Much of the content of this article revolved around Davidson. It parroted many of the strawman arguments made by the traditional supporters of Davidson Town Hall during the campaign season. Here are a few of the things they got wrong and the reasons why.
The "experts" decried the tone of online commentary.
"Tone" or the supposed incivility of online groups was raised by the experts and by those supporting the former status quo in Davidson. They used generalizations regarding the typical tone of online discussions to paint the specific Davidson discussions as somehow being "uncivil". However, let's be clear. In Davidson groups like Save Davidson, Paradise Lost, and Citizens for a Safe Davidson Hotel Location were all very well moderated. Anything that could be called a true personal attack was not tolerated. Strong disagreement with Town Hall and elected official was allowed, hard core personal attacks were not.
The Business Today article quoted a post from former Davidson Commissioner Sandy Carnegie made on several of these groups, pointing out that Carnegie had said "there should be no personal attacks of anyone for any reason." The way the quote was used in the article implied the sites were somehow rife with these so called personal attacks. The reality was actually just the opposite, and this quote was really just a very good example of how well these groups policed themselves.
The attempts throughout this past election to smear these Facebook groups by calling them "uncivil" were either made out of ignorance because those making the claims didn't actually read the groups, or they were made in a cynical attempt to minimize the impact of free speech by keeping other people from reading.
Those attempts failed.
These groups kept growing throughout the year, providing proof people were not turned off by the tone. If anything, the smears against social media and online citizen activism backfired.
The "experts" erroneously equated the number of individuals posting on various social media groups with the impact of the groups.
It is fairly common knowledge that the vast majority of Facebook posts are made by a very small percentage of users. That was certainly true here in Davidson. However, in Davidson these Facebook groups effectively became the main distribution points for local news and information on various subjects. Many of these subjects were pertinent to the election. With that in mind, focusing on the number of posters in these groups as a proxy for the groups' reach and effectiveness is like saying a newspaper has limited impact because only a few journalists write all of the stories.
aShortChronicle posted a lot of stories on these groups and while this is just a lowly blog and yours truly is not a journalist, here is some data. aShortChronicle has never posted raw numbers of page views in the past, but here is the graph of the monthly pageviews since the blog's inception.
In September, October, and November of this year, aShortChronicle averaged 32.5 thousand pageviews per month. Almost all of that traffic was driven by social media, and as the graph shows, each of those consecutive months was an all-time monthly record. While pageviews does not equate to distinct readers, the explosive growth in 2017 corresponds to the growth of these various groups on Facebook and the more widespread use of the Nextdoor platform in Davidson. That data point combined with the constantly growing membership numbers of these various Facebook groups and use of Nextdoor shows those groups' true reach.
The "experts" minimized the impact social media has in the real world and in getting people out to vote.
This one really seemed like a case of the "experts" whistling past the graveyard. These social media groups may be big, but they won't get people to the polls was their thinking.
Really!?!?
The "experts" must have forgotten about the impact Facebook groups like WidenI77 and Exit 28 Ridiculousness had on the election for Governor in 2016. Pat McCrory is out of Raleigh in large part because of the impact these groups had in changing votes in the Lake Norman area due to the I77 HOT lanes issue. It seems like flat out denial to think the same wouldn't happen in an even more localized election, but that's what the experts sure seemed to think.
As the election unfolded, turnout data showed how wrong they were in this thinking.
During campaign season, the one argument defenders of the former Davidson status quo made relentlessly was to attack several of the new candidates for not having voted in previous Davidson elections. The new candidates were painted as unqualified simply because they had not participated in previous votes. This fabricated "issue" played out in Facebook groups, on personal Facebook pages, and on Nextdoor.
It was a predictable attack, and it backfired terribly.
As early voting began, aShortChronicle was interested in the number of 1st time and infrequent voters in municipal elections. The thought was that these voters would not care about this attack and might even be offended by it because they too had not voted much or at all in previous Davidson elections. This measure seemed like a good proxy to guage the potential impact of this attack on certain candidates.
The numbers were through the roof.
In early voting, people who had not voted in the last decade (called "1st time" voters for this analysis) or who had voted only once in the previous decade ("infrequent" voters), constituted nearly 50% of the vote. On election day itself, this percentage spiked and brought this category of new/infrequent municipal voters to a shocking 59% of the entire electorate.
That was the game changer. When you add in that the main argument against some of the challengers was to attack their voting record, the supporters of the status quo were effectively also attacking nearly 2/3 of the electorate. When you do that, you lose.
Considering the final outcome, clearly social media educated and turned out a lot of people who would not have been there otherwise. In fact it would be fair to say it completely changed the electorate in Davidson.
How the experts missed that this was happening just goes to show the trouble one can get into when making generalizations. "All politics is local" goes the saying, and this year in Davidson you had to look at the actual local dynamics to see what was really brewing. The signs were all there, you just had to know where to look.
Current research tells us the number one influence on buying habits is the pyramid of social media with influence groups like Save Davidson being the mis powerful. Traditional advertising silos are, in many cases, lumped together with fake news. This blog proves the research.
ReplyDelete