Social Media and the Presidential Race

For our last class of the semester, we discussed what we learned about social media and its impacts on politics during this semester. Professor Jeff South asked the class to come up with five major issues we have learned or taken away from this course. 

“VCU Votes” set up a get-out-the-vote campaign in the weeks leading up to election day, but our efforts didn’t stop there. All of our students were busy and engaged on Nov. 6.

NBC 12 anchor and reporter Ryan Nobles came to our class on Nov. 20 to discuss the emergence of Virginia as a swing state and the role of social media in the presidential race. He also gave insights into his one-on-one interviews with the president and his challenger.

For the last assignment in our class, you have to create a profile on the business network LinkedIn. You need to develop a professional profile and achieve at least a 80-90% completion rate on your account. You need to include information on your current position (VCU or internship/job) and location, your past jobs, your education, [...]

Bill Adair, founder and editor of the Pulitzer Prize winning site PolitiFact.com, spoke to our class via Skype on Nov. 13 and talked about the importance and impact political fact checking has had on politicians.

Two days after Election Day 2012, VCU journalism student Samra Khawaja spoke to our class via Skype about her role in broadcasting the results of the election as an intern for CNN.

VCU’s School of World Studies held a student research conference on Nov. 9 and our “Social Media and the Presidential Race” class had the opportunity to give an hour-long panel presentation on what we have been studying this semester. We touched on the role of social media on a number of topics including the Occupy [...]

Here are some instructions for our interviewing project on Election Day on Nov. 6.

Speaking to our class via Skype, Republican strategist Vincent Harris said he believes social media will have a big impact in this year’s presidential race and other elections.

Dr. Bob Holsworth visited our Social Media and the Presidential Race class last Thursday to provide insights on the presidential election. The respected political analyst and consultant discussed the “Momentum Theory” and the “Stability Theory,” which support winning election outcomes for Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama respectively.