According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of the users on this platform see political or social content. If you use the platform regularly, you will come across political content in your timeline. Why is Twitter in politics, and why do politicians, activists, and political parties use this platform regularly?
Does this social media channel impact campaigns, policies, public discourse, and opinions?
Keep reading to find answers to these questions and learn why politics thrives on this platform!
Table of Contents
Role of Twitter in Politics: 4 Reasons Why X Is Popular in This Sphere
What is the role of Twitter in politics? After all, every politician and political party is active on this platform. So, why do they primarily use this social media channel? Here are four reasons that explain the popularity of politics in Twitter.
1. Political Figures and Parties Can Engage With Voters Directly and Vice Versa
Social media platforms like X, formerly Twitter, changed how people and political parties communicate. These social networks opened new avenues for politicians to reach out to voters and vice versa.
Candidates and public figures no longer have to rely solely on traditional media to communicate their viewpoints and policies. They can also rely on Twitter, which acts as their megaphone and ensures their messages reach the right voter base.
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney used this platform for their political campaigns during the 2012 presidential elections. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor, announced his plans to run for the 2024 U.S. presidential elections via Twitter Spaces.
At the same time, the public can also use this platform to contact politicians and political parties. They can raise their concerns, participate in debates, and ask questions directly.
2. Twitter Allows Political Figures To Understand and Shape Public Opinions
According to the Pew Research Center, one-third of the posts from U.S. Twitter, aka X, users are about politics. Also, people use X to share their political opinions, especially during election season.
With the help of Twitter-based social listening tools, political leaders can learn about their voter base’s real feelings. How is this possible?
Third-party services offer sentiment analysis by reviewing thousands of political tweets. This helps them understand what’s working for them and what’s affecting their popularity.
Candidates can use what they learn through these tools to improve the effectiveness of their campaigns. Controlling the narrative allows them to shape public opinions.
For example, parties can point out flaws in their opposition’s policies and raise awareness among voters to sway their opinions.
3. X Helps Amplify Political Activism and Campaigns
Twitter and politics go hand in hand because it amplifies activism movements and campaigns. There are several reasons why specific messages go viral. For instance, the platform makes sharing your favorite tweets with others easy.
When a political movement resonates with the audience, they will repost, aka retweet, the message to their followers. As a result, it helps raise awareness about the cause.
At the same time, the platform’s algorithm amplifies such posts due to high engagement levels. It shows the tweets to people with similar interests, which can have a snowball effect. These movements can also appear as Twitter trends, further increasing the campaign’s reach.
Politicians and activists no longer need to go door to door to spread their message. They can tweet their opinions, and their supporters will share these tweets to spread the word.
4. Politicians Can Get Their Message Across to the Right Voter Base
Twitter offers several tools for politicians to reach the right voter base. For example, in 2023, the platform removed the restriction on political ads and banned such advertisements in 2019.
This allows political parties to run ads that reach a specific audience. The platform has the following targeting features:
- Interest
- Location
- Keywords
- Gender
- Operating systems
- Conversation topics
This way, they can ensure their campaigns are visible to certain groups.
Twitter, or X Analytics, offers political parties data about their tweets and ads. This dashboard can show various performance metrics. It displays the demographic data of their audience. Several third-party analytics tools offer comprehensive information.
For example, they can share fundraiser links in tweets and monitor Twitter Analytics or a third-party dashboard. This shows information like:
- The number of users who see the tweets
- The percentage of people who engage with the links
They can compare this with the amount they raised to improve their strategy on Twitter to get more donations.
Twitter Tools for Politics and Activism: A List of Popular Features
The following sections highlight Twitter tools that help politicians and activists.
1. X Pro, Formerly TweetDeck
X Pro, aka TweetDeck, is popular among power Twitter users for good reasons. It lets political parties manage multiple X accounts from a single dashboard. They can follow conversations among their voter base and monitor rival candidates.
With X Pro, parties can maintain a consistent voice across different profiles. They can also schedule tweets to ensure the posts go live when their voter base is active.
2. X Analytics
X or Twitter Analytics is another powerful feature for politicians and activists. This dashboard tracks user activity on the platform and shares this information as easy-to-understand metrics.
Politicians can see the performance of their advertising campaigns and tweets. This data helps them make changes to reach the right audience and get better results.
