Packaging Politics in 140 Characters or Fewer 
 
An Examination of Twitter in Consumer and Political Marketing 
 
David Seawright 
 
Media Studies 190 
 
April 21, 2010 
   
 

 
 Seawright 2 

President Barack Obama, with 140 or fewer taps on his BlackBerry, can issue a statement

directly to millions of Americans that can be accessed worldwide. Obama, like many other

modern day politicians, is an active user of Twitter.com, the latest trend in social media that has

quickly expanded into a commercial and political force with the ability to inspire action,

communication and consumption. Founded in 2006, Twitter now claims over 75 million users

with 7.8 million new accounts created each month (Gaudin). Consumer marketers and politicians

alike have tapped into the power of the rising social networking website to reach potential

consumers or voters on a personal and immediate level. With the ability to send messages to a

“follower’s” computer or mobile phone, Twitter has remarkable potential to continue to serve as

a force for both marketers and politicians alike, opening up the field of communication between

producer and consumer, delivering instant and noninvasive messages and organizing political

activists. Twitter has influenced American business and politics so remarkably that the Library of

Congress recently launched a project to archive all public tweets (King). Although Twitter has

established a new level of intimacy between producer and consumer and politician and citizen,

the packaging of politics in 140 characters or fewer also establishes a dangerous precedent by

overly simplifying complex political issues, bypassing the traditional press and creating a false

sense of intimacy between constituent and politician. With the understanding of these dangers,

however, Twitter becomes a valuable source of information for a voter.

In its four years of existence, Twitter has captured the attention of millions of people

worldwide. The microblogging service is a “web-based platform that enables subscribers to its

free service to disseminate short messages by way of the web, IM applications…or a mobile

handset” in 140 characters or fewer(Mischaud). While each individual user may create a Twitter

account for a wide variety of reasons, a study conducted at Pennsylvania State University
 Seawright 3 

concludes that Twitter allows users to “develop more accurate person perceptions of others,” a

“mutual understanding among communicators about a fact” and “feelings of intimacy and

connectedness between colleagues” (Rosson and Zhao 244). The ability to instantaneously

interact with both acquaintances and politicians while constantly receiving a stream of

information from news outlets via Twitter makes this particular social media outlet successful.

Furthermore, users of Twitter have been found to appreciate the website for its “brevity,”

“broadcast nature,” and “mobility and pervasive access” (Rosson and Zhao 245-248). Incoming

tweets can be accessed by computer or cell phone, making Twitter uniquely accessible when

compared with many other popular social networking mediums. Recent studies reveal that over

55 million tweets are sent a day (Lohr) and, as of 2009, 14 million Americans actively use

personal Twitter accounts (Murray-Threipland).

The same characteristics that led to Twitter’s growth are what make the website such a

valuable asset to consumer marketers. Marketers understand that “goods flow to customers

through numerous channels consisting of many different types of marketing institutions and

many different combinations of marketing functions [and that] they are continuously shifting as

manufacturers seek more effective ways of getting their goods to customers” (Hansen and

McNair 193). Twitter is the latest shift in marketing, serving as a means of communication for

producers to inform and connect with customers. “Twitter is the most popular micro-blog tool

among other existing equivalents…for business communications” in “product management,

marketing, and corporate communication” (Rosson and Zhao 245). Twitter even markets itself as

“a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers…right now,

in a way that was never before possible” (Twitter 101 for Business). The company claims that:

Twitter isn’t just about useful immediacy. The conversational nature of the
medium lets you build relationships with customers, partners and other
 Seawright 4 

people important to your business. Beyond transactions, Twitter gives

your constituents direct access to employees and a way to contribute to
your company; as marketers say, it shrinks the emotional distance between
your company and your customers.(Twitter 101 for Business)

Despite the lofty claims of the people behind Twitter, the results appear to confirm that

companies do rely on the social media outlet to market their products. In 2009, The New York

Times claimed “the nation’s retailers see it [Twitter] as a business tool” (Rosenbloom and

Cullotta). Some companies have started “paying commissions to individuals who refer buyers to

the[ir] site via Twitter messages” (Stone). Other businesses use their Twitter accounts to lure

customers with “exclusive coupons” or even allow customers to place orders through a tweet

(Twitter 101 for Business). Best Buy even created an account (@twelpforce, over 25,000

followers) to deal directly with customers who tweet about their technical difficulties. Twitter

has become the leading medium for consumer marketing strategists to promote, assist, inform

and interact with consumers.

