Iowa Caucus 2012 Twitter & Google
For the first week back of the new year I have a look at last years prediction that a lot of our online freedoms would be attacked by Governments around the world. Certainly that was proven to be true and continues. What we have seen in retaliation to those threats is a corresponding rise in Internet activism/hactivism. Most recently with the Reddit community leading the charge to boycott domain name provider GoDaddy over their support for the Stop Online Privacy Act being pushed through in the US at the moment.
Iowa Caucus Results
Most topical right now of course is the Republican Presidential Primaries and the Iowa Caucus which is taking place as I write. There has been a lot more online political activism as opposed to party machine organisation than I have ever seen before online. Below is the graph from Google Insights that shows how the candidates are currently fairing for search volumes.
You can see that the stand out is Ron Paul. How search volumes correspond to the ballot box is anyone’s guess but we can see some interesting data as I point out in today’s video. These Ron Paul supporters are so active online they can shoot a popstar to no.1 overnight because she said something nice about their candidate. They increased the sales of Kelly Clarkson’s latest efforts by 600% overnight. I also take a look at the article today from Mashable on Twitter mentions and how that corresponds to the Iowa Caucus.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
