IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: Democratic National Convention

  • A Speech Haunted by the Past

    How long does it take for people to forget about your past? Apparently, for some, it takes longer than 14 years. On Wednesday night, former president Bill Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention. He addressed the crowd with an honest, straightforward approach. However, many people found it difficult to believe him.

    On social media such as Twitter, people were arguing that they could not trust things coming out of Clinton’s mouth due to his dishonest past. Twitter users were using the hash tag #slickwilly to discuss his forty-nine minute speech. People on Twitter posted  “Bill Clinton, a.k.a #SlickWilly was disbarred for lying..Not a word he says can ever be trusted..” and “May I remind you that this is a man who was impeached by the House of Reps for perjury and obstruction of Justice? #Clinton #SlickWilly.”  These tweets were just a few of the negative words being spread across social media. There were, however, just as many positive remarks concerning Clinton’s speech as there were negative on twitter September 5th.

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    Clinton has been branded by a group of U.S. citizens as dishonest. For this reason, the many facts that were included in Clinton’s speech have been meticulously checked. Although none of them have been found as incorrect, he has been critiqued for exaggerating many facts. The facts Clinton presented that have been questioned were his statements about the health care reform, Medicare, and the American Recovery Act.

    Clinton’s speech is the only one that has been carefully examined for not providing the whole story to back his “honest” claims. None of the many speakers at the Republican National Convention were critiqued as much. Due to his scandalous past, Clinton is on a careful watch. If it were not for his impeachment, people would likely not question what he was saying.

    So do you believe Clinton gave an honest and real speech? Or do you think his speech left out details that were necessary?

  • “Tweeting” the Way (Back) Into the White House?

    This Labor Day weekend, as thousands of North Carolinians made a trek to the beach, others headed inland to Charlotte in anticipation of the Democratic National Convention and the preliminary festivities. On Monday, the excitement was palpable in Uptown as “CarolinaFest” served to get audiences pumped up for the opening day of the DNC. The streets were overflowing with vendors, street performers, temporary exhibits and thousands of chanting supporters, who all came together in celebration of North Carolina’s first-ever national convention.

    After experiencing the fervor first-hand, it was hard to imagine that (as right-leaning media suggested) the Democrats would have problems filling seats at either venue where the speeches were originally scheduled to be given. Convention officials were unfazed by this possibility and rightly so; enthusiasm at the event and via social media was at an all-time high for the first night of speeches. Signs were hung from various booths in the heart of the DNC activities to “keep calm and Tweet #DNC2012” and on the first night of speeches, viewers all over the country did just that.

    In the opening night of DNC speeches alone; the continuously trending  topics #DNC2012 and comparable terms received almost 3 million tweets…roughly 3/4ths of the final tweet count (taken over the entire three-day period) of the Republican National Convention. While all of the openers were well received (the numbers don’t lie!), the most prominent twitter conversations took place during the speeches of the Mayor Julian Castro (of San Antonio, TX.) and our First Lady, Michelle Obama.

    Mayor Castro’s speech peaked at 11,503 tweets per minute (TPM) which was higher than all of the GOP speakers excluding Mitt Romney himself. However, the “magic” really happened when Michelle Obama took the stage to officially open the convention. Peaking at 28,003 TPM, Mrs. Obama’s speech received twice the amount of “Twitter action” than Mitt Romney’s GOP acceptance speech, which saw 14,289 TPM at its peak. It is truly remarkable that one 25 minute speech could garner so much attention and foster a virtual discussion of mammoth proportions. While the content of the tweets in question undoubtedly varies, the important thing is that it got people talking.

    The use of twitter as a forum for political discussion and debate among average Americans and major media entities alike continues to grow and evolve as we near the 2012 election season. Will this explosion of Democratic enthusiasm continue all the way to the polls? Only time will tell. One thing is for certain: Democrats are using all of their available media to ensure that their voices are heard.

    (The twitter stats listed above were taken from the Twitter Blog (http://blog.twitter.com/) additional information regarding the DNC can be found at http://www.demconvention.com/ )

    –Lauren Habig , Gene Lee, Hannah Eure, Erin Kiffmeyer, Ally Walton