Ron Paul 2012 Wins on Twitter, But Still Ignored by MSM

Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign is winning on Twitter, according to a recent study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study examined data from May 2 to Nov. 27 in 2011.

Paul enjoyed by far the most positive tone on Twitter; his favorable mentions, at 55 percent, are far ahead of all other candidates. His negative mentions, at 15 percent, are also by far the lowest of any candidates.

Most presidential candidates (all GOP candidates and President Obama) had more negative mentions than positive mentions on Twitter. For Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Barack Obama, negative mentions outweighed positive mentions more than 2-to-1.

Herman Cain’s Twitter opinion fluctuated. Jon Huntsman received more positive mentions than negative mentions. However, the volume of Twitter discussion on Huntsman is small.

Paul’s volume of Twitter mention was sixth at the time of Pew’s study. The trend of his Twitter volume, moreover, is steady and rising. Contrastingly, some of the so-called “flavor of the month” GOP candidates saw their volume fluctuate wildly.

The dynamic in the blogosphere is similar; Paul has by far the highest percentage of positive mentions and by far the least percentage of negative mentions.

The mainstream media’s (MSM) treatment of Paul, however, is quite different. MSM isn’t out to get Paul; he actually has a higher percentage of positive mentions than Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama.

However, the volume of mainstream media coverage of Paul is the second lowest, only placing ahead of Rick Santorum. In other words, MSM continues to ignore the Texas Congressman.

An earlier study from Pew, examining data from May 2 to Oct. 9, showed that Paul had the least amount of news coverage from MSM.

This is despite Paul’s impressive performance in certain polls (for example, placing second in the Iowa straw poll) and his passionate following online.

The ignoring of Ron Paul is a documented phenomenon in the media industry. Back in August, Jon Stewart put out a viral rant on this very subject.