Skip to Content
Uncategorized

The Tweeting of the President

A new social media analytics effort points toward the White House.
August 21, 2012

Bluefin Labs, a social media analytics company that attempts to glean meaning from tweets about TV, is now expanding beyond sitcoms, sports, and shaving ads and attempting to analyze how people are reacting to the presidential candidates. It plans to apply its techniques when more of the national presidential TV ads air (to date, most advertisements have been in local markets, making analysis difficult because the location of tweeters is usually not available, the company says), and to analyze reactions to the conventions.

“We are going to be doing something nobody has ever done—looking at campaign TV ads and people responding to them on social media as they air,” says William Powers, director of the new effort, called The Crowdwire.

Bluefin’s effort is aimed mainly at providing story fodder and insights to the news media; it is not under contract to any party or campaign, the company says. Bluefin, a startup that grew out of research at MIT, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts (see “A Social Media Decoder”).

It’s not yet clear that Twitter analytics provides actionable information or strategic insights to campaigns, says J.D. Schlough, founder of Well & Lighthouse, a Democratic political strategist firm in Washington, DC. For one thing, it’s not always clear how the people tweeting relate to the general population, or, more important, to the crucial registered swing voters in swing states. And regardless of what people tweet, it’s hard to determine whether someone has been swayed by any particular message enough to influence their vote, he says.

The Bluefin tool joins the Twitter Political Index, a tool that takes a daily measurement of sentiment toward Mitt Romney and President Obama as expressed on Twitter. That tool is based on a calculation from another analytics firm, Topsy, that analyzes tweets mentioning either of the candidates’ last names or Twitter accounts—@barackobama or  @mittromney—and gives a daily sentiment score between 0 and100.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI

The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models. 

Rogue superintelligence and merging with machines: Inside the mind of OpenAI’s chief scientist

An exclusive conversation with Ilya Sutskever on his fears for the future of AI and why they’ve made him change the focus of his life’s work.

Data analytics reveal real business value

Sophisticated analytics tools mine insights from data, optimizing operational processes across the enterprise.

Driving companywide efficiencies with AI

Advanced AI and ML capabilities revolutionize how administrative and operations tasks are done.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.