By Elizabeth Grady
Promotions Editor
With 24 million tweets total during the three presidential debates, according to an Oct. 23 L.A. Times article, it’s safe to say social involvement in politics is trending. But, how much of this social commentary on the Twitterverse is informed?
Twitter and other forms of social media should not cancel out traditional news sources when following the presidential debates. Based on the most tweeted about topics, real issues don’t always take center stage on social media.
During the first debate, the most prominent topic tweeted about from the event was Mitt Romney’s comment about Big Bird and cutting subsidies to PBS. According to an Oct. 4 CBS news article, Romney’s Big Bird comment peaked at a high of 135,332 tweets per minute. Big Bird became a key figure among Romney and Obama in the eyes of ‘tweeters’ as it was the fourth most mentioned debate-related term of the night. People jumped on the bandwagon, creating Big Bird Twitter accounts like @BigBird, @SadBigBird and @BigBirdRomney. @BigBirdRomney garnered close to 13,000 followers.
The second debate wasn’t without a new catchy Twitter craze: Romney’s “binders full of women.” Romney made this statement when discussing gender pay inequality in his experience of choosing female cabinet members as governor. Again, the internet world picked up this statement, making it the phrase of the debate. It was the third most searched term on Google during the second debate, according to an Oct. 16 CNN.com article. One viewer created a Facebook group before the debate was over, gathering 100,000 fans. Social media followers glossed over the issue, from women’s pay to back-to-school supplies.
The third, and least tweeted about debate may have only received 6.5 million tweets, compared to the 10.3 million tweets from the first debate, but it didn’t go without another trending topic. This time Obama was the culprit. In response to debating the size of the military Obama said, “We also have few horses and bayonets.” Instead of comments regarding foreign policy issues like terrorism, the economic crisis in Europe or oil dependency, Obama’s single comment took the spotlight. According to a Mashable.com article, the comment earned 105,767 tweets per minute at its peak.
The sad thing about this whole craze is how the real issues get over looked and are left out. The primary issues aren’t Big Bird, binders of women or horses and bayonets. They’re government funding, gender pay equality and military defense spending.
If you tuned into Twitter for your debate coverage, you would have thought the debates included a public execution of Big Bird, a binder of promiscuous women and a War of 1812 re-enactment.
People should take time tuning into traditional news sources and trusted online news sources before they form their opinions based off Twitter trending topics.
