Tuesday 3rd November 2020 is set to be a career-defining moment for many journalists tackling one of the world’s biggest news events. This is the Interhacktives’ complete low-down on how to bulk up your coverage using social media.
Start now
At the time of writing, there is exactly one week to go, which means any social media journalist needs to have their game-plan in place asap. There will be so much information from 6pm ET (11pm UK) onwards when the first states, Indiana and Kentucky, close their polls, take the following steps to ease your workload on the night:
- Tweetdeck – create/follow Twitter Lists which cover profiles which will give you relevant info for your particular beat/angle. If you’re covering a specific race, use the “near:” search function (or “geocode:”) to find tweets from precise geographic locations.
- Draft posts – draft multiple social media posts with every pragmatic, possible outcome (X wins landslide, confusion over Y state’s votes, Z candidate will make speech at 1am). If you have a cross-publishing platform, draft them there and add assets – if not, use a Google Doc you can copy/paste and edit as you go on the night. This will save you time trying to come up with copy and making creative choices. Schedule any posts which are ready for publishing.
- Community monitoring – start teasers for your angles, your coverage – encourage UGC to be sent to you on the night. This could include polls, stories, forums or questionnaire-style posting which will start to get your online community engaged with your election coverage. You could potentially store any engagements as leads and chase them up on the night.
- Location tracking – Set up location filters on various platforms as much as you can in order to get instant reaction from on the ground. Get confident with using your location map on Snapchat to follow your connections across the States.
- Block unreliable sources – Even if on a temporary basis, reduce your chance of channeling wrong information by blocking accounts you know will go out of their way to disinform. Twitter announced it will be live-labelling harmful tweets and has prompted all users to QT vice RT from 20th October onwards.
- Cover your bases – only use the platforms which are relevant for your coverage depending on your target audience and your own resource capability. Don’t overstretch yourself with the quest to be “the most interactive”, stick to 3 platforms with similar settings which will allow you to really champion your particular angle – Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat or Telegram, WhatsApp and Discord. You can always redirect/tease your coverage on your additional platforms without stretching yourself out too thinly.
“It’s data, stupid!”
For those of you with a #ddj, #dataviz or #metadata hustle, bookmark this page from the Kennedy School at Harvard. It’s a one-stop shop of 2020 election data and information which will be incoming from 3rd November onwards. You may want to prepare your own templates which you can fill in on the night if this helps you add value to your particular angle – voter turnout, demographic breakdowns etc.
Around the World
Many of you will be covering the election from outside the States, so you’ll want to include information through the prism of your audience’s culture, language and politics. Look for profiles with a high social media influence which resonates with your audience. Don’t forget that 58 million people speak Spanish in the USA, so limiting your social listening to just English could impact your work.
Try to find journalists, social media personalities and political operators who are present on interactive, “story-led” platforms such as Instagram (Stories and Reels), TikTok and Snapchat. You’ll often find that foreign correspondents, those who work in the diplomatic core/embassies use these tools as “soft power” to bring to life their viewpoints so do be sure to amplify them as well as your own work.
It’s not over ’til it’s over
Over 60 million Americans have already cast their ballots given the early voting protocols in place in several states. This means that in many states it could take several days of counting before a winner is declared. However, there will still be some key timings to look out for which you certainly ought to cover.
12am Eastern/ 5am UK – New Hampshire midnight voting (an oddball event bound to get your audience talking re quirky US election practice)
6am Eastern/ 11am UK – First polls open in several NE states, followed by additional states every hour until 12pm Eastern/ 5pm UK
6pm Eastern/ 11pm UK – First polls close, followed by additional states every hour until 1am Eastern/ 6am UK (4th November)
11pm Eastern/ 4am UK – Most polls will be closed, most deadlines for postal votes. From this point onwards, if there is a landslide, the winner can be confidently projected. If not, the media can still start to make educated predictions – this will be a key moment to gauge reaction.
It is not until 8th December that votes can continue to be counted, so in the event of a very tight race, things could still be unclear until then. The Electoral College meets on 14th December and the formal President/VP team will be confirmed by 6th January when Mike Pence (by convention as President of the Senate) will formally declare the election result in Congress. The new presidential term begins on 20th January and lasts 4 years.
It’ll be alright on the night
As long as you follow the steps above and have a game-plan, you won’t go wrong. If you’re a freelancer be sure to link up with your peers on the Society of Freelance Journalists’ Slack or reach out to us, the Interhacktives. Check out what we’re doing in this Twitter List and to see if any of us have a beat you might be interested in on our About page. Good luck!