Social media and the 2012 election
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Social media and the 2012 election
STEVE CHIOTAKIS: President Obama will take questions today as he talks to people online about deficit reduction and the presidential campaign. The president and a handful of Republicans so far are the only ones officially entered in the 2012 race.
And in this election, candidates will be able to utilize social media that wasn’t fully developed 4 years ago.
Dusty Trice is a Democratic media strategist and he’s with us now from Washington. Good morning.
DUSTY TRICE: Good morning.
CHIOTAKIS: So the president may be the first candidate ever to reach $1 billion through fundraising. Is social media going to help him get there?
TRICE: Absolutely. It’s the easiest way to reach out to voters where they want to be contacted. This isn’t going out and knocking on doors and making phone calls. People are actually seeking out contacts from the president now. Traditional campaign tactics are not bad, you know. But social media makes it a lot easier, it makes it a lot easier to just reach people where they want to be reached, on their cell phones, on their laptops. It’s going to give him an easier road to walk.
CHIOTAKIS: What kind of social media landscape are we going to see going forward?
TRICE: It’s all advertising. Everything is advertising. You go to Facebook and you can actually take a know you, scalpel and cut out the group of people you want to talk to, and then buy very inexpensive advertising to reach them. I think this year, we’re going to see more Google ads, more Facebook ads, and then just on the event front, campaigns can invite people to events through all of these sites, and they can share information about the campaigns through this site. It just makes it 1,000 times easier than previous years.
CHIOTAKIS: Dusty Trice, Democratic new media strategist. Thanks for joining us.
TRICE: Thanks for having me.
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