In social media, Obama wins hands down

The Engagement Gap

By CHARLES M. BLOW, NYT

Forget the enthusiasm gap, let’s focus on the engagement gap.

In particular, let’s focus on the gap in the level of media engagement — particularly social media engagement — between President Obama’s campaign and Mitt Romney’s. Obama is on the winning side of that gap.

A study earlier this month by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at how the campaigns are using social media this cycle. It found that:

“The Obama campaign posted nearly four times as much content as the Romney campaign and was active on nearly twice as many platforms. Obama’s digital content also engendered more response from the public — twice the number of shares, views and comments of his posts.”

Obama also has twice the number of Twitter retweets and YouTube comments, likes or views as Romney, and nearly 80 percent more Facebook likes, according to the report.

(More here.)