Stephendipitous: The Digital is Poltical

It is undisputed that social media played a large role in shaping the narrative of the 2012 Presidential Election. It is also established that women play a large role in social media.

It is impossible to ignore this intersection of facts. If social media is a driving force in 21st century elections and women are the driving force behind social media, is it safe to assume that women have an increasingly important role in online political discourse and therefore the narrative?

While this question has yet to be answered (let alone posed) by any researcher or political journalist, it still lingers as an interesting theme I encountered during the course of the election.

The early interest in this idea can be traced back to an article by Alex Johnson of NBC News which mentioned that more politically-charged comments about the First Presidential Debate were made by women than they were men, with no real reason as to why.

This prompted me to take a closer look at the relationship between women and social media in the context of this past presidential election.

I have compiled a profile of the impact social media had on the 2012 Election, both in the narrative and the outcome. I have also outlined the research surrounding social media demographics, which more often than not identify women as playing a dominant role in the online industry.

I would like to cross-reference the intersection of social media and politics with the intersection of women and politics. The resulting article is an examination of women’s use of social media as a political tool during this past election cycle.

With more women on the campaign trail and the everyday woman sitting behind her computer screen blogging/Tweeting/Facebooking about the election, it begs the question, “Are women increasingly influencing the media narrative of Presidential Elections and politics in general? And if so, do they play an important role in the shaping of present and future public opinion?”

The "Socialization" of Politics

Looking back at the long, campaign commercial-filled months leading up to Election Day 2012, it is safe to say that just as many events occurred in the physical world of politics as they did in the digital world.

Since the last Presidential Election in 2008, the multiplying supply of social media sites coupled with the proliferation of smartphones has inspired a surge of political activities on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Pinterest.

The campaigns and social media users alike capitalized on the opportunity to use these sites as a platform upon which to produce and share political information that if "trending" would often be picked by mainstream media, and therefore mainstream America.

As political events unfolded live, many Internet users took to Twitter or some other social media site to document the events as they occurred in real-time on the T.V. screen.

The Presidential Debates offered much of the material used for Internet memes that seemed to go viral faster than you can say “Big Bird.”

Gaffes and campaign missteps were picked up instantly by social media sites, who’s users “tweeted” and posted about events incessantly. As gaffes turned into “hash-tags” and campaign photos went viral, it was easy for Internet-using Americans to engage in the political conversation that was unfolding online daily.

The Internet’s instant accessibility to information paired with social media’s ability to make a post go viral allowed the voters of this election cycle to have a voice in a political conversation that goes beyond the kitchen table.

A recent study conducted by Pew Research Center found that 60% of American adults use social networking sites and 66% of those users- 39% of all American adults- have engaged in some kind of civic or political activity through social media.

Aaron Smith, a senior research scientist on the project, stated in an email to a PBS reporter, "People like talking about politics, and [social media] is another venue for them to share their excitement, interest, and passion... about something that they think is important."

The study found that 34% of social media users posted their own thoughts on political or social issues during the election. Another 35% have used their social media accounts as platforms to encourage others to vote.

An even smaller population is those who participated in "duel-screening" during the Presidential Debates. The study found that 1 in 10 of those who viewed the debate live were simultaneously following the event on both the television and a computer or mobile device.

This type of duel-media multitasking allows for the real-time unfolding of events on social media sites, which is resposible for the explosive memes that came from soundbites taken from the Debates.

Without a live Twitter feed, the "binders full of women" or "Big Bird" gaffes might have never gained as much traction with the mainstream media and therefore would not have been part of the Election 2012 narrative, which seems hard to imagine.

This lends itself to the importance of social media during this past election and elections to come. It also highlights the influence of those using it as a political tool for conversation.

"A small number of really engaged people can in many instances, at least from the point of an election campaign, be more powerful than a large number of people who are either passively engaged or are only marginally interested," Smith noted.

#Women2012

According to Pew Research Center’s recent study examining social media users, the likeliness of women to use social media has been on the rise since 2009 — with no signs of slowing.

The study reports that as of August 2012, 75% of female Internet consumers were active users of social networking sites, compared with 63% of men. Women also are more rigorous users of social media, with more than half of female internet users accessing social networking sites every day (54%) while only 42% of male users do the same.

The best example of women’s dominance in the social media world can definitely be seen on Pinterest, where women make up 72% of the user base.

