Social media use by Barack Obama

Graph of Obama's follower growth

The @BarackObama account is among the top ten worldwide in both followers and followed accounts.[14][15] The account held the record for following the most people.[16][17] On August 13, 2019, at 14:39 PDT Obama's account overtook Katy Perry to become the most-followed person on Twitter with over 107 million followers.[14][18]

During his 2008 campaign, the account was intermittently the world's most followed. In May 2010 Obama's Twitter account ranked as the fourth most followed account with about 4 million followers.[19] By May 16, 2011, @BarackObama was followed by 7.4 million people, including twenty-eight world leaders.[20] His account became the third account to reach 10 million followers in September 2011.[21]

Twitter was the most popular social media app during and immediately after the 2008 presidential election; studies show that Twitter reached its peak growth rate on its platform between 2007 and 2010.[22]

Obama "using Twitter" on May 24, 2012, in response to hashtagged questions

@BarackObama was launched on March 5, 2007, at 16:08:25.[23] It is his official account, although he also tweeted through @WhiteHouse which is usually used by the presidential administration, while @BarackObama was for his election campaign staff.[24] @WhiteHouse predates the Presidency of Barack Obama, since it was created on April 21, 2007.[25] Following the 2008 election, the Democratic National Committee was believed to have taken over Obama's official Twitter account; in a November 2009 speech, Obama stated "I have never used Twitter," although he had over 2.6 million followers at the time.[26][27] In 2011, the @BarackObama account was stated to be "run by #Obama2012 campaign staff. Tweets from the President are signed -bo."[28] The first Tweet using Obama's initials was posted for Father's Day in 2011 with the message, "Being a father is sometimes my hardest but always my most rewarding job..."[24]

Audience members at the July 6, 2011 Twitter Town hall meeting tweeting questions to Barack Obama

During his presidency, Obama held public forums in which he fielded questions posted on Twitter. On July 6, 2011, he participated in what was billed as "Twitter Presents Townhall @ the White House".[9][29] The event was held in the East Room of the White House and was streamed online. Only written questions on the site about the economy and jobs were accepted for oral response by Obama.[30] His average responses were over 2000 characters long.[31] Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner participated by tweeting "Where are the jobs?" to the hashtag #AskObama, and received a response from President Obama.[32] The event was moderated by Twitter executive Jack Dorsey.[33] Dorsey said afterwards that Twitter received over 110,000 #AskObama-hashtagged tweets.[34] On May 24, 2012, Obama again responded to questions on Twitter about his administration's "Congress to-do list".[10][35]

On July 29, 2011, during the United States debt-ceiling crisis, @BarackObama lost over 40,000 followers when the president urged Americans "to call, email and tweet Congressional leaders to 'keep the pressure on' lawmakers in hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit ahead of an August 2 deadline."[7] During the day, he sent about 100 tweets that included the Twitter accounts of Congressional Republicans.[36] Later in 2011, Obama used Twitter again to try to encourage the people to voice their opinion on legislation when he was attempting to pass the American Jobs Act.[8]

Obama and Jack Dorsey during the July 6, 2011 Twitter town hall meeting

On January 5, 2009, @BarackObama was among several celebrity accounts that were hacked and domain hijacked.[37][38] The hacker phished the password of a Twitter administrator's account, gaining access to other accounts to which he then changed the passwords, and subsequently offered access to accounts upon request at Digital Gangster. The case eventually led to a non-financial settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by Twitter.[39]

On July 4, 2011, Obama was the subject of a death hoax on Twitter when Fox News' Politics Twitter account (@foxnewspolitics) was hacked. The hackers were unfamiliar with Twitter and started their hoax messages with @BarackObama, thus only making the message appear in the Twitter timelines of those following Fox News and the Presidential account. Eventually, the hackers switched to hashtag references, increasing the visibility of their activities.[40] Fox News acknowledged the breach and apologized.[41]

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama and his Republican adversary Mitt Romney were active on Twitter. The Pew Research Center determined that only about 13% of American adults had joined the site at that time. Thus, Twitter's impact on the election was only "one slice of an enormous communication effort". Its impact grew significantly that as many tweets were sent in 8 minutes as were sent on all of Election Day 2008.[13] As of May 25, 2010, 48% of Obama's followers resided outside of the United States and 47% were female. At that time, the top five industries in which his followers were employed were

1. Hospitality,
2. Law,
3. Marketing/Public Relations,
4. Fashion and
5. Education.[42]

Measuring social influence has become a new consulting career opportunity.[43] According to discussants on the PBS NewsHour, Obama had 5,000 times as much social media influence as Romney;[44] however, according to The Hill, Obama only had 12 times as much social media influence.[45]

The Change in Campaigns

Since Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to use social media, he helped the immense realization that social media can greatly help one's campaign. Upon this realization social media contributed to helping candidates raise money for their campaigns. Previously, much of the resources that candidates utilized came from their financial reserves. In an article written by Pinar Yildirim of the University of Pennsylvania, emphasizes on the large amounts of money that are spent on campaigns and on advertising alone. Mike Bloomberg is introduced as an example as he contributed more than half of his campaign funds towards his advertising. Social Media has been shown to impact funds gained by candidates directly. These candidates who committed to social media shown to gain small percentages of what they would earn in a two-year time.[46]

The official website of Obama is barackobama.com. It is run by Chris Hughes, one of the three co-founders of Facebook, and has been described as a "sort of social network".[47] Steve Spinner, a member of Obama's National Finance Committee, says that while previous campaigns have used the internet, none had yet taken full advantage of social networking features.[47] The website included online tools that allowed members to identify neighbors that the Obama campaign thought might be potential backers and then report back on any resulting conversations.[48] By taking full advantage of social networking features, Obama would have saved over a hundred million dollars of TV ad buying by using social media to spread his message. This also meant that Barack Obama did have not rely on big tickets donations and instead could rely on micro-donations of hundreds of thousands of supporters.[49]

Members of the site could also create blogs, post photos, and form groups through the website,[48] but each member must publish a limited biographical profile and no more than one photo.[50] According to Hughes, during the 2008 campaign, over two million accounts were created for the website to "organize their local communities on behalf of Barack Obama".[48][50] He estimates that more than 200,000 events were organised through the website.[48] Moreover, 400,000 articles were written in blogs. Four hundred thousand videos that supported Obama were posted on YouTube via the official website. Thirty-five thousand volunteer groups were created. 70,000 people spent thirty million dollars on their fundraising webpages. In the final four days of the 2008 campaign, three million phone calls were made through the website's internet virtual phone.[50]

President Barack Obama made a surprise half-hour visit to the social news website Reddit on August 29, 2012. Using an Ask Me Anything (AMA) format, the President garnered 3.8 million page views on the first page of his self-post. Users left 22,000 comments and questions for the President,[51] 10 of which he answered. The questions' topics included more serious topics, from the most difficult decision made during his first term to a plan to end the corruption of money in politics. Some included a more lighthearted focus, like the recipe for the White House beer.

In response to Obama's use of Reddit, many noted bypassing generally established mainstream media channels during the 2012 campaign in favor of less-filtered and closer forms of communication.[52] When asked why Obama logged on to Reddit, one campaign official responded "Because a whole bunch of our turnout targets were on Reddit."[53] By using a newer, underused media channel like Reddit, Obama's campaign acknowledged a largely unaddressed demographic of unlikely voters on social internet boards.