Social media and political communication in the United States

Democrat Howard Dean is credited for being the first politician to use the Internet for political purposes.[6] Dean served as the Governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and decided to run for president in the 2004 election. Dean is credited with organizing the first campaign website, acting as a virtual headquarters for fundraising and volunteer recruitment.[7] Dean’s website had several online metrics of success, including the hits on his homepage, weblogs, campaign sign-ups, house parties, and meetups.[8] Dean’s supporters hosted house parties and invited individuals to learn about Dean’s campaign. Dean also encouraged the use of the website Meetup for his upstart presidential campaign in 2002, making it easy for people "with a common interest to find each other and arrange to meet, face-to-face".[9] Individuals would attend face-to-face meetings to learn more about his campaign.[10] The number of people coming out to Dean's Meetups in 600 locations across the country ultimately reached about 143,000.[9] About 75,000 individuals attended these meetups and more than 96% of respondents reported that they wished to become actively involved in Dean's campaign. The engagement in face-to-face local groups "dramatically affected how involved volunteers got with the campaign. The more meetups people attended, the higher their average donation to the campaign".[9]

Dean won a "digital" primary election that was held on MoveOn.org, getting 44% of the votes. His success in the primary generated positive coverage from the news media. This early victory was important to the momentum of the campaign. Dean's campaign was able to raise large amounts of money in small increments. In January 2004, his campaign had raised $41 million, mostly from online supporters. A total of 318,884 individuals contributed to his campaign, with over 61% of the contributions under $200. Less than 1% of individuals gave $2,000, which was the federal limit.[11] Dean's fundraising behavior was the opposite of his rivals. George Bush raised $130.8 million in 2003, and 68% of his donations were the maximum donation limit.[12]

Facebook is a commonplace where people can interact with each other through social media. An example of what can be done on Facebook is, "an individual creates multimedia content like a video on the cognitive level," which allows for mass interaction between hundreds of people.[13] This free interaction between people on Facebook allowed the use of social media by political figures to help promote their ideals. The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, served as a field organizer for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.[14] Zuckerberg was responsible for get-out-the-vote and other mobilization efforts. Facebook was also launched this same year on February 4th, 2004.[15] The Facebook platform relies on group formation and constant communication, both of which are goals for any political campaign.[14]

Chris Hughes, a founding member and developer at Facebook, left the company to work as an adviser for President Barack Obama. While working at Facebook, Hughes designed a Facebook profile for the then-presidential candidate. Following his departure, Hughes worked on Obama's Facebook page and utilized his knowledge of content management and new developments to outpace other candidates concerning their online presence.[16] Hughes created the website MyBarak0bama.com, which had a similar layout and concept as Facebook.[14] In the 2008 elections, Facebook continued to be used by electoral candidates. The main user during this election was former President Obama. Mitt Romney also used Facebook for his campaign, but not as much as Obama had. It is reported that well over 1,000 groups on Facebook were created supporting one of the two sides.[17] In recent years, political figures have been using Twitter more often, but Facebook remains to be a frequently-used social media platform.[18]

The 2008 presidential election was the first election in which candidates utilized the Internet and social media as a tool for their campaigns. Nearly three-quarters of internet users went online to learn about the candidates in the election; this equates to 55% of the entire adult population.[19][20] Then President-elect Barack Obama was the first to use the Internet to organize supporters, advertise, and communicate with individuals in a way that had been impossible in previous elections. Obama utilized sites like YouTube to advertise through videos. The videos posted on YouTube by Obama were viewed for 14.5 million hours.[19] Obama led McCain voters in all categories of online political activism, which is considered by some to be a major factor in his victory.[19]

Young voters are much more active in online politics. 30% of all those who posted political content online were under the age of 25.[21]  66% of that same demographic voted for Obama, while 33% voted for McCain, showing that Obama's prominence in online politics greatly increased his chances of winning.[21]

In the aggregate, the Democratic websites got more views than the Republican websites (at least in the primaries).  This was due in part to the younger voters being more inclined to be in favor of the Democratic candidate, as well as being more likely to go on the internet and research or show support for a candidate.[22]

