As we anticipated, social media and online news activity peaked in October, surrounding the launch of Healthcare.gov and the government shutdown. There was sustained engagement through mid November, with particular attention paid to the shortcomings of the online marketplace and concern about individuals not being able to keep existing health plans. Levels of activity waned in December.
Social media users driving the conversation were not often spurred to engage immediately following major milestones in the legislation. Aside from a few notable exceptions (the launch of healthcare.gov, the government shutdown, and the end of the government shutdown), social media content that gained traction did not correlate chronologically with offline news.
Highly engaged content at times referenced various speeches, interviews, and other offline activity, but not usually on the same day. These references were made to support a broader opinion about Obamacare, and often happened days after the offline event. Conservative social media sources were especially prone to this. In fact, one of the most striking things about Obamacare social media content is the dominance of conservative politicians, journalists, and organizations. With the exception of President Obama’s own content, almost all major spikes in activity were driven by right-leaning sources. All of these sources – FreedomWorks, Rand Paul, Michelle Malkin, Mike Huckabee, to name a few – have passionate, opinionated, like-minded social communities.
This suggests that without objective social listening, politicians will be exposed almost exclusively to their supporters’ engagement. Engagement for both conservatives and liberals came almost exclusively from their own fans and followers. The social activity coming from across the aisle, however, cannot be ignored. While the level of social media activity cannot say exactly how many people are in favor of or against a piece of legislation, it can give an idea of how many people are willing to express opinions on either side. Politicians, lobbyists, and political organizations would do well to deploy social listening tools in order to understand all aspects of the conversation surrounding an issue.
This analysis also shows a missed opportunity to foster any sort of objective policy discussion or share valuable information with highly engaged social audience(s). Both sides tended to share, and have more success sharing, general support or disfavor with Obamacare. In all fairness to political influencers, engagement levels show that this content was most resonant with the audience, so perhaps they were simply giving the people what they wanted. At the same time, there is something of a chicken-and-egg scenario at play. Can we say for sure that social media communities would not have interest in meaningful information about how the ACA would impact their lives? This is a question we will continue to explore in further analysis of this data.
About the Info-graphic
The info-graphic shown below presents the full timeline of Obamacare Facebook, Twitter, and online news activity, September 1st through December 31st, 2013. We highlighted milestones in the legislative timeline and program rollout, as well as content that drove high levels of engagement. While we did monitor a larger group of networks, including blogs, forums, Tumblr, Instagram, and Google+, the vast majority of activity took place on Twitter and Facebook. Online news posts and comments are presented to highlight any resonance from publisher media to social.
![Obamacare Timeline[1] resized 600](http://blog.tracx.com/Portals/230431/images/Obamacare_Timeline[1]-resized-600.jpg)
