Interesting slice of research here from media agency MindShare that claims despite his reputation as a pioneer of social media campaigning, which we covered extensively last week, President Barack Obama could be influencing fewer voters through social networks than his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

On back of a tough week for Romney when he slipped in the polls following Hurricane Sandy, the results of the survey could provide some good news for the Presidential hopeful despite more reports saying Obama is likely to narrowly win.

The Mindshare study says that while President Obama clearly has many more followers on Twitter and Facebook, Republican voters are more active on social media. Read More »

A nice little ad here from Barack Obama’s campaign that seems to perfectly illustrate the impact that digital has had on politics during this Presidential Election campaign. It features Walter, a 91-year-old World War II veteran, at home with his phone and his laptop making telephone canvassing calls for the Obama campaign.

The software isn’t new, but it is only when you see it at work like this that you’re reminded how much as changed. Read More »

Party political conference season has dominated UK Twitter over the last few weeks.

Followers have keenly Tweeted key quotes and messages while following the conference debates on television, while delegates shared comments and pictures from the fringe events and speeches that they attended.

It all prompted Twitter to share some of the data they had accrued over the conference season, which overall Twitter says racked up more than a million mentions. Read More »

As David Cameron gives his speech today at the Conservative Party Conference it comes during his first week on Twitter.

The PM has been off to a flying start quickly hitting 100,000 followers and showing us he can use a hashtag or two and attach plenty of images.

He has also tweeted a preview of his speech telling us he will be “levelling with the British people in my speech at 11.30. It’s sink or swim, do or decline”. The bookies are laying odds of evens that Cameron will today mention Twitter (he didn’t) having previously been less flattering about it. Read More »

The race for the White House is in full swing, but which candidates’ video ads and tweets are attracting the most attention across social media?

We’ve two infographics here. The first has been put together by Unruly Media tracking the number of shares each candidate’s video content receives across Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere.

The second takes a look at Twitter following the first presidential debate that showed among many other things that celebrity tweeters, like Rob Lowe, have real pulling power, but does that count in the final analysis? Read More »

UPDATE -David Cameron last night passed the 100,000 follower milestone.

It was a quick canter to six figures for the Prime Minister who marked the occasion with his ninth Tweet and a little dig at some bookmakers.

It appears some bookies had doubted Cameron’s ability to pass the 100,000 follower mark during the week of the Conservative Party conference and have had to payout.  Read More »

A savvy and speedy move here by US public service broadcaster PBS after it took advantage of Mitt Romney’s attack on the network during the first presidential debate earlier this week.

During the debate, which set a new record for the Tweeting of a political event, Romney said in reference to PBS that he was not prepared to “to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for”.

His remark sent #BigBird trending and saw a rash of parody Big Bird accounts launched, including @BlGBlRD. Now PBS itself has responded by buying the character’s name as keyword ad campaign on Twitter. Read More »

We already know how important digital campaigning has become and that those standing for office have to be increasingly careful of what they say and do online.

This story from Maine in the US, however, takes that to a new level and delves into what are the essentially the hobbies of political candidates and uses the information against them.

Local Republicans have launched an attack on Democratic Party candidate Colleen Lachowicz, who is standing for the State Senate, on the basis that she plays the online role playing game World of Warcraft. That’s right it is an Orc attack. Read More »

Twitter launched Twitter.com/#debates as the first US Presidential debate kicked off last night and quickly became the most Tweeted political event on record as more than 10.3 million Tweets were sent in the 90 minutes.

The media declared Mitt Romney as the winner over President Obama in Denver although some had it down as Big Bird from Sesame Street.

The big yellow bird trended on Twitter as Romney said he would cut funding for US public service broadcaster PBS. Read More »

As the first presidential debate of the US election kicks off tonight between President Obama and Mitt Romney Tumblr is teaming up with the Guardian.

On its ‘Tumbling The Election blog‘, Tumblr and its team of GIF artists are planning to crank out instant animations of the best debate moments.

Tumblr says these will be from “zingers to gaffes to awkward silences” in a debate that will see the men come head to head for the first time. Read More »