Analyzing the Multifaceted Uses of Twitter and YouTube to Influence the Middle-Class Female Vote during the 2012 Presidential Election

Abstract

Modern social media applications have revolutionized the ways that public relations practitioners perform their work and conduct their research due to the usability, versatility and compatibility of these contemporary technologies. For example, during the 2012 election cycle, both President Barack Obama’s and Politician Mitt Romney’s electoral campaigns extensively employed popular social media outlets, such as Twitter and YouTube, to engage and more effectively encourage their electorate to become more politically involved online. My honors thesis defines several operational definitions and explores how modern social media applications, particularly Twitter and YouTube, were used effectively during the 2012 presidential election to target and critically influence both their general electorate and middle-class females. I briefly mention descriptive statistical research and qualitative data from the 2008 presidential election; however, my paper primarily focuses on data from the 2012 election. In conclusion, my thesis investigates the content and variety of political messages that were relayed through social media (i.e., Twitter and YouTube) by President Barack Obama’s and Politician Mitt Romney’s media strategists during the 2012 presidential election and the channels of communication that were employed throughout the election cycle.