Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
The 2012 U.S. presidential election is a tight race with both candidates getting about the same amount of votes in recent election polls. During the election race, social media has played a very important role. Here is a quick infographic outlining the Twitter battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Obama has ten times as many followers but Romney has more mentions per tweet.
Click on the image for a larger version or here for a pdf.
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Moderaterna, the Swedish Moderate Party which is part of the ruling right-wing coalition, predict that blogs and social media will become an integral part of the 2010 election campaign. In a speech this weekend in Sollentuna outside of Stockholm, Secretary-general Per Schlingmann said that the web will be the hub in the next campaign (my translation below).
The web will be the hub in the campaign. In ten days we will release our new digital platform which will create new opportunities. How well it turns out depends on us. How open do we dare to be? Dare we let go? For me one thing is clear: in the election 2010, every Moderate blog will be valuable, every Moderate video, every Moderate Facebook group. Let us make sure that there will be as many as possible. I am also convinced that we will carry out more activities where we will meet voters directly, but these activities will be co-ordinatet online and will make it easier for people to take part of our campaign.
The prediction that the next election will be web-centric is not very risky, but nevertheless it is interesting to see that the Moderate Party is stressing social media tools so actively almost two years ahead of the election.
During the last few months, blogs have made a huge impact on the political arena, first and foremost from the FRA debate, i.e. the resistance to the new controversial Swedish wiretapping law that enables FRA, Swedish National Defence Radio Establishement, to screen and store all digital traffic passing Swedish borders. Blogs about politics and society are also one of the most popular categories in the Swedish blogosphere. The blog portal Knuff.se lists the 50 most linked to blogs in Sweden and currently about 24 of the top 50 are commenting regularly on political topics.
A question I would like Swedish party strategists to answer is how they plan to engage with female voters via social media. If my latest blog survey BlogSweden 3 is anything to go by, female blog readers don’t see blogs as an interesting channel for news about politics and society. While this was the most popular topic among male blog readers (49.2% of all male blog readers), the situation was radically different among female blog readers.
Female blog readers prefer reading blogs about (Jan 2008):
– Fashion and design (53.0%)
– Everyday life experiences (51.6%)
– Photography and art (26.6%)
– Parenthood and children (24.3%)
– Music (22.0%)
– Literature and writing (17.2%)
– Movies and tv (16.9%)
– Journalism and media (16.7%)
– Sex and dating (16.5%)
– Politics and society (14.4%)
Tags: election, blogs, 2010, moderaterna, politik, fra. Ping.
Social networking sites may be playing an important political role in the 2008 US campaign for young people, according to a new study by Pew Internet.
“Fully two-thirds of Americans age 18-29 say they use social networking sites, and more than a quarter in this age group (27%) say that they have gotten information about candidates and the campaign from them – including 37% among those ages 18-24. Nearly one-in-ten of people under age 30 (8%) say that they have signed up as a “friend” of one of the candidates on a site. And the numbers are even higher for each of these activities among young registered voters.”
Full report here.
Tags: pew, social media, sociala medier, politik. Ping.