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Carole
12-11-2011, 01:38 PM
This is interesting, not monumental, but interesting.

Study: Ron Paul is winning on Twitter
hxxp://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70072.html

tangent4ronpaul
12-11-2011, 02:09 PM
http://www.journalism.org/node/27619

And in that campaign discussion on Twitter, one candidate has fared better than anyone else. Congressman Ron Paul has enjoyed the most favorable tone on Twitter of all candidates examined. From May through November, fully 55% of the assertions about the Texas Republican on Twitter have been positive-the highest of any candidate-while 15% have been negative-the lowest percentage of any candidate. That is a differential for Paul of 40 points on the positive side.

Paul is also the most favorably discussed candidate in blogs. While he trails significantly in the polls, and has received less coverage than every Republican candidate except Rick Santorum from news outlets, Paul seems to have struck a chord with some cohort in social media.

This treatment of Paul stands in contrast to that of most of the GOP field, for whom Twitter has been a tough neighborhood. Five of Paul's seven GOP rivals have had negative opinions on Twitter outstrip positive ones by roughly 2-1 or more.


The work is part of a new ongoing analysis of the race for president conducted by PEJ that will continue through the election, tracking the amount of attention paid to the candidates in different media platforms and the tone of that attention. The research combines PEJ's traditional ongoing weekly content analysis conducted by human researchers with computer algorithmic technology developed by the company Crimson Hexagon.


The findings also suggest that neither Twitter nor blogs function in general as a form of vox populi that either reflects or anticipates changes in public mood as expressed in representative samples of the population in polling. Sometimes these social media move with polls, but often they do not.


In the blogosphere, since May only one candidate other than Ron Paul-Cain-has received more positive than negative coverage, and that by the razor thin margin (32% positive and 30% negative).


http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/campaign_conversation_twitter_vs_blogs

http://www.journalism.org/sites/journalism.org/files/u29/lead_table.png

Danemicus
12-11-2011, 02:20 PM
Jut curious, but have there ever been any proper twitter bombs been done before? As in, efforts by a group of people to make #RonPaul trend? I think this kind of thing would be extremely effective in grabbing the attention of undecided voters. Of course, it would be better still if this was organized so that everyone wasn't tweeting the same things. There is so much information and material that repetition could be at a minimum. It would just require some organization and coordination.

tangent4ronpaul
12-11-2011, 02:25 PM
http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/candidates_twitter

Ron Paul

The Texas congressman is a social media phenomenon.

In many respects, the conversations about Paul on Twitter and blogs were similar-and both were different from his news coverage. On Twitter, there were more than 1.1 million assertions about Paul, ranking him fifth among the GOP candidates. He was also the No. 5 newsmaker on blogs. But in the news media, Paul finished next to last in the Republican field in terms of quantity of coverage-ahead of only Santorum.

http://www.journalism.org/sites/journalism.org/files/u29/Paul_tone.png

Paul had several major spikes in attention in the past seven months, including the two weeks in August surrounding his second-place finish in the Iowa straw poll, the week in mid-September when the CNN debate in Florida occurred and the week of October 17-23, when another CNN debate took place. But he had his busiest week on Twitter from November 21-27, which included speculation that Paul would have a strong showing in the January 3 Iowa caucus.

http://www.journalism.org/sites/journalism.org/files/u29/Paul_amount_of_coverage.png

And as was the case in blogs, Paul is the clear winner of the Twitter media primary when it comes to tone. A whopping 55% of the assertions about him were positive, only 15% were negative and 30% were neutral. His closest competitor in terms of positive attention was Cain, well back at 34%. And the candidate with the next lowest percentage of negative assertions was Huntsman, also well off the pace at 24%.

Indeed, Paul is the only candidate who generated more positive than negative assertions on Twitter, blogs and in the news coverage.

On blogs, the assertions about Paul were overwhelmingly positive as well (47% positive, 15% negative and 38% neutral). In news coverage, however, they were more mixed (23% positive, 16% negative and 61% neutral) and the attention to him there was scant.

In none of the 30 weeks included in this report did the margin between positive and negative assertions about Paul on Twitter fall below 29 percentage points. And he enjoyed six weeks where the differential was at least 50 percentage points.

While he has never shown up among the frontrunners in national GOP polls-and most news coverage discounts his chances of winning the nomination-Paul commands an energized online following, as the tone of his narrative on both Twitter and blogs indicates. Indeed, a number of the tweets examined by PEJ offered the simple message: "Vote for Ron Paul."

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/update_elite_news_media

http://www.journalism.org/sites/journalism.org/files/u29/elite_tone_-_dana.png