3. X Live
Public officials can go live on the social media platform, allowing them to connect with their audience. The platform offers a one-touch option to start a live video from your smartphone. You can also set up professional live sessions.
Politicians use this feature to cover political rallies and other important events. At times, it can also be interviews with journalists and entertainers.
4. X Spaces
X Spaces gives public officials another avenue to engage with their voter base. It is a live audio-only chat where people can join to listen to the speakers. This feature lets up to 13 Twitter users speak with the attendees.
Politicians can gauge interest by seeing how many people tune in to the conversation. It also lets officials host debates, talk to their voters, have Q&A sessions, and more.
5. Gray Check Marks and Verified Organizations
The gray check mark or tick lets people know the account belongs to a government official. Politicians must share their government ID or email address to verify themselves.
Verified Organizations is X’s subscription service for governments and businesses. By joining these programs, public officials get protection against impersonation. This can prevent bad actors from damaging their reputations by spreading misinformation or sharing malicious links.
Officials don’t have to worry about rate limits, as the platform increases the cap for direct messages (DMs) and posts.
6. Media Studio
Media Studio is an all-in-one multimedia organizer for Twitter users. This dashboard makes it easy to manage various media files in a single place. They can add titles, descriptions, and call-to-action links to their campaign videos.
It also lets politicians schedule live broadcasts and tweets, include sources for the live streams, and more. The Insights section shows when a public figure’s followers watch their videos.
Politicians can see their top mentions, hashtags, and posts, making it easier to follow conversations.
What Is Compassion in Politics Twitter?
Compassion in politics Twitter is an organization that started in 2018 to revamp the political sphere. They want to ensure politicians focus on what’s important, i.e., the region’s voters. The London-based group also intends to push for a system where compassion is one of the main values.
The group regularly holds campaigns to increase public awareness and engage in discussions. They have also gotten politicians from different political parties to collaborate and work towards solving common problems. They have also raised awareness about mental health in public policies.
They are active on Twitter and post regularly about politics.
FAQ About X in Politics
In this section, you’ll see answers to questions about politics and X:
How do you use Twitter in political campaign?
You can use Twitter in a political campaign in the following ways:
• Running Twitter ads to raise awareness among the public about bills, policies, and more.
• Posting tweets with relevant hashtags regularly that highlight your or your party’s achievements.
• Hosting X Spaces and going live to connect with your voters.
• Sharing links to resources and information that’s valuable to your audience.
• Responding to users who send direct messages (DMs) or post replies to your tweets.
How is Twitter used in politics?
Politics uses Twitter in the following ways:
• Promote campaigns to raise funds for the political party.
• Communicate with voters via discussions, polls, and more.
• Monitoring political rivals to avoid being blindsided.
• Sharing achievements, opinions, and relevant news.
• Responding to criticism and events.
• Encouraging people to attend political rallies and vote.
Who is the most followed politician in the world?
As of August 2024, Barack Obama is the most followed politician globally, with over 130 million followers. Narendra Modi, India’s 14th Prime Minister, takes the second spot with more than 100 million followers. Donald Trump, the 45th President of the U.S., is third with over 87 million followers.
TweetDelete Doesn’t Let Your Old Posts Derail Your Political Campaign on Twitter
Twitter will continue to have a place in politics, as the platform offers several useful features to politicians. It’s also popular among voters, as they can communicate with public figures. The platform also allows people to stay up-to-date with what politicians do after they come to power.
If you plan to join the government or a public-facing role, you must look at your older posts. Otherwise, people will review your profile, looking for anything damaging your credibility.
Once they find something, they’ll share it with everyone, affecting your reputation permanently. However, Twitter doesn’t have all the features to protect you from your older posts. You can delete tweets, but only one post at a time.
TweetDelete is a popular choice among public figures because removing specific tweets with this tool is easy. The auto-delete task can find the posts you need to delete and remove them permanently. It uses keywords, date ranges, and hashtags as filters to locate certain tweets.
You can use the mass-delete tweets feature\ to remove posts based on date ranges and keywords. There’s the option to delete all your older tweets to ensure you don’t miss anything while cleaning your profile.
Also, using the unlike tweets feature is a good idea, as it deletes your likes from specific tweets. Although X may no longer show your Likes tab, people can share your likes on controversial posts.
Join TweetDelete today to use Twitter in politics without facing any controversies due to your older tweets!