By the 2012 election, more candidates were utilizing a wider array of social media platforms.[23] Politicians were on social networking sites like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other new social media tools and mobile apps. Some of the candidates used social media sites to announce their candidacy. Barack Obama emailed a video to 13 million users when he announced his intention to run for re-election, and Mitt Romney sent out a tweet.[23] Obama produced a seventeen-minute long video, composed of video clips and interviews that documented Obama's first term in the office. This video was published on YouTube, allowing the audience to contribute to the campaign by donating without having to leave the website. This efficiency and convenience was the key point to further extend his fundraising target. This target would not have been achieved without the existence of YouTube, as sharing the link would have been more challenging. The campaign heavily relied on social media to share the video that included the donation link to the fundraiser.[24] Other candidates posted on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to announce their candidacy.

The candidates ran their campaigns with greater emphasis on the internet. Obama and Romney each hired third party companies to pull, track, and analyze data from their websites. This data drove them each to spend nearly $100,000 on online advertisements (Obama spent $93,400 and Romney spent $82,200).[25]  Though these numbers are close, in the aggregate, Obama spent more than Romney did on digital campaigns by a factor of ten. Romney spent $4.7 million and Obama spent $47 million.[26]

Obama had a much larger digital presence than Romney throughout the campaign. In October 2012, President Obama had over 20 million followers on Twitter, while Romney had 1.2 million. On Facebook Obama had over 29 million likes on his page, while Romney had 7.9 million. On Instagram Obama had 1.4 million followers, while Romney had 38,000. President Obama had a higher following on all of his other social media accounts including Spotify, Pinterest, and YouTube,[27]. However, research suggests that merely following Obama or Romney on social media sites such as Facebook may have had little influence on voter behaviors.[28] President Obama also utilized his social media accounts more than any other candidate online.[29] He actively posted more on Twitter, YouTube, and on a personal website blog.

President Obama's campaign thrived on online donations in both 2008 and 2012. In 2008, around 3.95 million people donated to his campaign.[30] That number reached 4.4 million people during his 2012 campaign. The total online donation also rose from $500 million in 2008 to $690 million in 2012.[30]

Political figures can use social media to accomplish tasks such as raising donations for their campaign. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tweeted his support for Barack Obama in the 2012 election. At the time, he boasted an 80% approval rating which led voters who were on the fence to support President Obama.[31]

The 2016 presidential election saw heavy use of social media across all candidates. The top three candidates were Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders (the runner-up in the Democratic primary), and Hillary Clinton. Research reports that "in January 2016, 44% of U.S. adults reported having learned about the 2016 presidential election in the past week from social media."[32] At this point, social media was being heavily used across all platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Specifically, in the 2016 election, Twitter was the main source for both Trump and Clinton. They both were the two major nominees, who used the platform to convey various things. Several reports and statistics show that millions of people received information about the election via social media.[32] Roughly "24% say they have turned to the social media posts" for information regarding the election.[32] All presidential candidates used social media differently. While Trump's posts focused on links to news sources, Clinton and Sanders focused on "highlighting official campaign communities." [32] During the campaigns of these main three candidates, Trump had a higher response from users compared to the two Democratic candidates, which is likely because Trump already had more followers at the beginning of the campaign. The election showed that several strategies could be used with social media as reflected in Trump's, Clinton's, and Sanders' varying usage. On Twitter, Trump mainly retweeted tweets from the general public, whereas Clinton and Sanders mainly retweeted tweets about their campaign.[32] The main two rivals of the campaign, Trump and Clinton, made several tweets directly talking about each other. Clinton used the "@" feature of Twitter, linking users to Trump's page. Trump referred to Clinton several times, but he rarely used the "@" feature.[32] Trump's main focus in his Twitter campaign was the media, such as Fox News or the New York Times. On the other hand, Clinton and Sanders primarily focused on their campaigns. Some of Clinton's and Sanders' posts were written in Spanish.[32]  These two candidates actively reached out to the Hispanic community while Trump did not make any posts in Spanish. The use of videos on Twitter was used in different ways in the 2016 election as Clinton and Sanders mostly posted videos sponsoring their campaign, while Trump posted videos related to news media (a very common theme in the candidates' strategies).[32]

Overall, Trump focused his strategy on social media to get the news media's attention.[33] Sanders and Clinton focused their social media strategy on promoting themselves. Social media, such as Twitter, continues to be used by politicians today and continues to grow more popular in American politics.