The campaigns in this election, specifically the Obama camp, picked up on this trend and created their own Pinterest accounts. With the "women vote" as such a key demographic for victory in this election, it is safe to assume that the campaigns hoped to target women with this kind of social media activity.

While Pinterest may boast the most female users, it is definitely not the only site with more women creating accounts than men. Twitter is close behind with women controlling sixty-two percent of its accounts, and each month 40 million more women visit the site than men.

Women also make up over half (58%) of the people with active Facebook accounts and are responsible for much of the daily traffic to the sight.

Basically, women have found their place in the Internet, and that place resides in social media websites. Whatever the reason, women seem to like the connectivity that these sites offer and continue to use them for various reasons.

Of the topics women read and comment about online, "entertainment", "food", and "health/wellness" fill the top tier of women’s online conversation. Also on this list, is "politics and news", with 22% of women engaging in this type of dialog while using social media.

The NBC article referenced earlier, which commented on women's engagement in online political dicourse during the First Presidential Debate, best exemplifies the influence and pressence of women on social media during the election.

Of the 11.1 million tweets generated by the Debate, 55% of them were made by women while 45% were made by men- a difference of 1,110,000 tweets.

This could be due to the fact that women make up more of the Twitter accounts than men.

It also could be partly because increased self-awareness of women and the importance of their vote to the outcome of the election.

Either way, women have exhibited an increasing amount of influence on the political conversation, more so in the 2012 election than ever before, shaping both the outcome and the narrative of the election.

With more and more young women filling the ranks of political journalists on the campaign trail, women have also played a role in the narrative told by traditional media during this election.

According to a Politico article by Ginger Gibson, "While the senior ranks of the political media are still largely dominated by men, young women—typically younger than 30 —now do a large share of the grunt work necessary to make campaign coverage hum during the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week news cycle."

As campaign corespondents for the major news networks, these "embeds" are the ones who ride the candidates' buses all over the country from one event to the next, "recording every word out of the candidates' mouth — good or gaffe — and filing endless stories about incremental developments."

And this is all done by freshmen journalists in the hopes that it will jump-start their career and lead to a bigger and better job within the news network.

“This was about ‘boys on the bus,’ this was the path — whether it was TV network or print publication — this was the path to a big career,” Amy Walter, the political director of ABC News, told POLITICO.

She continued, “Now you have a generation of women who are coming out and know what they want — and they’re going to go get it, they’re not going to ask for somebody to give them what they want.”

This past election season, ABC had more women campaign corespondents than men, as did Fox News and CBS. CNN and NBC had as many female embeds on the trail as they had men.

The growing presence of female corespondents on the trail was evident in 2008 Presidential Election as well.

“I do notice that there are a lot of women, but there were a lot of female embeds last time, too,” said Shushannah Walshe, who was a 2008 embed and is now a staffed ABC political reporter.

While this trend seems to be the new norm on the trail, Walter notes that the people at the top of the business still reflect the old status quo.

“The high ranks are still dominated by men,” Walter says, “and by white men, mostly.”

“As to the bigger point of what it all means, I think that’s what we’re going to have to see — and it’s a very important question,” Walter said. “These women who are out on the trail now, what is their next job? How many of these women are we going to see five, 10 years from now doing those big jobs, sitting as a correspondent or having their byline on the front page of the paper?”

“That is going to be a very big test for all of this: how successful will it be in actually populating a farm team of really talented women into the high political ranks.”

With more and more filling the ranks of young reporters, it seems reasonable to assume that in a few years from now, women will be holding more of the higher positions in the industry.

During this past election, women were the majority of the political corespondents on the campaign trail, basically acting as the gatekeepers to much of the information reported on by mainstream media.

Although at the bottom of the food chain, these women were responsible for many of the news articles that shaped the traditional media narrative of this election cycle.

Coupled with women's role in shaping the new media narrative that formed via social media sites, it seems that young females have left a considerable mark on the recording of the 2012 Presidential Election.

The considerable impact that the media, social and traditional, had on this past election is a testament to the increasing amount of influence and power women have on both the dialog and outcome of presidential elections.

The "Girls on the Bus" and the girls online have a lot to say, and the world seems to be listening.

This almost elusive amplification of women's voices can be described as the narrative within the narrative of this election.

And as Susan King, Dean of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, always says, "It's about the narrative. It's always about the human story."