This Week in Digital & Politics: GOP Edition

Republicans are taking to social media in an attempt to curb the Democrats’ digital momentum. Facebook is courting the red states. And a study shows that Republicans are more cohesive and effective on social networks. That’s the news from this GOP-themed edition of our weekly series looking at stories in the intersection of digital technology and politics.

Republicans Beat Democrats on Twitter

Despite President Barack Obama’s prowess on social networks, Republicans came out ahead of Democrats when it comes to effective use of Twitter, at least in the 2010 race. That’s according to a study from the U-M School of Information and the College of Engineering. The study looked at more than 460,000 tweets — that’s three years worth of tweets from 687 candidates running for House, Senate and guberntorial seats during the 2010 midterm elections.

Republican tweets were more cohesive, covering a single basic topic. Top terms included “spending,” “bills,” “budget,” and “deficit.” Democrats sent an average of 172 fewer tweets, and they covered more diverse topics, including terms like “education,” “jobs,” “oil_spill,” “clean_energy,” “Afghanistan” and “reform.”

Tea Party Members showed more cohesion than either Democrats or Republicans. They retweeted a colleague’s message an average of 82.6 times compared with 52.3 retweets for Republicans and 40 for Democrats. Tea partiers also used hashtags an average of 753 times, while Republicans averaged 404 times and Democrats were at 196, the study said.

Facebook Courts Top Republican Candidates

The worlds most popular social network has historically leaned towards the Democrats. President Obama has 22 million fans, which is 10 times more support than the 10 declared GOP presidential candidates combined, says the Atlantic Wire. Now Facebook is working to close that huge number disparity.

“The color of the site is blue, but the color of the company is purple,” Joel Kaplan, former deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration and Facebook’s current vice president of U.S. public policy, told RCP. Facebook has recruited five high-profile GOP strategists to join its outreach team in recent months.

Republican’s Hold a Twitter Debate

Following on the heels of President Obama’s Twitter town hall, Republican presidential candidates will be holding a Twitter debate on July 27 sponosored by TheTeaParty.net, reported the Washington Post.

The forum will include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R,-Pa), former Gov. Gary Johnson (R,-NM), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R,-Minn), Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R,-MIch) and Georgia businessman Herman Cain.