Obama Vs. Romney Via Twitter

The 2012 presidential race is just around the corner, and the politics have been heating up lately. Incumbent Barack Obama will face off against the Republican Party candidate, yet to be determined. We have decided to focus on Mitt Romney as the likely candidate for the Republican Party in order to analyze the politics of the presidential race from the perspectives of each candidate. In order to accomplish this, we analyze the politics of representation through the Twitter pages of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama by comparing and contrasting their content and form.

Twitter is an interesting medium to analyze for many reasons. The immediacy of Twitter is baffling. Witnesses of a particular incident often tweet about an incident or event before the media can even arrive on scene to report on the incident. At the same time, this leaves much up for debate about the reliability of Twitter as a news source. Nonetheless, many people now use Twitter as their main form of news, the small blurbs give them enough to feel moderately educated about the world, but not enough to interrupt their busy lives. The structure of the character limit on Twitter also forces users to choose their words carefully in order for them to adequately describe a situation in few words. Every single word on Twitter is chosen for a reason, there are no wasted words. If a word is unnecessary, often a Twitter user will simply not add that word, even if it is generally considered necessary in formal writing.

Mitt Romney’s campaign strategy has been two-fold as displayed on his Twitter account. He spends the majority of his Twitter posts talking about Barack Obama’s “failed leadership” and the remaining posts are about how he feels he could do better, posting his own plans for policy changes. His use of rhetoric obviously demonstrates his campaign strategy. A typical post from Mitt Romney reads something like, “Today’s unemployment report reflects a failed economic policy by a president who is looking for someone to blame.” This is quite a hefty statement, and we must assume that every word was chosen specifically for its weight, due to Twitter’s word count limitations. Obviously, he is referring to Barack Obama when he talks about a “president who is looking for someone to blame.” He blatantly states that Obama has already failed as president because of poor economic policy. It doesn’t take an expert to read the slant and bias in such weighty accusations. There also seems to be no need for Romney to back up these accusations with facts. Perhaps he believes that the people who have chosen to follow him on Twitter trust that he is telling the truth. Or at least their version of the “truth”. According to our investigation of Hegelian/Rankean history, there is no such thing as “truth:” just versions of the truth. His goal is to make voters think Obama is incompetent and he hopes that people will adopt his message as their own.

In another tweet, Romney states: “@BarackObama’s Magical Misery Tour chugs along. Reject his failed leadership & get your limited edition hat.” This is pure cultural studies gold. He calls out Obama directly, tagging him in the post (another function of Twitter’s magic.) Next, he refers his Midwest tour of America as the “Magical Misery Tour,” which is a reference to The Beatle’s Magical Mystery Tour in 1967. In effect, reducing his political tour to a reference to the biggest pop culture sensation in the 1960’s implies that Barack Obama is nothing more than a political celebrity. Next is the call to action, “reject his failed leadership.” The term “reject” implies that there is a higher standard than Barack is performing at. After that, he suggests that you “get your limited edition hat,” which is obviously the best phrase in this tweet. This is both hilarious and brilliant. On the web page where they sell the hats, the buyer is required to make a campaign contribution in order to receive a hat. That’s a pretty great deal for Romney. He gets revenue to fund his campaign and at the same time spread his political propaganda with cheeky hats.

A later tweet reads, “I agree with @RepPaulRyan - @BarackObama’s opted for ‘divisive rhetoric.’ His cynical politics have caused people to lose faith in him.” Mitt Romney chooses the word “rhetoric” for a reason. He wants the reader to believe that Barack is essentially lying to his constituents, because the term “rhetoric” implies that there is a heavy political spin and a small amount of truth. The fact that Romney accuses Barack of using “divisive rhetoric” is rhetoric in and of itself. The next sentence proves this, when he calls him a cynical politician. I may be wrong, but someone who has gotten this far in a presidential campaign must be a politician of some sort, so Mitt Romney may not be a “cynical” politician, but he’s a politician nonetheless.

