May the Best Tweeter Win: The Twitter Strategies of Key Campaign Accounts in the 2012 US Election

The analysis of the main Obama and Romney accounts provides new information into how the major candidates and their campaigns use social media, taking in their styles of tweeting, interactions or acknowledgement of their opposition, links to other sources and content, and the use of promotion tweets for campaign advertising. The analysis reveals markedly different tweeting strategies amongst the examined Twitter accounts. @BarackObama and @Obama2012 choose to engage almost solely with their own supporters, while the Accounts from the other side of the aisle are much more interested in taking the fight to the opponent. The specific use of Twitter as a campaign medium resonates with the different electoral positioning of the two campaigns. Taking into account the analysis of the communications strategies of the contestants, “Team Obama” was more successful in connecting to the Twitter userbase, adding a new facet to its overall campaign strategy. Additionally, Team Romney seems to be limited by its strategic disadvantage as challenger—their turning away from the personal account @MittRomney to @TeamRomney revealed a more “aggressive” tweeting pattern, in the light of the analysis it turned out to be not the right decision, as it failed to connect with a broader Twitter userbase. Overall, the Twitter strategies of the candidates resonate with the general character traits of the respective campaigns. Due to technological developments and the constantly changing digital ecosystem it remains to be seen, how specific Twitter strategies will be applied in upcoming campaigns.