Twitter is especially effective in its ability to reproduce and spread viral advertisements, a

tactic employed by consumer marketers regularly “in which video advertisements are distributed

from one user to another…This strategy is unique from almost any other online advertising

formats as consumers receive ads from friends rather than from the advertisers themselves [and]

view ads at their convenience” (Golan 959-960). These advertisements, which directly contrast

the more traditional advertising mediums, regularly depict humorous, sexual or violent content,

were originally dispersed through email, yet the emergence of Twitter as an effective means of

communication attracted the attention of viral advertisers (Golan 962). Twitter and viral ads

seem to be a perfect match; the essence of Twitter feels noninvasive because every user has the

freedom to either “follow” or “unfollow” anyone. A viral advertisement, when tweeted, appears

unobtrusive because the viewer made a conscious decision to follow the person who tweeted
 Seawright 5 

about the advertisement, yet advertisers are now paying Twitter users to tweet about their

product or a link to a video. “The idea, according to entrepreneurs who are developing such

services for Twitter…is that people trust recommendations from those they know and

increasingly ignore nearly every other kind of ad message in print, on television and online”

(Stone). A recent example of such an advertisement came in the release of a video of ultimate

fighter Chuck Liddell and his model girlfriend, Heidi Northcott, working out in nothing by

Reebok shoes. The explicit nature of the ad, which showed the two with intimate areas barely

blurred out, kept it from ever reaching the airwaves of television, yet Twitter users quickly

spread the link of the video worldwide. Although Reebok never paid for airtime, Twitter users

worldwide came across the video. In short, consumer marketers see incredible potential in the

power of Twitter and have worked to utilize the influence of the medium to attract attention and

connect with potential consumers.

As quickly as consumer marketers picked up the powerful platform of Twitter, politicians

followed closely behind. Twitter separates itself from other social media outlets by its primary

demographic, for “It isn’t teenagers who are using Twitter. They’re in the minority. It’s the 45 to

54’s who are the largest group and the over 65’s outnumber the teens by miles. That is because

Twitter is fairly commercial” (Murray-Threipland). The primary users of Twitter, then, are

legally permitted to vote in elections, making some of the earliest Twitter accounts used by

political campaigns become the most “heavily followed micro-blogs” on the internet (Rosson

and Zhao 245). Today, TheHill.com, a popular online political news source, features a “Twitter

Room” that accumulates the information tweeted by politicians each day, headlined as the

“Tweets you need to read”(The Hill's Twitter Room). The site also links to the personal twitter

accounts of 50 Democrat and 91 Republicans who currently hold office in either the Senate or
 Seawright 6 

House of Representatives, plus an additional nine accounts directly linked to the Executive

Branch, including President Barack Obama (@BarackObama, over 3 million followers),

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (@clintonnews, over 45,000 followers) and the official White

House account (@whitehouse, over 1 million followers). These political office holders view

Twitter as an effective medium of communication with both constituents and the media,

exemplified by “Barack Obama’s turning to Twitter to declare victory in the 2008 election”

(Lohr). Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s press secretary (@presssec, over 55,000 followers),

recently praised Twitter on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” saying, “It’s a fabulous medium in which

to communicate with not just the White House press corps, but tens of thousands of people who

want to know what the president is doing, or a picture of who he met with…I just think it’s a

fascinating, fast moving medium.” President Obama, like scores of consumer marketers, agrees

with Gibbs’ assessment, turning to Twitter for intimate access to both political and commercial

brands. “In its short history, Twitter…has become an important marketing tool for…politicians

and businesses, promising a level of intimacy never before approached online, as well as giving

the public the ability to speak directly to people and institutions once comfortably on a pedestal”

(Cohen). Never before has a major political officer had such immediate access to the public.

