FDR Won with Radio. JFK won with TV. DJT won with Social Media.
As a first time voter, I cast my Presidential Election ballot early in the morning with no line ahead of me. As a social media manager at Content Carnivores, I couldn’t just ignore it during the day, but held off becoming obsessed with the coverage, and started streaming election coverage on my computer and other devices around 7pm. It all went into overload from there. I constantly checked different stats and saw what the pollsters were saying–even as it didn’t seem like anything more than chatter. It was a long, nerve-wracking night for all of us, and social media added a layer of unprecedented opinion. In a time when Twitter and Snapchat were vigorously updating each new candidate burp and fart, inputs from @RealAmericanPublic kept coming in and made us feel like one–as in one big divided country
11/7 Tweets. Pre-Election the sentiment was all LOL and JK. Afterall, this was a reality show, not an election, right?
#ElectionFinalThoughts
#ImVotingBecause
Snapchat filters kept the election upbeat.
11/8: Election day. There were over 75 million election-related tweets on twitter. That more than doubles the Tweets made during the 2012 election.
All predicting polls pointed towards Clinton as the winner. But as I watched the news and monitored the off-network coverage, Clinton was always one step behind Trump. How could the data have been so wrong especially with all this technology we have to help us? People were getting pissed.
The night dragged on until 3am EST. Trump won the presidential election. It was a surprise. We laughed. We cried. Some of us hurled. We went from thinking this was all a joke one year ago to it becoming our reality today.
11/9: Post Election Day. Hashtags on Twitter like, #TheMorningAfter, #NotMyPresident, and #StillWithHer are surfacing. Snapchat Election stories show Trump supporters jumping up and down.
Snapchat Election stories show Trump supporters jumping up and down.
This looks like a divided country, alright. I try to be optimistic about our country’s future. Half of the country has a broken heart. Unity is more important than ever. As Hillary said in her concession speech this morning, “Donald Trump will be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/11/08/election-winner- twitter/93509896/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/08/these-are-the-best-election-tweets/