The Nation published an editorial this past week entitled “Be more alert, but less judgmental” which made a plausible argument for placing some responsibility on the social media audience to not rush to judgment when first receiving information. They cited that this can be especially damaging when the chatter on the Internet becomes very negative and presumptuous, making it incredibly difficult to turn the conversation back in a positive direction. In the political arena, the life cycle of a “scandal” (whether or not one truly exists) can be breathtakingly short due to the mob-like rush to judgment. In one recent case, this cycle lasted less than a day: on November 20th, Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general of Great Britain, tweeted a photo of a house covered with three English (St. George) flags she saw in her travels on the campaign trail. By the end of November 20th, she had resigned. Although Thornberry initially said she was just tweeting images in her travels and was especially impressed by this house, much of the public thought that she was being a snob towards the working class with her tweet. Because the appearance of snobbery reflected poorly on her boss, Ed Milliband of the Labour Party, during a difficult election season, the pressure from the public’s rush to judgment was too great too quickly. Just as the audience bears responsibility not to rush to judgment, the political actors need to exercise greater judgment before casually tweeting, or engaging on any social media platforms for that matter. It is a sad state of affairs that the public complains that politicians have become too cautious and rehearsed, but the negative, collective voices on social media lie in wait for any missteps. Therefore, it is understandable that politicians would need to exhibit caution. Politicians need to be discerning about the messages they want to convey with a full understanding of how social media platforms work. Honestly, this is true of any medium of communication. Before the Internet, people used telephone conversations differently than they would letter writing. I can remember as a child, my mother told me not to write anything down in a note that I passed to a friend that I wouldn’t want shared with a larger circle of people. Sensitive information was saved for telephone calls or face-to-face conversations – even I knew that as a young child. Like the rest of us, politicians need to understand that if we just blather on incessantly on social media without exercising the deliberation required to communicate the important messages to the public, mistakes will happen. Sometimes in our own private lives, these mistakes are small and we can breathe a sigh of relief when they slip past the notice of our social circles. But when you are in the public eye, these mistakes will inevitably be caught, and you could wake up one morning a shadow attorney general and go to sleep that very evening, out of a job.

I intended to write this blog about the difficulties that people encounter on Thanksgiving when faced with discussing politics with their relatives.  It appears things have gotten so dire in this regard that there was an article in the New York Times that was intended to be humorous, but the idea that crisis negotiators could offer some valuable advice on the tactics one would need to deal with political conversation amongst relatives didn’t seem so far-fetched.  I thought I would come up with a cute top five list of advice to share on how to navigate the mine-filled terrain that is the political Thanksgiving conversation with the relative at the polar opposite end of the political spectrum.  But then I read an article that described the Twitter “conversation” (and I use the term in the loosest possible sense) that has exploded over the past few days about the tragic situation erupting in Ferguson, Missouri.  I encourage you to read it – there is a striking graphic that depicts the great divide that exists in the conversation between liberal and conservative people on Twitter when it comes to sharing opinions on the Ferguson decision.  This graphic reveals that there is very little communication occurring between people holding differing opinions on the decision, further illustrating the siloing that often occurs in social media.

I thought I would advise you to avoid political conversations whenever possible in the interest of family harmony, thinking “What could possibly be gained by talking past each other?”  Instead, I humbly offer the following advice: to begin with, do avoid the political conversation during Thanksgiving dinner.  After all, everyone should have the opportunity to have a stress free dinner in the interest of family harmony and the promotion of good digestion.  But after dinner, I would encourage all of us to ask each other some questions.  Pose questions about Ferguson, Obamacare, immigration, or whatever issue you feel is worth raising. And then listen to what your relative with the polar opposite opinion has to say.  You might find their opinion to be crazy, you might question their news sources, or perhaps you might find you both have some questions left unanswered that you could explore together.  You could both realize that you don’t have all of the answers – maybe you could at least agree on what questions remain unanswered.  Maybe it would be some small victory for both you and your relative to realize that there is something left to be discovered; some piece of evidence remaining to be mulled over.  And maybe in that moment, you could both realize that there is some value in searching further for more information and in keeping the conversation going.

I came across an article last week about the Arizona race for governor that shows how success on social media does not necessarily translate into an electoral victory.  The Democrat in the race, Fred DuVal, had 30,425 fans of his Facebook page, whereas the Republican, Doug Ducey, had 18,866 fans of his Facebook page.  Yet Ducey decisively beat DuVal, 53.6% to 41.5%. There are many stories of the reverse being true, particularly the legendary Obama campaign of 2008, but to what extent do one’s social media fans take a break from the liking and start voting in an election?

