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Neon Tommy - Annenberg digital news

Obama Uses #My2k To Gain Leverage In Fiscal Talks

Jackie Mansky |
November 29, 2012 | 2:44 p.m. PST

Staff Reporter

President Obama takes the fiscal cliff debate to social media. (Creative Commons/Flickr)
President Obama takes the fiscal cliff debate to social media. (Creative Commons/Flickr)
President Barack Obama looked to gain "followers" in support of his plan to avoid the year-end fiscal cliff on Wednesday, by moving to the conversation to a new avenue: Twitter.

Obama announced the new Twitter hashtag "#my2k" at a mid-morning news conference. He asked people to use the hashtag to write messages with examples of what paying an additional $2,000 - the amount that the average family would pay in additional taxes if Congress fails to act - would mean to them.

He referenced the Twitter hashtag four times in his speech and it later appeared on a screen at a televised afternoon briefing, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Shortly afterward, "my2k" became a top-trending subject on Twitter.

NPR and other news outlets heralded the social media strategy as the 2012 version of a president's traditional White House bully pulpit. First coined by President Theodore Roosevelt, the bully pulpit refers to the platform used by presidents to promote their agenda.

According to social scientist and author Morley Winograd, Twitter’s platform is an opportunity to make a more individualized and more persuasive public opinion argument.

“There are lots of public opinion surveys out about what the overall opinion of the public is, but they don't make it personal or specific to the individual legislatures and districts,” Winograd said. “Potentially the opportunity here with Twitter is to have people tell their representatives how decision will represent them personally.”

It comes down to localization, he said. While individual representatives or senators may not be persuaded by a state or national survey because they feel they think they have a better sense of the people in their district and how they feel on an issue, if they receive enough Tweets showing the opposite viewpoint they may re-consider their stance on a policy.

“If president was able to get a whole bunch of people to say here's how it affects me and why, then that's a harder argument to ignore,” Winograd said.

Although some say Twitter’s users are more likely to be younger and Democratic and politicians might dismiss the tweets as skewed data, Winograd argued that Tweets can be persuasive.

“You’re certainly getting a biased selection on Twitter. Republicans receiving Tweets might think, ‘Oh yeah, these folks wouldn't vote for me anyways, nothing I can do about it.’” Winograd said. “That may very well be true, but generally you ignore a segment of your district at your peril.”

Winograd sees Obama’s use of Twitter as the bully pulpit as another step in his social media evolution.

“In 2012 his administration is light years ahead of the campaign we saw in ’08," he said. "The administration's [social media strategy] continues to evolve and I think this shows how much more comfort they have become using the technology.”

 

Read responses to #My2k on Twitter here.

Read more of Neon Tommy's coverage of the social media here.

Reach Staff Reporter Jackie Mansky here.

 



 

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