Twitter quickly developed into a powerful tool for political communication and brand building

as “strenuous personal branding is now seen among…politicians who speak daily…to massive

audiences through social media” such as Twitter (Giridharadas). The medium and format of

Twitter has opened up communication between politicians and their constituents like never

before and politicians, like consumer marketers, have been quick to realize its communicative

power.
 Seawright 7 

While current office holders have adopted Twitter as an effective means of

communication with constituents, the greatest strength of Twitter in the political is in political

campaigning. The influence of consumer marketing techniques is undeniable; just as marketers

have dispersed viral advertisements via Twitter, so too have politicians seeking office, making

the social network critical “for understanding political communication” (Golan 965). Twitter can

quickly diffuse political advertisements and messaging to millions of viewers who need not be

sitting in front of a television at the precise time of an advertisement’s airing. Such ads also tend

to employ different techniques of persuasion by entertaining, nor annoying (like used car ads),

the customer. This is because “no user is likely to forward a boring advertisement to a friend, the

ad must include a ‘viral component’ in it, a component that makes any ad ‘forwardable’ from

one user to another (Golan 962). The viral nature of Twitter also assisted in the numerous open

source contributions to the Obama presidential election in 2008. Popular online videos from

“Obama Girl,” (over 316 million total views) and Will I Am, whose “Yes We Can” video, alone

amassed over 20 million views, circulated the internet via social networking mediums like

Twitter. Obama’s ability to utilize social media during the 2008 election has received much

attention, bringing some to believe that “the president’s old friends, Twitter and Facebook,

helped him get elected” (Othmer). So avid were the Obama supporters in using Twitter that Biz

Stone, co-founder of the website, claims that “during the election…the site was flooded with 10

times the normal traffic” (Richtel). The expansion of Twitter’s influence and its ability to turn

homemade videos viral contributed to “the new-media revolution that is remaking political

campaigns. Online videos can dominate the evening news…[and] alter the national debate”

(Rainey). A tweet increases the strength of a political message for candidates and voters alike for

“a Twitter post can in theory be seen by millions, and thus packs more punch than an e-mail
 Seawright 8 

message or phone call” (Rosenbloom). Politicians understand the power of Twitter as a

communicative medium and, in ways very similar to the practices employed by consumer

marketers, use the microblogging tool to disseminate information.

The 2008 presidential campaign and the introduction of the viral open source video, made

relevant largely in part by Twitter users, has forever altered political campaigns as Americans

have come to know them:

It has rewritten the rules on how to reach voters, raise money, organize
supporters, manage the news media, track and mold public opinion, and wage –
and withstand political attacks…This is a result of the way that the Obama
campaign sought to understand and harness the internet (and other forms of so-
called new media) to organize supports and to reach voters who no longer rely
primarily on information from newspapers and television. (Nagourney)

This new American political campaign tactic has quickly spread internationally. The current

political discourse in Great Britain is “in a league of its own in mirroring U.S.

campaigns…Parallels to the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign – including the importation of top

Obama advisers, heavy deployment of grass-roots internet campaigning and an increasing focus

on politician’s wives – are generating national discussion” as Sarah Brown, the wife of

incumbent Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is “alone courting 1.1 million campaign followers on

Twitter” (Faiola). Obama’s 2008 campaign simply touched the surface of Twitter’s potential

influence on the political process, but only two years later the website’s communicative power

can be seen internationally. In 2008, Terry Nelson, George W. Bush’s political director in his

2004 campaign, said, “We are in the midst of a fundamental transformation of how campaigns

are run. And it’s not over yet” (Mitchell). Twitter most certainly will play a significant role in the

continued transformation of the political process.