During the 2020 presidential election the use of social media by candidates, campaigns, and other stakeholders was considerable. The two main candidates during this election were Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Other candidates, such as Kanye West and Andrew Yang also created large amounts of buzz on social media. In the 2020 US election, social media played a large role compared to past presidential races.[34] The Trump campaign spent $48.7 million and the Biden campaign spent $45.4 million on Facebook ads alone.[34] However, Facebook and Twitter are facing intense criticism for their role in politics from lawmakers.[35] This is tied to antitrust concerns. A report from the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust stated, “In the absence of competition, Facebook’s quality has deteriorated over time, resulting in worse privacy protections for its users and a dramatic rise in misinformation on its platform.”[36] In response to these issues, Facebook has taken action and announced that it will not run any political ads in North America.[37] Subsequent to the election being formally called for Biden by media agencies ranging from CNN to Fox News, Donald Trump proceeded to contest the 2020 election results' authenticity using social media platforms - in parallel to contesting it via multiple lawsuits. While the lawsuits were each unsuccessful, Donald Trump's social media campaign and Stop The Steal initiative during this period is recognized to have culminated in the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. This ultimately led to Trump's Twitter account being shut down by Twitter - citing a breach of their usage policy.

Social media has been used in political campaigns ranging from small local elections to larger-scale presidential elections. According to Wael Ghonim, social media can reinforce pre-existing beliefs rather than promote new ones. While social media can be used to raise donations, several candidates focused on using it to promote their own campaigns.[38] Politicians cannot control the conversation on social media. According to a study by Miguel del Fresno García, Alan J. Daly, and Sagrario Segado Sánchez-Cabezudo, regular friends and followers hold high levels of influence on social media, instead of blogs and campaign pages. Users with the most influence over social media fall into three different categories: users who disseminate knowledge, those who engage other people, and those who lead conversations. These three types of users are the ones who others tend to follow and listen to through social media. Therefore, for political campaigns to truly reach as many people as possible, political groups first need to get those three users talking about their campaigns on social media.[39] However, despite the many ways social media can be utilized in political campaigns, many U.S. social media users claim they are drained by the influx of political content in their feed.[40]

People worry that too much use of social media might cause less lawmaking as more effort is put into getting supporters. Due to the surplus of fake news stories, social media may cause limitations on the credibility of campaigns. Scholar Calderaro mentions that social media allows online knowledge to spread easily ‘giving space to unqualified voices’.[41] This could threaten the quality of political news by replacing the authenticity and impartiality guaranteed by journalists with possible unreliable sources of information,[41] during the 2016 election, 'just below 55 percent' of online news was false.[42] The political Astroturfing approach defined by scholar Ratkiewicz [43] is a system that allows unqualified voices to gain influence through social media. Here, political campaign spams are disguised as grassroot behavior where in reality, they are carried out by a single person or organization. The strategy seeks to build a large scale ‘false sense of group consensus[43] about an idea so it is spread consistently by avid group supporters. This makes it easier for like-minded citizens to form filter bubbles which essentially isolates them from opposing contrary perspectives due to their search history.

This political news circulated within one's bubble may be filled with one-sided fake news, allowing certain politicians to gain popularity through false pretenses. For example, throughout the 2016 election, 115 pro-trump fake stories were shared 30 million times in comparison to the 41 pro-Clinton fake news stories that were only shared 7.6 million times.[42] It is argued by some, such as Jill Lepore in the New Yorker, that this influence went as far as to tamper with election results.[44] The circulation of Trump's fake news stories grew, such as one where wtoe5news.com reported that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump's presidential candidacy.[42] This may have allowed his right-wing populism to grow. As the more consistently fake news on Trump online circulates, the more successful filter bubbles will be to recruiting electorates.