Posts Tagged ‘midterm elections’

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released the results of a study titled Parsing Election Day Media — How the Midterms Message Varied By Platform, examining coverage of Tuesday’s elections by various media. Following are the findings for bloggers and Twitter:

Bloggers offered a more mixed election verdict than much of the rest of the media. While the themes of GOP and Tea Party victories accounted for about 42 percent of the conversation, the competing idea of a mixed result or a setback for the Tea Party accounted for about one-quarter of the discussion. And the second-biggest election theme among bloggers (at 18 percent) was allegations of, and concerns about, possible voter fraud.

Twitter users demonstrated their platform’s function as an organizing and galvanizing tool. About two-thirds (64 percent) of the Twitter conversation monitored by PEJ focused on calls to action, on encouraging people to vote. And most of that (41 percent) came in the form of nonpartisan appeals. One other theme to emerge on Twitter was that people were tired of what they perceived as a nasty and negative campaign season (9 percent).

PEJ used technology from social-analytics firm Crimson Hexagon.

CNN released its Election Day statistics for CNN.com via Omniture and for CNN Mobile via Bango.

CNN.com tallied nearly 80 million page views Tuesday, its highest-trafficked day since July 7, 2009, the day of the memorial service for Michael Jackson. Traffic was up 61 percent compared with the prior-four-week average and 10 percent over the day of the rescue of the Chilean miners.

Unique visitors to CNN.com were up 26 percent versus the prior-four-week average and 10 percent versus numbers for the 2006 midterm Election Day, totaling more than 11.2 million. Nearly 250,000 live videos were viewed, up fourfold from the prior-four-week average.

CNN Politics nearly doubled its prior-four-week average, with more than 25 million page views, and blog CNN Political Ticker saw a 62 percent gain, collecting more than 2 million views.

CNN Mobile welcomed more than 2.2 million unique visitors Tuesday, up 30 percent compared with the prior-four-week average, and mobile page views were up 42 percent to 7.3 million.

msnbc.com plans to embed itself into social-media users’ tracking of Tuesday’s midterm election results, announcing that its live stream of NBC News’ coverage from 9 p.m.-3 a.m. (ET) can be embedded and shared on both Facebook and Twitter, the latter marking the first time live election coverage will ever be embedded on the microblogging service.

The embedded video player can be viewed and shared with friends and followers. A Decision 2010 widget is also available, and the cable network said Twitter users can follow @NBCNews and the hashtag #Decision2010.

And viewers can join the election conversation, share pictures and video, monitor candidates’ Tweets, live chat, and be included in hashtag art via the Decision 2010 Web page or Facebook.

CBS News will begin live-streaming results from Tuesday’s midterm elections on its YouTube channel at 9 p.m. ET as part of its partnership with the video site and its parent, Google.

A Google Moderator session is also being held on the CBS News YouTube channel, whereby users can submit comments and questions, with the top-voted content possibly appearing on-air.

As part of the partnership between CBS News, Google, and YouTube, the network has already been highlighting election trends mined from data from the search engine and the video site, as well as keeping tabs on Google Trends and Insights for Search.

Ramya Raghavan of YouTube News and Politics posted on the YouTube Blog that nine of the top 10 searches on Google thus far Tuesday are related to the elections.

Jodi Olson of Twitter corporate communications published a post on the Twitter Blog about how to use the social network to follow Tuesday’s midterm elections. From Olson’s post:

Tomorrow the balance of power in both houses of Congress is up for grabs, as is control of more than one-half of the nation’s gubernatorial seats. Many of the races are still too close to call, and debates are raging about how the 2010 midterm elections will change the country. This is also the first Election Day you’ll be able to follow in its entirety — via text and video — on Twitter.com.

We’re rounded up some illuminating accounts and coverage below. But remember: None of this matters if you don’t vote.

Follow different sides of the conversation by checking out Twitter feeds from the Democrats (@thedemocrats), the Republicans (@gopconference), the Tea Party (@TPPatriots), and the Libertarians (@LPNational). @CSPAN has also compiled comprehensive lists of all the House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates on Twitter.

Our @twittermedia team is working with top media outlets to integrate Tweets into their election coverage — and to bring that coverage onto Twitter.com.

