Why can’t a campaign run mostly off of social media? It’s free (maybe $8/month) to post something that millions will see. Even if your audience doesn’t have that platform someone, even your campaign staff, will eventually repost to every platform for you for free. The tv news will usually mention a tweet or post that a political candidate says so again that’s free advertising. What am I missing?
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First off, it is not free. Pushing ads via social media costs money – that is how the social media business functions. Simply reposting isn’t enough – getting ads in front of followers doesn’t get you new votes. You need to push those ads to people who _don’t_ follow you.
Second, not everyone is on social media. You need to get your message in front of other demographics, and those demographics may be better targeted with email, TV news, mailers, etc. My mother, who is in her late 60s – doesn’t use social media at all and she is a sought after voter (older people are more consistent voters than younger) so you need to meet her where she is, and that isn’t social media.
> What am I missing?
For starers it’s not free. A campaign is either paying the platform to get that reach, or paying staffers to build it organically.
Current social media platforms are specifically designed to create echo chambers, and only feed you outside information that will get engagement, e.g. make you mad. So it’s a fairly poor platform for reaching new folks.
Lastly, most recent campaigns use social media as part of a larger strategy, it isn’t a silver bullet, for anything.
In addition to what’s already been said, a lot of politicians are older and are a little slower in this regard. For example, in my country, yes everyone has a social media platform but this election for the first time there were politicians setting up AMA threads in reddit-groups speaking the local language. It was novel, and cost them nothing but their time. There’ll probably be more of those in the future.
That’s exactly how Trump won the election, by leveraging the might of social media. Republicans more broadly have done a great job utilizing social media for campaigning and ideological alignment. Reposting details of the Rittenhouse Trial, for example, got him way more support than he’d have ever received through traditional media alone.
Democrats, however, have a consistent issue with being behind the eight ball on such things because their internal structure gives disproportionate power to party stalwarts. Still, the influx of young voters is bringing them up to speed.
Notwithstanding the cost, for a campaign to succeed, they have to appeal outside of their core audience. On social mead, the interaction is primarily with their core. They would be wasting an effort, no matter the cost. To reach the undecided, they have to seriously scatter a message to the widest audience. That’s TV/steaming, radio/streaming, or the bain of my existence, direct mail.
Social media can be gamed, twisted, vandalized by bots, organized individuals. Similar to reasons why advertisers are fleeing twitter. Groups like 4chan, political troll farms have history of interfering/trolling public polls, spamming racists messages/images, adding chaos to your carefully crafted messages. Very few organization have the time or energy playing whack a mole with these motivated technically savvy groups.
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