Politico Podcasters on Biased Twitter: A Political Necessity?

Recent Politico Podcast discussed the value of Twitter in this new age. However, Twitter has a long history of amplifying certain voices more than others.

An episode of Playbook Deep DiveCo-author of the Playbook Eugene DanielsEditor in Chief and Deputy Editor Zack StantonEric Wilson, a Republican strategist for digital strategy and former Andrew Yang campaign manger, was our conversation. Zach Graumann, and Aaron Smith, director of the Pew Research Center’s Datalab, about the impact social media platforms have on campaigns.

Wilson stated that modern social media platforms have become crucial to campaign success. Voters use Facebook and Twitter to voice their opinions.

“We know that most voters are more active on Facebook,” Wilson added. “So what’s happening on Twitter is primarily performative for journalists, influencers, opinion makers and other elected officials that you may need to win over — or politicians — in order to break through on Twitter. The goal is to become the star of the day. So if you’re playing that sort of status game, then that’s the objective, particularly in light of restrictions from Twitter on political advertising.” 

“What social media does is let folks feel like part of a movement that is completely different from the canned talking point that’s clearly been written by 20 people that the candidate has tweeted out,”  Zach Graumann, former campaign manager to Andrew Yang, noted.

However, Wilson emphasized that social media “is not real life.”

“Voters who are deciding elections are not as active on Twitter as the people who are writing about them minute by minute,” he said. “It is not real life in that regard, but it is an important part of the narrative. It is important to clearly define your goals, and the purpose of engaging with Twitter. Twitter is all about telling a story. Make sure some facts or data points are available to people who are your allies on the platform.”

Twitter is a great platform for politically involved users, but it’s infamously censored content by right-of-center people.

MRC Free Speech America Twitter banned former President Donald Trump 625 Times between May 31, 2018, & January 4, 2021. However, Joe Biden wasn’t censored during that same period. Twitter boasted that it had labelled 300,000. tweets in the 2020 election cycle.

Conservatives are being attacked. Contact Twitter at (415) 222-9670 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. Contact us at Media Research Center if you feel your voice has been silencedContact formHelp us to hold Big Tech responsible.