Twitter Presidential Debates: Sept 26

Categories: MicroMedia, Politics, Social MediaPosted on September 21st, 2008

UPDATE: McCain has committed to join.

Why: Why let the media pundits and political analysts have all the fun? You can now be an armchair critic, all you need is a twitter account, a TV, and internet access.

[On the first Presidential Debate on Sept 26, 2008, YOU get to be the armchair political analyst and use Twitter to score the candidates]

What is it: With the success of the previous Twitter SuperBowl ads rating last Jan, let’s repeat this community based voting event for the upcoming presidential debates, this time, you’re in charge.

When:
9PM Eastern. September 26, 2008: Presidential debate with domestic policy focus, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS. More details available from the commission of Presidential Debate.

Rules:
You’re the judge! In your opinion, score points to the two candidates and tweet it

A) Score the candidates ability to debate
Using twitter, you can score the candidates with this handy scoring guide.

-3 for a personal attack
-2 for a false statement
-1 for avoiding the issue, or not answering the question
+1 for a successful assertion
+2 for a successful counterpoint to opponents assertion
+3 Quotable sound bite

B) Use Twitter to tell the world (use the hash tag)

Example: A proper tweet is: “Mccain +1 for articulating his energy policy #tweetdebate”

Example: A proper tweet is: “Obama -3 for calling McCain an old fart #tweetdebate”

Example: A proper tweet is: “Mccain +3 for great line: “It’s the economy stupid” #tweetdebate”

C) See what everyone else is saying

A good practice is to open another tab on your browser, and watch what others are saying on twitter search, tagged with the keyword #tweetdebate.

D) After the Debate, Tally your score, then leave a comment
At the end of the debate, count up your score, your twitter handle, then leave a comment on this post.
Tip: Enter your score into a spreadsheet in real time, saving you time to tally.

Example:
My twitter handle is http://twitter.com/jowyang

Obama scored a total +25 and McCain scored a total of +26

Then create a percentage: Obama scored 49% and Mccain 51%

Then soak in your glory of being a true armchair political analyst (and argue the scoring of the other twitter pundits)

Future Debates: Come back to this site for discussions

October 2, 2008: Vice Presidential debate, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

October 7, 2008: Presidential debate in a town hall format, Belmont University, Nashville, TN

October 15, 2008:Presidential debate with foreign policy focus, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY

Despite that I work at a research firm, this event is entirely for entertainment, and some education, and won’t be used in any formal studies –have fun.

Input from Zack Reiss-Davis

Post Event Findings:
The game started out with folks scoring as suggested above, but soon, the scoring became pretty lax, then many just used it as a way to track conversations. Current TV was showing tweets live on TV, which at one point, overwhelmed their system, resulting in no tweets showing. Twitter’s infrastructure withstood the onslought –I think they’re finally starting to see their opportunity as a major communication device.

We started out strong scoring the sound bytes and assertions, but soon the threshold to score became too difficult. I suspect folks were also interested in Current TV, The Drinking Game, the Friendfeed debate room, or just used the tweetdebate tag to track all their responses. In any case it was all good –watching any event is no longer a lonely event –we participate and mainstream media is watching and adopting.

A graph indicating the frequency of the term “#tweetdebate”

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 6:12 am and is filed under MicroMedia, Politics, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This idea is ingenious. I’ll be participating in your brilliant web strategy.

http://twitter.com/teedubya

Posted by Travis Wright on September 21st, 2008 at 8:57 am

Outstanding idea! Perhaps a more democratic version of political punditry than what you’d see on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, or any other media. I participated in the Super Bowl ad tweetup, so why not this one? Looking forward to it.

Posted by Ken on September 21st, 2008 at 9:00 am

Travis, Ken,

Looking forward to having you!

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 21st, 2008 at 9:26 am

[...] Twitter Presidential Debates: Sept 26 [...]

Posted by links for 2008-09-21 - Kevin Bondelli’s Youth Vote Blog on September 21st, 2008 at 9:57 am

Great idea! You should probably add that people put their political leanings in the tweet so that you can segment the data set by M (McCain), O(Obama), or U(Undecided). Will probably find some interesting and divergent data based on this segmentation.

Posted by Maigari on September 21st, 2008 at 2:50 pm

if twitter can be used for Presidential debates - what else can it do?…

Jeremiah continues to amaze me with his twitter strategies Check out this brilliant post by Jeremiah…

Posted by The Web Platform @ Rohan Thomas' Blog on September 21st, 2008 at 10:29 pm

Smart thinking!

I am in 100% agreement with Maigari, although I don’t know if that would prevent the masses from ‘pretending’ to be from one side or the other, just to skew the results - of course that could happen in any community type poll…

Just the same, I’m in!