The politics of representation are blatant in Romney’s tweets. The only regulation he receives is self-regulation. He receives reader regulation in the form of flak, so he can’t post anything too outrageous, or he won’t get many votes. However, he has total control in how he paints himself. He can select for stories that make him look good and Obama look bad, and he doesn’t need to pretend he’s unbiased. He paints Barack as a cynical pop culture fad of a president who needs to be replaced. He spends at least as much time berating Obama as he does advertising himself. Part of his strategy is to make sure that people decide that they are not alright with the way things are going under Obama’s presidency. He needs them to decide that it’s time for a change. With that accomplished, he can much more easily convince them to vote for him instead. However, one thing to consider when analyzing Twitter is the readership. Romney understands that generally the people that choose to follow him on Twitter are already fans of his. People must actively seek out his page and choose to follow him in order to see his tweets on their pages. Followers of Romney are generally conservative, with some moderates sprinkled in. So this begs the question, what is the true strategy behind his current method of attacking Obama? I don’t have an answer for this one. He seems to be rallying the voters for a tough campaign.

Obama’s campaign strategy seems very different from Romney’s strategy, if their Twitter pages give us any indication. A typical post by Barack reads, “Karlene, a recent college grad, hopes that student loan reforms will make things easier on her and her family…”. Tweets have a limit of one hundred and forty letters per ‘tweet’. Obama and his staff have a very limited amount of information they can post to Twitter, which means they have to choose their words extremely carefully, which can often allow for a narrow perspective on events and comments of his campaign. Often he will put links of articles and videos into almost every tweet because of Twitter’s limitations. Because Twitter is structured as a column with the author’s most recent tweets first, it is easier to analyze patterns in Obama’s texts. Pictures of the President hugging and shaking hands with the average folk are displayed on side bars for easy viewing. His Twitter page itself is mostly colored the calming light blue of his main campaign color. On the side of every twitter page is the number of followers, following, and tweets an account has.

Barack Obama is appealing to bodies of the average American, as seen in his coverage of both the presidential election and current events throughout the world. His constant references and links to ‘average’ people supporting his bills appeal to the bulk of moderate voters. “Is it a jobs plan? This white house infographic helps you figure it out”. He calls on the reason of voters, making them feel intelligent for not buying into the rhetoric and fanatics of the conservative party. His portrayal of the elections represents his politics as a president. As with any politician’s web page, Obama’s Twitter asks readers to take a position (his position) on current political issues by only displaying information and support related to his policies.

Another silent factor in this campaign is the issue of race. Richard Dyer in his article White states, “The invisibility of whiteness as a racial position in white (which is to say dominant) discourse is of a piece with its obliquity…In fact for most of the time white people speak nothing but white people, it’s just that we couch it in terms of ‘people’ in general.” Neither candidate mentions Obama’s or Romney’s race, but some voters are swayed solely on racial background. Obama is very distinctly categorized as being black but Romney is not categorized as being white because his race is not abnormal for a presidential candidate. The lack of comment on race is a comment in and of itself. This is a stark contrast to his previous campaign, when everyone was wondering if Obama would be the first black president. Now that we’ve had our first black president, it’s not really worth mentioning that he would also be our first two-term black president.

Obama’s portrayal of the 2012 election is of hope and unity of the American people. He and his team report on the many people who support him and his plans for the future of the country. He wants to be reelected, obviously, so it is in his best interest to only advertise the positive feedback he receives. If Barack Obama’s Twitter page was the only media which an individual watched the elections progress, they would receive an extremely limited amount of knowledge. Obama, unlike the conservatives, doesn’t bash the opposing politicians. He represents himself as being above the other candidates by purposefully avoiding name-calling, creating an image of a mature adult next to hysterical toddlers.

The President often repeats patterns of tweets; he uses examples of people who support him and his plans as an indirect response to Mit Romneys jabs, and he gives links to information on his policies. We learn about the positive qualities from his links but not the negatives nor the policies of other politicians. Twitter allows for too few letters for Obama’s team to give full information, so history is skewed to only be represented by the President’s followers and policies.

In conclusion, by analyzing the language and structure used on the Twitter pages of politicians Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, we can analyze their campaign strategy through politics of representation. Mitt Romney’s campaign strategy focuses primarily on pointing out the flaws in Obama’s presidency and commenting on how he would change Obama’s “failed” policies. Obama chooses to focus his efforts in making himself appear as strong as possible, and presents himself as “above” all of the negativity of campaign politics. These representations display their ideological differences and goals. They represent versions of the truth, bias, and motive. Ultimately, this seems to be the mode of operation in politics these days.

By Krysta Kaner and Alanna Norton