For this week’s journal I would like to focus specifically on the social media website Twitter’s effect on the Presidential Debate. Twitter has really taken off in the past couple years and now plays a sizeable role in the media as a whole. The main thing that sticks out about twitter during the debate was the amount of usage it was receiving in such a short amount of time. Over 10 million tweets occurred in the ninety minute long debate, a record for most tweets during a single political event. A major factor about twitter compared to other media outlets, such as television or radio, is that any random person can contribute their own opinion to any certain political topic. One tweet that was sent out by a candidate may receive thousands of retweets (a single tweet by President Obama the day after the debate received 1,113 retweets). This means that every single person who follows any of the 1,113 people who resent the President’s original tweet. The average number of followers of a Twitter user is 126. The enormity of the people who have access to any of these political tweets by candidates is enough to make Twitter a major player in the media coverage of the campaign. For instance, big bird of all things became a media frenzy after Governor Romney’s comments about PBS. Thousands of people jumped on the bandwagon about making fun of Romney’s statements. The fact that thousands of people can not only see comments that make fun of a candidate but can join in on the satire as well poses a huge threat to that candidate’s campaign handles public relations. A major fear I have about social media sites like Twitter is their ability to effect a majorly important even such as the President Debate simply by involving the opinions of the millions of the uninformed and uninterested masses. There is major problem with allowing a huge amount of people who do not take the responsibility to either inform themselves of the issues or which candidate they actually...