Posted by David Pavlicko on September 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 am

Brilliant, Jeremiah. I will try to do this, but I promised a live blog for my online community so I’ll have to watch that closely as well. Now if I could somewhow incorporate the two. Hmmm….

Posted by Angela Connor on September 22nd, 2008 at 10:49 am

Awesome idea Jeremiah. Shel Israel will be all over this one. Looking forward to Friday night and all the tweets that will be buzzing around.

Posted by Michael Barber on September 22nd, 2008 at 2:13 pm

Jeremiah, I love the idea, but I don’t think I can trust myself to play nice.

Posted by Kay Ballard on September 22nd, 2008 at 2:28 pm

I hate debates but this actually looks like fun. I’m ready!
BTW, missed you at BolgWorld.

Posted by Carolyn S. aka wadesmom on September 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm

I hate debates but this actually looks like fun. I’m ready!
BTW, missed you at BlogWorld.

Excellent idea; however, I’m expecting the results to be quite skewed towards the left judging from your previous FF political experiment. Would be much more interesting if you started on an even playing field.

Posted by Beth on September 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm

How many points do we record per Fail Whale?

Anyone going to open a Room on Friendfeed “just in case”?

Posted by Nancy B on September 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 pm

Great idea! I’m currently living in the Philippines and hope CNN International will air it live. It will be good to escape the chains of the political pundits.

Do I detect a light bias for McCain in your post? Hmmmm…. not like a northern Californian at all!

Posted by Tom Colvin on September 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 pm

I hope folks try to be fair and objective, that is after all what the debates are supposed to do –to get to the heart of the matter.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 23rd, 2008 at 4:26 am

how about -4 for “more then 1 Quotable sound bite per minute”

Posted by Joe Tennis on September 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 am

I fear the Twitter pool is deeper on the left than on the right, and the whole enterprise is too easy to game.

The real fun for participants will be the side debates about “How could you give that a +2???”

That could generate interesting discussions, but I can’t accept it yet as an objective meter.

Posted by Ike on September 23rd, 2008 at 7:05 am

Great idea! I suggest you make a few posts on Twitter to remind everyone as we get closer to the debate.

Posted by Warren Sukernek on September 23rd, 2008 at 7:30 am

Is this connected to “hack the debate”? Should it be somehow?

Posted by Ben Watson on September 23rd, 2008 at 7:32 am

[...] You be the Judge during the Debates [...]

Posted by Mark Your Calendars « Humboldt County Democrats on September 23rd, 2008 at 8:56 am

[...] Twitter Presidential Debates: Sept 26 [On the first Presidential Debate on Sept 26, 2008, YOU get to be the armchair political analyst and use Twitter to score the candidates] (tags: twitter election debates politics) [...]

Posted by Public Relations Matters » Blog Archive » links for 2008-09-23 on September 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Point of clarification and one minor rant, you decide which:

1. Is 9:00 p.m. Eastern actually 6:00 p.m. Pacific or is it the typical tape-delayed-but-pretend-it’s-live 9:00 p.m. Pacific? They are never clear about this….and, yes, it does make a difference.

2. What is it with the southern locations (not counting NY)? Is there only one corner of the continental U.S. (not even getting into the Alaska/Hawaii issues)? Does anyone on the east coast get the fact that California is the most populous state with the largest individual GDP (and one of the largest in the world)?

Oh, and I’m from Oregon, where getting any respect from the feds is hopeless, so I don’t expect that for our little corner of federal mismanagement and neglect.

Posted by Mike Mathews on September 23rd, 2008 at 10:07 pm

Mike

I put 9pm Eastern, isn’t that clear enough? Oregon is a great place, love it.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 24th, 2008 at 4:01 am

[...] Twitter Presidential Debates (Web Strategist) With all the social media and networking sites available, companies and organizations now have a way to monitor how their message and customers are responding. [...]

Posted by K Street Cafe » Blog Archive » Daily Specials on September 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am

[...] September 2008 at 1:53 am (Current Affairs, Twitter) (debates tweetdebate) Jeremiah Owyang has a system for folks on Twitter to score the presidential debates, in real time. It seems it worked for SuperBowl ads in [...]

Posted by The Twitter Debate Response « WiredPen on September 25th, 2008 at 1:20 am

[...] Twitter Debate Response Jeremiah Owyang has a system for folks on Twitter to score the presidential debates, in real time. It seems it worked for SuperBowl ads in [...]

Posted by The Twitter Debate Response « Digital Democracy on September 25th, 2008 at 1:21 am

Assuming they take place, I’ll be there with bells on.

Posted by Robyn Tippins on September 25th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

So is this on or not? I think you should repost since the debate is on for tonight. McCain says he’ll be there.

Posted by joeschmitt on September 26th, 2008 at 8:24 am

Unfortunately, you’re way off with this game as the rules you set up are highly objectionable and far from fair and scientific. Example?

