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Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_political_communication_in_the_United_States

Analysis of 2012 Election
The two main candidates of the 2012 election were Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney. This election was one of the first elections to use social media to support the candidates' campaigns. (Most information regarding this election is already on Wikipedia)

How Social Media Influenced the 2016 Elections
The presidential elections of 2016 saw heavy use of social media across all candidates. The main three candidates were Donald Trump (Republican), Bernie Sanders, and Hilary Clinton (Democrats). Research reports that, " In January 2016, 44% of U.S. adults reported having learned about the 2016 presidential election." At this point, social media was being heavily used across all platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Specifically in the 2016 elections, Twitter was the main source which Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, the 2 potential presidents, used to convey various things. Several reports and statistics show that several people received information about the election via social media. Roughly, "24% say they have turned to the social media posts" for information regarding the election. All presidential candidates used social media in a different way. While Trump's posts focused on links to news sources, Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders focused on "highlighting official campaign communities." During the campaigns of these main 3 candidates, Trump had a lot more response from users compared to the two democratic candidates. This is most likely due to the fact that Trump already had more followers at the beginning of the campaign. This election showed that several strategies could be used with social media. This is reflected in Trump's, Clinton's, and Sander's use of social media. On Twitter, Trump mainly retweeted tweets from the general public, and Clinton and Sanders mainly retweeted tweets about their own campaign. The main two rivals of the campaign, Trump and Clinton, made several tweets directly talking about each other, Clinton used the @ feature of Twitter linking users to Trump's page. Trump referred to Hilary Clinton several times, but he almost never used the @ feature. You can see that Trump's main focus in his campaign on Twitter was the media such as Fox news or New York Times. On the other hand, Clinton and Sanders mainly focused on their own campaign. Another part of the strategy used by the Democratic side, Clinton and Sanders, is that some of their posts in Spanish. These two candidates had a focus on reaching out to the minority community which is reflected in these posts in Spanish. Donald Trump did not make any posts in Spanish. The use of videos on Twitter were used in different ways in the 2016 election. Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders mostly posted videos sponsoring their own campaign while Donald Trump posted videos related to news media (a very common theme in the candidates' strategies).

Overall, Donald Trump (Republican) focused his strategy in social media in news media. Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton (Democrats) focused their social media strategy on promoting themselves. Social media such as Twitter continues being used by politicians today, and continues to grow more popularity in American politics.

Origins of Social Media in Politics
Facebook is a place where people can freely interact with each other. "This means, for example, on Facebook, an individual creates multimedia content like a video on the cognitive level", which allows for mass interaction between hundreds of people. This free interaction between people on Facebook allowed the use of social media by political figures to help promote their own ideals. (Include information preexisting in article). The way people can interact on Facebook includes things such as social status. There are "various social activities" that have been used by early presidents using social media. For example, someone could make a post asking for donations to help fund whatever that person is trying to fund, or simply state their own opinion about a certain topic.

General Edits
There are several sentences that need to be slightly corrected throughout the entirety of the article.

Sources:

Social Media, Politics, and the State (Book)

https://www.journalism.org/2016/07/18/candidates-differ-in-their-use-of-social-media-to-connect-with-the-public/

https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=fypapers

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Facebook