Using Social Networking and Social Media for Politics in the Midwest

Adam Sichko of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a good piece on candidates’ use of MySpace, Facebook and social media in races in Missouri, Illinois and Ohio, focusing on Missouri. Some details: Missouri Senator Jim Talent has a Facebook profile, his opponent Claire McCaskill has a supporter-created Facebook profile rather than a campaign-created one, and both make good use of video on their own campaign sites. None of the major-party Missouri congressional candidates has a campaign social networking profile at all, but the article looks in a little detail at an Ohio congressman’s and a Missouri state senatorial candidate’s social media outreach.

The article makes the appropriate points about social networking sites’ potential for reaching new supporters, YouTube’s ability to make your gaffes last forever (hello, macaca) and the difficulty of maintaining message control when supporters are creating content. Nice quote from Julie Barko Germany, Person to Person to Person editor and IPDI deputy director.

– cpd