While Twitter has produced an undeniable influence on political communication by

drawing on many of the techniques developed by consumer marketers, including establishing

 Seawright 9 

open communication with constituents and creating an emotional connection with voters,

limiting a message to 140 characters or fewer has left many concerned about the over-

simplification of political messages. Although White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told

CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that composing a tweet requires careful consideration – “[I]t takes an

amazing amount of discipline to write out all of what you want to say in 140 characters or less. If

you ever watch me do it, it takes me a few minutes to sort of edit even myself down” – many

others see Twitter as establishing a dangerous precedent in political communications:

Social media help stir up excitement for “change we can believe in.” They are a
much less effective tool for articulating the extraordinarily complicated details of
health care reform. Mr. Obama still uses Twitter to articulate his health care
goals…There’s no way these sound bytes can truly battle the countless opposition
messages in circulation. Twitter, after all, bleeds both blue and red. (Othmer)

President Obama has come under considerable criticism for his use of Twitter, even though the

medium played an integral role in placing him in office. Some have gone as far to say the

president needs to drop tweeting altogether: “Here’s hoping that the next time Mr. Obama needs

to deliver a complex idea, he’ll once again use more than 140 characters at a time” (Othmer).

Still others see social media outlets such as Twitter, as well as the videos and blog posts

promoted via politician’s Twitter accounts, as a means for politicians to bypass the traditional

media. With the ability to immediately access millions of constituents through Twitter, the

Obama administration instituted a White House blog that is marketed by the White House

Twitter account. Other politicians will surely follow suit, because even though “people who use

it [Twitter] are allowed only 140 characters…it’s enough to mention products or to direct others

to blog sites. Twitter could almost be called a ‘blog directory’” (Murray-Threipland). The

president actively uses his social media accounts to answer questions without the “annoying

follow-ups of the kind posed by real, live journalists” (Kurtz). While the Obama campaign in
 Seawright 10 

2008 brilliantly employed social networking sites to deliver its message, the current

administration has come under fire for “trying to control the message rather than allowing

Obama to be seen ‘unscripted’” (Kurtz). The traditional press plays an important role in the

American political process, providing detailed accounts of the on goings in Washington D.C.

while serving as a governmental watchdog. With politicians now able to interact directly with

voters, they can bypass the traditional news media, allowing many messages reach the eyes of

voters unfiltered. Twitter has, in many ways, dismantled the system of accountability established

by the ever-present press keeping watch over legislative positions and decisions. Although

President Obama is no different than his predecessors in his “attempts to circumvent the press

corps,” he is “the first internet president, with his radio addresses on YouTube, videos on

Whitehouse.gov and official photos on Flickr. There’s a White House blog, and deputy press

secretary Bill Burton has been weighing in on Twitter” (Kurtz). The White House and Barack

Obama Twitter accounts serve as the glue to attach all of these mediums to one another: the blog

is linked while pictures and videos are posted. By providing followers with a constant flow of

information directly from the White House, the Obama administration manages to bypass the

traditional media altogether, leaving average citizens to decipher for themselves if something is

newsworthy or a spin campaign. The traditional press historically handled this task for the

citizen.

Perhaps the most misleading aspect of Twitter, however, is the false intimacy that it

produces. Even though many voters turn to Twitter to develop a personal connection with a

candidate or current office holder, many politicians turn to “ghost Twitterers” whose sole

responsibility is to keep voters “updated on the latest twists and turns” of political life.

“Politicians like Ron Paul have assigned staff members to create Twitter posts” while Obama
 Seawright 11 

“has a social-networking team to keep his Twitter feed tweeting” (Cohen). Jesse Benton, Ron

Paul’s campaign manager in 2008, recalls, “supporters would read more meaning in the online

relationship than was intended.” Said Benton, “We would get some sincere written notes that

would say ‘thank you for letting me be your friend’” (Cohen). While such false intimacy may

succeed in winning the votes of constituents, it certainly establishes a dangerous precedent as

politicians are personalized well beyond their means. Rather than winning office based on issue

standpoints or political experience, candidates may begin to win office based on their staffers’

ability to craft 140 character messages masquerading as a message from the politician. In short,

the very quality of Twitter that makes it a successful marketing tool, both commercially and

politically, is what makes it unequivocally dangerous.