Deciphering how social media support affects voting can be a hot mess – even if you can get a solid handle on how the last election went, the ever changing variables of the electorate (age, gender, religion, ethnicity, income, Internet access, etc.) can make such understanding fleeting.  One of the greatest obstacles to grasping this link is attempting to understand what social media support itself means.  It is difficult to measure the depth of support that a person’s social media engagement represents.  An activist who participates in get-out-the-vote efforts and literature drops in neighborhoods may look identical on a candidate’s social media platform to a slacktivist who follows and comments on the same platform but does not participate in politics beyond the confines of the Internet.  But clearly the level of commitment of these two people are on differing planes, and it would appear that the activist would be more likely to go to their polling place and cast their ballot than the slacktivist.  Perhaps with more extensive academic research coupled with technological advances to measure the more varied and complicated levels of a person’s support, we can better understand the real meaning behind participation on the social media platforms of political candidates.

But in the interim, it is wise to recognize there is no solid equivalency between social media fandom and vote counts at the ballot box.  Social media is not the magic elixir of victory – it remains one of many tools that candidates use to connect with constituents and motivate them to vote.

In an effort to procure relevant content on my social media platforms, I spent the past week mining the Internet for articles on the use of social media in US Election 2014. One would think that with the election last Tuesday (November 4^th), surely there would be plenty of articles on the use of political social media to populate my Twitter feed and Facebook page.  This task was not so easy, and I have to say that my reaction was layered.  At first, I thought it was very odd that there weren’t more articles, but as I began to consider why this may be the case, I developed a few theories:

1. Midterm elections garner significantly less voter participation than presidential elections, so it stands to follow that the number of articles about social media and Election 2014 would not be as plentiful as the coverage was in Election 2012;
2. Midterm elections produce a more fractured climate – the “top” races are at the state level for governor and US senate. In this environment, it becomes much more difficult and cumbersome to study social media coverage in each state with elections; as a result, it becomes complicated to write an article about political social media in general on a national scale. Articles on social media on the more local, state level were written, but these were more like case studies than overall assessments of social media usage in politics;
3. Getting the metrics that are involved in an entire campaign may be better suited for researchers than journalists, as it can be a daunting undertaking. It is easier to have more anecdotal accounts of social media participation with more narrow applications than it is to do an exhaustive study with wider reaching implications.

Academics, journalists, political practitioners and interested citizens have vastly unexplored territory to cover to better understand the role of social media in politics. With political participation by the electorate at such lows in contrast with the opportunities for unprecedented levels of political communication enabled by social media, the challenge remains: how do we get citizens who express their political opinions on social media to voice their opinions where they have the authentic power of a registered vote – the ballot box?

Welcome to the Federalist Tensions blog! The launch of this site is the result of my work on a project for a course I am taking in the Master of Arts in Emerging Media Program at Loyola University Maryland. My research focus for this program has been the role of social media in political communication. Although social media has provided citizens with opportunities for expanding their participation in the political process by providing the means to communicate directly with people in power and with their fellow citizens, issues have arisen. The emergence of social media onto the political scene presents dilemmas for political representatives and organizations which, by their very nature, prefer traditional broadcast media due to their preferences to control the conversation to further their aims; they are still learning to navigate the challenges of engaging in a dialogue with their constituencies.

Over the past year that I have been in this graduate program, the question of “how much is too much communication/democracy” in the political realm has fueled my research projects in the Emerging Media program. Not surprisingly, I have observed a climate of caution and trepidation on social media by an organization I have been studying in the field of political communication. Political office holders and organizations want to have citizen participation to gain their support, but they do not necessarily want to deal with the consequences of the citizenry’s amplified, engaged voices or to lose too much control over the content of their messaging.  The research projects I have completed so far have just begun to scratch the surface of the complexities and challenges these struggles pose for organizations. I have yet to explore the flip side of this coin – how citizens use social media to create platforms from which they can not only voice their opinions, but also organize outside of traditional institutions to exercise their political capital as a check on those institutions.

This website, Federalist Tensions, seeks to improve political communications to grow stronger democracies. Its platforms will serve to foster a non-partisan dialogue with academics, political practitioners and interested citizens about the role of social media in both traditional political organizations and external political entities. By contributing to the improvement of political communications using social media in the most efficient and effective manner, Federalist Tensions will grow to be a resource for all those motivated to enhance their own political social media strategies.

That said, today is November 4^th – Election Day.  As valuable as political communication on social media may be, it is no substitute for the act of voting.  So I encourage you to exercise your power to vote today, and I welcome you to join this community as we work together to find better ways of communicating to improve our political climate.