I'll admit that I was one of the millions who flocked to twitter during Michelle Obama's speech on Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention. I may have tweeted one thing the entire time but constantly updated my feed every 10 seconds and looked through the #DNC2012, #michelleobama and #firstlady.
The fact that the number of tweets during Michelle Obama's speech peaked at 28,003 tweets per minute meant that a lot of people were watching the speech on TV and on a second screen, (smart phone, tablet, laptop) like I was.
It's an understatement to say that Michelle Obama inspired people to get involved in these months leading up to the election in November, and twitter provided the forum for people connected to the web or using the app on their phones to express their excitement and praise for the first lady that night.
The FLOTUS's speech about her husband and her family was extremely effective in attracting tech-savvy users and journalists to twitter to share thoughts and post key quotes. Although Ann Romney spoke last week during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, her speech peaked at only about 6,000 tweets per minute.
Clearly the speeches targeted different groups, with one reporter on CNN stating it well when he said Ann Romney's speech was directed towards older mothers while Michelle Obama's speech was more in tune with the daughters of those mothers. Those daughters (and sons) were the ones who bombarded twitter Tuesday night, as well as last night during Bill Clinton's nomination speech.
Here is a Huffington Post article with photos and examples of tweets from Michelle Obama's "grand slam" of a speech (to borrow a phrase from Wolf Blitzer...)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/michelle-obama-dnc-speech-reactions-2012-twitter-women_n_1856298.html
The tweets on this article are definitely worth reading.
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1 comment:
It's fascinating that Twitter tweets are now a measure for analysis. I agree, Julia, that those using Twitter are a distinct demographic. My parents and grandparents have no idea how to use Twitter, but my teenage sisters are all over it. I just started using it in the past year. I think the quantity of tweets on a topic is definitely insightful. We just have to be cautious when citing information from Twitter, as Twitter users don't necessarily represent the entire population. Good job Julia!
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