While Twitter still remains a young tool in the realms of consumer and political

marketing, its immediate impact is undeniable. Although it could be seen as simply providing an

additional level of noise in the already boisterous political conversation, in many respects Twitter

manages to synthesize much of that noise in 140 characters or fewer. With politicians using a

wide variety of online media, from YouTube to picture websites, Twitter brings each medium

together in a single feed of news, linking to blog posts, attaching pictures and videos while

maintaining the intimate relationship with constituents that has made the website so prominent.

Ultimate, however, Twitter establishes a dangerous precedent by allowing politicians to over-

simplify their messages, bypass the traditional news media and establish a false connection with

voters. If the public fails to acknowledge these dangers, Twitter could very easily become the

next polarizing medium in the American political spectrum as followers blindly accept the

claims of the politicians they support (and are likely to follow) without examining them closely.
 Seawright 12 

When used critically, however, Twitter provides a follower with a stream of information that

both educates and involves the voter.

Works Cited 
Cohen, Noam. "When Stars Twitter, A Ghost May Be Lurking." The New York Times. New
York, 26 March 2009.
Faiola, Anthony. "As Election Approaches, U.S.-Style Politics Catching Hold in Britain."
Washington Post. Washington D.C., 15 April 2010.
Gaudin, Sharon. Twitter now has 75 Millions Users. 26 Januray 2010. 6 April 2010
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9148878/Twitter_now_has_75M_users_most_
asleep_at_the_mouse>.
Giridharadas, Anand. "Branding and the 'Me' Economy." The New York Times. New York, 26
February 2010.
Golan, Guy J. "Creative Strategies in Viral Advertising." Journal of Computer-Mediated
communication (2008): 959-972.
King, Cecilia. "Library of Congress Archives Twitter, the Big and Mundane." The Washington
Post. Washington DC, 16 April 2010.
Kurtz, Howard. "White House Press Corp Feels Bypassed by Obama in Favor of TV Shows,
YouTube." The Washington Post. Washington D.C., 8 February 2010.
Lohr, Steve. "Library of Congress Will Save Tweets." The New York Times. New York, 14
April 2010.
McNair, Malcolm P. and Harry L. Hansen. Readings in Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Company, Inc., 1956.
Mischaud, Edward. Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self. London School of Economics and
Political Science. London: MEDIA@LSE ELectronic Dissertation Series, 2007.
Mitchell, Greg. "How Obama Won: The Rise of Web 2.0." AlterNet. 3 February 2009.
Murray-Threipland, Molly. "How Tweet it Is." The New York Times. New York, 26 May 2009.
Nagourney, Adam. "The '08 Campaign: Sea Change for Politics as We Know It." The New York
Times. New York, 3 November 2008.
Othmer, James P. "Don't Tweet About Health Care." The New York Times. New York, 2009
September 2009.
Rainey, James. "Watch Out for that Face in the Crowd." The Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, 7
June 2008.
 Seawright 13 

Richtel, Matt. "Inauguration Crowd Will Test Cellphone Networks." The New York Times. New
York, 18 January 2009.
Rosenbloom, Stephanie and Karen Ann Cullotta. "Buying, Selling and Twittering All the Way."
The New York Times. New York, 27 November 2009.
Stone, Brad. "A Friend's Tweet Could Be an Ad." The New York Times. New York, 21
November 2009.
The Hill's Twitter Room. 2 April 2010 <http://thehill.com/blogs/twitter-room>.
Twitter 101 for Business. Twitter 101 for Business - A Special Guide. 11 April 2010
<http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/>.
Zhao, Dejin and Mary Beth Rosson. How and Why People Twitter: The Role Micro-blogging
Plays in Informal Communications at Work. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University, n.d.