This story will show the influence of Twitter on the US elections, before, during and after the vote.
Storified by Martial Debeaux · Mon, Nov 12 2012 02:44:29
The victory of Obama is also a victory for Twitter. Indeed, the social network has a big influence on the election, before, during and after the vote. Obama has anounced his victory to his 22 millions followers with this tweet:
This happened because of you. Thank you.
But he also posted this picture with this wife and the text "four more years", and this tweet was the most retweeted of Twitter's history (813 279 retweets).
Twitter has become the most obvious political media of communication. That's why, for the first time in the Contemporary history, an american president choose to announce his victory on Twitter. We can say that it is a small step for the president, and a big step for social networks. It is quite naturally that worldwide leaders has twitted their congratulations, like the british ally David Cameron.
Warm congratulations to my friend @BarackObama. Look forward to continuing to work together.
During the night of the election, it was the political event the most twitted of the history, with 20 millions messages posted during the night, with peaks in 327.000 messages by minute.Before, during the first debate, Twitter had been saturated by messages of 140 characters, with 10 millions tweets, a record for a political event. Throughout the electoral process, Twitter has become a political place, where every statement of Obama and Romney was immediately commented, shared and diverted.
obama has a tumblr and romney wears crocs. i mean do we really have to debate on who we want as president?
at the mock debate, the guy representing Romney was black, and the guy representing Obama was white. #backwards
To realize Twitter's influence, according to a study 22 % of the american had announced on a social network for whom they had voted. During the campaign, teams of campaign of both candidates invested social networks (Twitter, Facebook and also Instagram). It's a new way of political marketing, due to one of the numerous assests of social networks: a "direct" communication with the public, without passing by the journalists.
To conclude, we can say that if the social media will not doubtless have influenced the final result of the ballot, their place in the media landscape was widely imperative in 2012.
