Posted on 11/03/2013 4:14:11 PM PST by tsowellfan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Besieged by unflattering stories about the launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare program, the White House saw a news report that it wanted to swiftly knock down.
It was from NBC, which said that Obama had overpromised when he said Americans who liked their insurance could keep it, and that the president knew that many people would see their coverage change.
White House officials quickly began firing off a barrage of tweets on Twitter, which has become one of the administration's most potent and relied-upon weapons in trying to shape public opinion and media reports.
Josh Earnest, the principal deputy press secretary to Obama, began the assault with a series of tweets that said the healthcare law did protect Americans against changes in their coverage - unless insurers altered such coverage.
"NBC 'scoop' cites normal turnover in the indiv insurance market," Earnest tweeted to his 9,500 followers on Twitter.
The message was retweeted 166 times, potentially reaching another 164,000 people, according to Twitonomy, a Twitter analytics tool.
During the next hour, White House staffers would tweet and retweet messages about the story more than a dozen times, including tweets directly to the NBC reporter.
The debate continues over whether Obama has been misleading about the healthcare law. But it's clear that in many ways, Twitter has become as important in the West Wing's communications arsenal as daily press briefings...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Which is why we need “citizen journalists” to uncover the truth and then regular joes and janes who will disseminate the information through new channels. If you are finding the public on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and whatever The Next Big Thing will be, that’s where you go.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we do a very good job in the social media platforms we do use. If our goal is to peel away votes from the middle, we cannot act like stark-raving mad lunatics when someone puts up a photo of Michelle Obama and Muppets on FB and asks if she should be encouraging kids to eat vegetables. I saw this scenario just yesterday. When I gently commented on an open page, my FB friends see my post. They also see the posts of everyone else, some of which were not flattering to our side.
The lefty true believers will never change, so there is no point in calling them names. When we do, it confirms to those in the center, whose votes we seek, that we are indeed “Rethuglicans,” “Repukes,” “Teabaggers,” and whatever else the far left dreams up.
Anyway, my two cents :) Thanks for the graphic.
Just little propagandists attempting to manipulate the sheeple with more audacious lies of hope.
I do agree with you that conservatives are rather lacking in the digital age, there are channels to get messages across and we miss them as a whole.
I do go on twitter, I enjoy poking the big mouths spouting their lefty nonsense.
As for that middle ground you mention, I have come to the conclusion that at this stage of the game, those who haven’t chosen a side are just not interested enough to do so. That’s not to suggest that we give them cause to vote with the left, just that catering to their sensitivities is a waste of effort, imho.
Sometimes it may appear our side goes overboard with regards to michelle et al, but c’mon, look at the language of the left and the out right filth they come up with - teabaggers, really? terrorists, hostage takers etc. I have no desire to play nice with the bullies. The squishes in the middle, which btw is a rather small %, can buck up, or suck it up. If they don’t choose a side, they will get left behind.
Come on.Get into the 21st century. As much as the older generation hates new technology, it is the social medium of today. Change can be good if viewed wisely.
Dunno about giving damns, but a lot care.
I agree. We need think tanks that are not afraid to go out there and rumble after they’ve thunk.
I hear ya, and I enjoy a Twitter war as much as the next guy, but those “rather small” percentages can make a difference in close elections. Single women voted overwhelmingly for Obama; plenty of married women did too. They keep getting fed this line of BS from the media that there is a war on women. When they see conservative men behaving badly and boorishly, it just confirms for them the image the media and the Dems are trying to create. These women are looking for security, acceptance, encouragement; some conservatives are driving them right into the arms of “Uncle Sugar” with overblown rhetoric. Factual, snappy and witty, not mean and personal, should be how we operate.
Yesterday I opened up a discussion on my FB page about the food stamp cuts, reminding folks that they were temporary when passed as part of the stimulus and that **Democrats** created this mess by taking food stamp money and putting it into Michelle’s pet project, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Both are points the media conveniently leave out when they raise the hue and cry about the cuts.
The other thing I try to do is point out instances of media bias—it was me taking a long, hard look at what the news media was doing to shape opinion, not report the news, during the 2000 election that made me rethink my own liberal views at the time.
The facts are on our side. Getting carried away by emotion is a hallmark of lefty “thinking.” If we stick to things that matter and to the facts, we win.
As always, just my humble opinion.
I don’t disagree with what you are stating here. Staying on point with facts and leaving the emotion out of it, is the path to opening dialogue. I guess I just don’t have it in me to worry about the undecided, I’ve engaged with them in the past and honestly, they are pretty much driven by any given emotion on any given day! Just my own observations.
See you on the battlefield, ie Twitter/facebook :)
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