Political pundits and consultants are no doubt closely studying the effects of social media and its many forms of influence on this year's campaigns. Though the Obama campaign used social media pretty effectively in 2008, and seems to be continuing to do so this year, the explosion of options has brought about some intense study of what works and what doesn't. But figuring how and where to target potential voters is an ongoing study as the social media landscape changes from day-to-day.
So here is another one of those quirkly little studies which tracks social media trends and those likely to use different programs. Another study that seems to confirm that there are indeed patterns in our daily social media engagement that are likely indicators of patterns in our politics ... down to our buying and social gaming habits.
This study, taken on by by Engage, shows the results of "countless 'Likes' from thousands of users of Trendsetter," their platform that ties together consumer preferences, polling and social media data. Their conclusions are pretty interesting as they mapped the politics of the social web, claiming to have gleaned political partisanship based on various, but particular, internet inter-action factors. "Using predictive modeling of Facebook likes, we tied political preferences and engagement to one’s choice of social media," they created a bubble graph showing the programs most likely left and right of center and the likely users and voters based on their data gathering.
In summary, Obama supporters are more likely to be involved with Angry Birds, Tumblr, Etsy, Zappos and get their music from Spotify. Romney supporters will be found amongst those in Farmville, Pinterest, Amazon and e-Bay. They get their music from Pandora.
I play lots of Words with Friends ... I wonder how that figures into this equation?
Media Bistro/AllTwitter has taken this information and presented an even more detailed summary with their conclusions, so check it out, too.
What do you think your social media habits say about your political leanings?
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