If the debates have been any indication so far, election coverage this 2012 will be more social than ever. The news channels kicked into social media overdrive for the Iowa Caucus tonight. Here’s a brief summary, and please feel free to let us know of other social TV examples from the night:
- CNN rolled out its massive Election Center, complete with a “social media screen” (above) to show tweets along with other social data. It scrolled selected tweets in the ticker — even during commercials — and asked viewers to hashtag tweets with #cnnelection. Erin Burnett had some fun “flicking” data back and forth between two screens, iPad style, which you can watch (here). And it showed off a virtual table (below) of “weebles” to demonstrate how a Republican caucus works. “By the way, if you missed any of this, you can watch it later on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” joked Anderson Cooper.
- Fox News has partnered with Google (which just launched its Politics and Elections page) to display Google search trends, Google News keywords and other real-time data around the Iowa Caucus. Fox’s John Roberts has been reporting live from Google’s set-up in Des Moines (watch video).
- ABC News and its new partner Yahoo are collaborating on a live blog that also features curated tweets. Powered by Cover it Live, the blog is featured both on Yahoo News and ABCNews.com.
- In advance of this Sunday’s NBC Meet the Press-Facebook debate, Facebook asked voting-age users in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationally about the issues they feel are the most pressing. This afternoon they posted the results on the newly-launched NBCPolitics.com here.
- Many news sites featured curated tweets on the home page. But DesMoinesRegister.com did it with a twist: the Barack Obama campaign wrapped the home page in a huge ad:
- KCCI-TV in Des Moines rolled out its “Live Wire” — an increasing staple at Hearst TV stations — featuring tweets, photos and other short-form updates. Live Wire is powered by Scribble Live.
- Not TV per se, but certainly worth highlighting: WashingtonPost has rolled out Mention Machine, which calculates and tracks the number of mentions for each candidate on Twitter and in news stories overall.
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That’s just a starter — see any other social election coverage worth noting?