Whether a statement is true or false is ethically more important than whether an attack was personal or not. So you should switch the points.

Further, your scale is too much based on rhetoric rather than content. Whether rhetoric was good or bad is always debatable, but whether something is true or wrong isn’t (don’t get me started with that “God created Eve of a rib of Adam” nonsense).

So change the rules:

+1 for any true statement
-1 for any false statement

sum it up at the end.

Much easier and much better rules.

Posted by Abygail on September 26th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

and by the way:

“I hope folks try to be fair and objective, that is after all what the debates are supposed to do –to get to the heart of the matter.”

how can we, if already the rules aren’t fair and objective?

Posted by Abygail on September 26th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Further you should take into account the kind of readership you and your blog attract.

You can call the results of this game representative for those of your readership who took part in this game, but don’t call it representative for ANYTHING else.

As a market researcher, you should be aware of this. Else I’d probably hire you as a spin-doctor, but certainly not as a researcher.

Posted by Abygail on September 26th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

Abygail

Thanks for this, you make some good points, and help point out why I wrote this line in the post above:

“this event is entirely for entertainment, and some education, and won’t be used in any formal studies –have fun.”

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 26th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

As always, genius. Love the idea but won’t be able to play. Next time, perhaps. You slay me.

Posted by cherylt on September 26th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

Can I answer now? Or do I have to wait for the debate to start

Posted by Denise Shiffman on September 26th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

I’ll be drunk, and won’t be able to count. Because I’ll be having a shot anytime someone says ‘change’ or ‘my friends’.

Posted by s on September 26th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

** Shameless plug alert **

It seems like what you are trying to do here is what we have also been up to. See our page on 2008 Presidential Debate on National Security and Foreign Policy - http://www.unfuse.com/decisions/64-2008-Presidential-Debate-on-National-Security-and-Foreign-Policy/finalize

We have extended http://www.unfuse.com - our social collaboration solution for trusted groups - to have a twitter-enabled participation in the presidential debate. The Twitter page can be seen at: http://twitter.com/unfusedebate

We welcome you to try our site ..

Posted by Bala Gopalan on September 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

[...] together an awesome tally list and rules for rating the debate tonight. You can read more about it here, but it basically uses Twitter and hash tags to focus the [...]

Posted by Social Media and the Presidential Debate - Left The Box on September 26th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

Same here #5, this will be interesting for 10 minutes then we’ll grow tired of it. Need tobake the functionality into our tv remotes.

Posted by Dave Evans on September 26th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

[...] like that’s what this Jeremiah Owyang blog post is also talking [...]

Posted by 2008 Presidential Debate on National Security and Foreign Policy « bHive Software on September 26th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

Maybe we could also add a general percentage vote:

“McCain = 35%, Obama = 65% - #tweetdebate general results.”

Posted by Dave Fleming on September 26th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

The idea I just previously submitted gives people the option to either score the debate as you suggested, and/or score it as a general summary, using the one liner above: “McCain = 35%, Obama = 65% - #tweetdebate general results.”

Posted by Dave Fleming on September 26th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

Thanks Dave, I added it in.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 26th, 2008 at 4:44 pm

My Twitter handle is http://www.twitter.com/bmaleszyk.

I scored a +22 for Obama overall and a +6 for McCain. I’ll neglect from giving a percentage - the results speak for themselves.

Posted by Bryan Maleszyk on September 26th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

I tallied my score obama +10, Mccain +5.

It’s very clear who won in my perspective. I find tallying a good way to keep track, as 1:45 hours of debates is hard to track

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 26th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

[...] con personas que tienen intereses como los tuyos. Una herramienta que sirvió incluso para realizar un sistema de puntuaciones para delimitar, de manera “más o menos justa y objetiva”, quién era el triunfador de [...]

Posted by El debate electoral americano también se siguió en los medios españoles : Blogografia /version beta/ on September 26th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

[...] bloggers suggested using Twitter to score the debate on an ongoing basis rather than just interacting. The idea is simple: watching [...]

Posted by Tweetscoring: Ubiquitous Instant Debate Scoring « Eric Gonzalez on September 26th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

[...] night’s debate was truly an interactive experience for all. Although I setup some guidelines to score the candidates, things quickly took on a life of their own as the group formerly known as the audience assigned [...]

Posted by Recap on the Tweetdebate experiment on September 27th, 2008 at 8:00 pm

I think this idea is awesome. Why not use an outlet that our generation thrives on. I think this can make or break candidates and definitely make marks in the minds of many. I remember how people said using television changed how voters felt about candidates, I wonder what waterfall effect this will have on future debates or elections.
In my mind, it was be smart for McCain and Obama to use this information to see where they are held in the eyes of the public and what they could change or make better before actual elections are held.
I feel like this is a system that will be around for a while, and will grow in the future. Our voices are going to be heard in a totally different way. Why not use that to our advantage?