Social media’s political impact

Candidates run their race on the Web

When Donald Trump wants to grab some attention, he turns to Twitter. Within 30 minutes, a Thursday morning Trump tweet mocking Jeb Bush’s presidential candidacy was fodder for a panel of pundits on CNN.

A year ago, when Bush announced he was preparing to run for president, he spread the word via a post on Facebook.

The part-time Palm Beach resident and the former Florida governor are two big-name politicians using social media to fuel their 2016 campaigns. But they’re not alone. Political figures at all levels are turning to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms to advocate for policy agendas, fire political shots at opponents, rally their supporters and release both major and minor news.

When U.S. Rep. Carlos

Curbelo, a Miami-Dade County Republican, broke his arm in a post-Christmas hoverboard accident, he spread the news — where else — on Twitter. He also tweeted a picture showing his arm in a sling. State Rep. Shevrin Jones, D-West Park, posted a picture and statement on Instagram to show and explain his presence at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on the day justices heard arguments in a major case that could determine the constitutionality of affirmativeaction programs.

“Social media has had a profound impact on the political system,” said state Sen. Joe Negron, a Republican whose district includes part of Palm Beach County. Negron is slated to become Florida Senate president after the 2016 elections.

And, for better or worse, social media has become indispensable for anyone involved in politics, said Kevin Wagner, political scientist at Florida Atlantic University and co-author of “Tweeting To Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics.”

“The social media campaign is almost at every level these days. You’ll see people running for mayor who have web outreaches, emails, Google advertisements. In fact, there are very few effective candidates today who don’t have some kind of effective social media outreach,” Wagner said.

The biggest impact so far has been in the presidential campaign, largely because of Trump, who has used 140-character Twitter messages as a major component of his campaign.

“Donald Trump wouldn’t exist without his Twitter account,” said Ron Mills, a Broward-based political consultant who was cochairman of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s 2004 Florida campaign and former campaign director of Florida Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Caucus.

Trump has more than 5 million Twitter followers. Wagner said a well-rated cable news show is lucky to get 2 million viewers. “Every time he tweets, he is reaching a huge audience for free. And that’s before Trump’s followers retweet his messages to their own followers,” Wagner said.

Besides the amplification that comes through retweeting, another Twitter advantage — for candidates who can get noticed — is that it doesn’t come with the high cost of television advertising and it targets people receptive to the message because they’ve signed up as followers.

Wagner said TV advertising is still the best way to reach mass audiences, but much of the spending is wasted by spreading the message to people who aren’t interested. “If I put an ad on television, I may get an audience of say 1 million people. But how many of those are voters, and how many of those are engaged in the political process?” he said. “In social media, I can literally target politically active people who are open to my message.”

With social media, consumers are able to decide what people and kinds of ideas they’re exposed to, something Wagner thinks may contribute to the current politically polarized culture. The propensity of social media to attract likeminded people makes it an ideal way to energize supporters and keep them pumped up, said Daniel Ruoss of Lauderdale-by-theSea, the southern region vice chairman for the Young Republican National Federation.

“People join these Facebook groups, they follow these Twitter accounts, and they see what they want to see. They see the news through the prism they want to see it. That’s definitely very powerful. It keeps your side motivated.”

He said it seems less effective as a tool to attract undecided voters. “It’s a difference between recruiting and cheerleading.”

Ruoss, a Bush supporter, said that’s especially true of Trump. “He knows exactly who he is talking to and exactly what they want to hear, and the rest of us are just shaking our heads,” Ruoss said.

Twitter has great influence on what’s reported by news media outlets, said Justin Sayfie, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer-lobbyist, publisher of the online political news site Sayfie Review and adviser to Bush when he was governor. Many news reporters are on Twitter, so messages from politicians get picked up and turned into news articles and television reports. So candidates know that’s a way to

get messages to the media as well as their own followers.

“There is basically a kind of bubble of information that impacts the conventional wisdom, so to some extent the media frame or the storytelling for those in the news media I think are impacted by Twitter and social media,” Sayfie said.

Some political veterans are skeptical about the impact of Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

Sid Dinerstein, former chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, said he doesn’t think social media can greatly alter the fundamental factors that influence how people vote: their parents’ political affiliations and ethnic and political leanings. “Their voting patterns haven’t been in any way upended by social media. All you’re seeing are minor ebbs and flows.”

Dinerstein said he views the Internet itself, which made possible the social media that’s popular today, as what’s really transformative. “I would argue the Internet was the revolutionary part.”

But Mills said social media is the most effective way to engage potential voters as media consumption be- comes more fragmented. He said that’s especially true for younger people.

Right now, social media is more popular among younger people, but people in their 20s vote at lower rates than older voters. As younger people age, they aren’t likely to drop social media, Wagner said, so it’s likely to become an even more important avenue to reach them.

“They don’t drop this stuff when they turn 25,” he said.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater of North Palm Beach, a former president of the Florida Senate, said it’s not yet possible to tell the long-term value of Twitter and other social media platforms.

When the novelty wears off, Atwater said he believes people may look more for meaning and substance. Social media is “offering people a chance to opine on a person’s thought of the day or thought of the minute or what they had at lunch, but I think some people are going to convert from entertainment to what’s consequential.”

aman@tribpub.com, 954-356-4550. On Twitter @BrowardPolitics