Read more

The Wall Street Journal will present six hours of live video coverage of the midterm elections online on Election Day Tuesday, with its Campaign Journal to be hosted from the newspaper’s headquarters in New York by assistant managing editor and executive Washington editor Gerald F. Seib; deputy managing editor and executive editor, online Alan Murray; and deputy editor-in-chief Gerard Baker.

Campaign Journal, which will begin at 8 p.m. ET, will offer real-time news and analysis, live reports from key race locations (via iPhone video, Skype, and LiveU), interactive maps, and features.

Editorial page assistant editor James Freeman and editorial board member Jason L. Riley will also provide video updates during the last 10 minutes of each hour, along with commentary from editorial page editor Paul Gigot, Potomac Watch columnist Kimberley A. Strassel, and WSJ.com columnist John Fund.

In addition to Campaign Journal, the homepage will feature real-time breaking news updates, analysis from WSJ reporters and editors, and an interactive map to help users keep track of key races and overall results.

And the WSJ for iPad app will integrate all of the election coverage, boasting an interactive, touch-controlled map.

BBC World News America is turning its focus to immigrant candidates in the upcoming midterm elections, announcing that it will profile three of them on its Web site this week.

The profiles will feature video, text, slide shows, issue overviews, and interviews with the candidates, voters, and political analysts. The candidates’ chances of winning will be evaluated, as will the effects of the record number of immigrant candidates running for election in 2010.

Its profile of Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.) debuted Tuesday. Cao is a Vietnamese immigrant running for re-election in a mostly African-American district in New Orleans.

Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez (D-Texas) will be profiled Thursday, and the Rodriguez profile will also air on BBC World News America at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Rodriguez, from Mexico, is facing a tough race from Republican challenger Francisco Canseco.

Another Vietnamese immigrant is the subject of Friday’s profile: Van Tran, a Republican taking on incumbent Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) in a mostly Vietnamese-American district.

ABC News will live-stream its election-night coverage Nov. 2 on Facebook starting at 8 p.m. ET, including some reporting from the social network’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., reports Caitlin Fitzsimmons of sister blog All Facebook.

In addition, Facebook will solicit members from key congressional districts to explore issues and interact with news broadcasts on the network, with questions, comments, and opinions, as well as questions for local debates, according to All Facebook.

World News anchor Diane Sawyer and chief political correspondent and Good Morning America co-anchor George Stephanopoulos will lead ABC News’ coverage of the midterm elections.

Followers of the midterm elections who are having trouble telling their blue from their red can rest easy: Google teamed up with political analysts The Cook Political Report, The Rothenberg Political Report, CQ Politics, and RealClearPolitics to combine all of their projections on one map, available here.

Google Maps product marketing manager Jesse Friedman posted on the Google Blog:

With the midterm elections in the United States just six weeks away, everyone is wondering how the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats will shake out after Nov. 2. Although more than 500 seats will be decided in House, Senate, and Governor races, the current tallies are so close that individual races are receiving great scrutiny: You’ll find several sources providing estimations for how each race is leaning.

The map initially loads with states shaded according to one of the sources’ ratings of the Senate race; click the links on the left to switch to House or Governor races, or to switch sources. To compare the ratings head-to-head, click a given state or district, and you’ll see ratings from each source displayed. We refresh the data daily based on the latest ratings, so come back as the races develop. If you would like to put this map in your own Web site, you can embed it as a gadget and grab the code here.

With the crucial midterm elections coming up in less than two months, The New York Times points out that when researching candidates on the Web, things aren’t always what they seem, as URLs that contain candidates’ names often point users to Web sites created by their opponents, or even out-of-state members of the rival party.

The Times reports that BobMenendez.com does not bring Web surfers to a site for Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), but to Sharon Angle for U.S. Senate, a page for the campaign of Sharon Angle, who is running for Senate in Nevada as a Republican. One of the main uses of the site is to discredit Democrats.

Similarly, as reported by the Times, bradellsworth.org is not pro-Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.), but instead linked to Bad for Indiana, on which the state Republican Party claims that Ellsworth is a “reliable rubber stamp for liberal policies,” among other things.

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse told the Times fewer than 50 percent of senators and some 40 percent of representatives own their “fullname.com” domain names, and the numbers are 32 percent and 22 percent, respectively, for “fullname.org,” and president Josh Bourne told the Times, “I’ve been amazed on how many congressmen don’t have the same sense of brand as businesses have.”

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