Online BS

Published December 27, 2014

by Gary Pearce, Talking About Politics, December 26, 2014.

An outfit called Verifeed says “social conversations” on Twitter helped Thom Tillis beat Kay Hagan. Put me down as a skeptic.

 

You hear a lot of sweeping claims about how social media is transforming politics. The acolytes can drown you in numbers about “clicks” and “reads” and “open rates.” But is there hard evidence that all this moves votes?

 

If there is, please share it.

 

WRAL’s Mark Binker is another skeptic. He posted the story on Facebook and said, “Posting this mainly because I think it's wrong. For Twitter to be a place where a race is won or lost, wouldn't it need to be a more persuasive medium? My window into the platform is that people are sharing news, jokes, etc... but there's not a whole lot of persuasion going on. Tell me why I'm wrong. (Seriously, I don't buy the argument in this piece but I think there might be one to be made.)”

 

You won’t be surprised to learn that Verifeed is a company that “identifies and mobilizes powerful viral ambassadors and amplifiers to drive cost-efficient and high-impact ‘word of mouth’ marketing, customer acquisition, and conversions.” Whatever.

 

In other words, it’s selling what it’s celebrating.

 

Its report on North Carolina said, “Republican activists outperformed Democrats in sheer volume – and resonance – of tweets, with a veritable army of party activists faithfully retweeting and favoriting each other’s tweets regularly, if not hourly. The result calculated by Verifeed in the final seven days was direct engagement with 15,436,367 people by the top 20 GOP influencers – more than 14 times that of the top 20 Democratic influencers, who by contrast engaged just 1,746,178 people on Twitter.”

 

Now, maybe all this math mumbo-jumbo means something. But it looks like most people on Twitter who are interested in politics have pretty much made up their minds.

 

Until the online entrepreneurs can show with hard evidence that they can actually influence votes, hold on to your campaign dollars.

Read More NC SPIN >>

December 27, 2014 at 10:03 am
Frank Burns says:

I agree too much credit is given to the social media for impacting our lives. However conservative citizens are fighting back against the left wingers who have dominated the social media repeating the talking points issued from on high. It may not be making a big impact but it is certainly satisfying to defeat their arguments with truth. It was also very satisfying to counter the talking points with Kay Hagan directly. We told her that a reckoning was coming for her ardent support of Obama and Obamacare, and we were correct.

December 27, 2014 at 1:31 pm
Norm Kelly says:

Correct me if I'm wrong. Please. Cuz unlike the average lib, I don't mind having facts pointed out to me, even when they prove I'm wrong. I just know it won't be a lib who uses facts to point out my error. Facts are routinely, regularly, religiously ignored by libs.

Didn't the Socialist Party of the US claim that social media was a major player in the win by the community organizer? So, if social media can be a major player in the win for a socialist, racist, unqualified pol, why can't it make a difference when a Republican wins? Or in this case, when MULTIPLE Republicans whoop some lib butt!!?

I doubt now as much as I did then that social media makes that much difference with just about anything. Don't care what some jack-!!s celebrity had for breakfast. Don't care what some lib pol claims about gun deaths, or black deaths by white cops, when there is nothing to back up their bogus claim. Or anything else that ANY lib pol feels like social-media-ing about. Or any other twit who decides to tweet. 99.9% or more of it is bogus, useless, irrelevant garbage that is better off ignored, so why even start using it.

The famed physicist who is happy to proclaim his atheism every chance he gets, and he invents a lot of occasions to make his claim, tweeted some stupid1ty on Christmas day about it being some other special day, just to rub Christians noses in his stuff. Except if one chooses not to pay attention to social media, it can't make a difference can it? And if you don't 'follow' any jack-wagon on social media, you don't have to even know about the drivel spewing forth. Until someone TELLS you about the useless drivel and blows it all out of proportion because it was on Social Media! Like that means something.

December 30, 2014 at 1:26 pm
Richard Bunce says:

Given Mr. Pearce's history as a manager of conventional campaigns isn't he doing exactly what he is complaining about... selling what he is celebrating?