businesses have to carefully utilize social media to ensure a positive response while promoting their campaign or products. For example, some democrats use social media to appeal to the masses emotionally such as Hillary Clinton’s posts of family photos on Pinterest to make herself seem more relatable and humane (Brousell, 2015). Another example is Nike sharing on Instagram to create brand awareness and induce brand image. On the other hand, some candidates are utilizing social media to degrade, attack and judge their competition. Social media has made it into a competition to see which campaign will drive the other’s negative rating higher (Patterson, 2016). Candidates may also manipulate social media to support their campaign. For example, altering the number of followers and responses can affect a viewer’s conclusion about the candidate’s popularity (Metaxas and Mustafaraj, 2012). Therefore, the most popular candidate will have an advantage, since people tend to conform (McLeod, 2016). Even though such popularity may not all be positive, a correlation between popularity and the election stand. Below is the data on number of followers of the top four candidates and current election results. Trump and Clinton being most popular are each leading the votes in their party.

(Courtesy of Captiv8)


This is similar with businesses where popularity can be created. However, businesses can make many decisions based on various popularity. For example, Nike can determine the number of products to produce based on its popularity on social media. Therefore, social media is a very important tool to politicians and businesses.
Here is some data on the amount of followers each candidate has. As you can see Clinton and Trump is leading in terms of overall amount of followers.

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