Did you know that the most-engaged with social media post by any Alaskan based political blog, candidate, news outlet, or elected official during the 2022 election season was this:
Of all the news, political scandal, trend posts and snark, more people engaged with this meaningless meme than any other post by an Alaskan political account. In fact, much of Must Read Alaska’s most-engaged with content is dumb, boomer memes. What does that mean? While it’s effective audience building, it’s only impactful if the audience building translates to high engagement on meaningful content. Often, we found the boost from boomer memes did not translate to high engagement on posts pushing a political narrative.
The 907 Policy Project is tracking how Alaskans and Alaska organizations use social media to understand where and how Alaskans get their news on digital media about policy issues that impact their daily lives, and how those with the largest influence are using their platforms. The 907 Policy Project is publishing the results in partnership with the Current.
“We want to know how those with the loudest voices are using their platforms to influence Alaskans, and how Alaskans are responding to that content,” said 907 Policy Project Executive Director Aubrey Wieber. The 907 Policy Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit and a partner organization to the 907 Initiative.
In November, Alaska’s digital landscape was dominated by political campaigns and election-related takes. So here are your election season takeaways on how Alaskan political and news entities are getting their message out on the series of tubes.
As soon as the world knew who Mary Peltola was, she dominated
Rep. Mary Peltola’s social media accounts skyrocketed into the top after winning the Special General Election, and she took the crown for most social media engagements in October and November. She had the strongest performance on Twitter out of all tracked accounts. Her most popular tweet was from Sept. 1, shortly after she won the election to replace the late Rep. Don Young.
Good morning from your newest Congressperson (elect)! pic.twitter.com/HYgXQHqqBp
— Mary Peltola (@MaryPeltola) September 1, 2022
Peltola’s tweets alone received nearly four times as many engagements as the next entrant on the list, former governor and Congressional candidate Sarah Palin. Peltola’s tweets performed better than Palin on all tracked social media platforms combined. Peltola’s best-performing tweets from November celebrated her reelection victory and reaffirmed many of her Congressional campaign’s core values such as pro-choice, pro-fish, and pro-worker policy positions.
Palin came in second place. IRL and on the internet.
With the majority of her engagements coming from posts to her highly active Facebook account, Palin’s best-performing Facebook posts this election season were Anti-Biden and pro-Ted Cruz content, before she realized she could only be elected to Congress by ALASKAN voters. She buttoned it up in the home stretch of her Congressional campaign in early November, touting content such as endorsement graphics from the conservative Liberty University. Andwho could forget the Nov. 9 gem when she announced Jerry Ward as her acting Chief of Staff to the office that she failed to win.
It is worth noting that her most-popular post in November had 18,122 engagements while her 10th most-popular post in September had 24,165 engagements.
There was one notable exception, however: One of Palin’s most popular posts in November touted her as the first signatory in support of a new initiative campaign to repeal ranked choice voting following her loss to Rep. Mary Peltola earlier in the month.
Just looking at November, Peltola and Palin maintained their place at the top of the Alaska social media engagement leaderboard, holding the top two spots, respectively, as they did in October. However, Peltola’s total November social media engagements increased by 56% from October while Palin’s decreased by 58%. Peltola’s rise came on the back of extremely strong Twitter engagement, while Palin’s decrease was the result of a decline in engagement with her Facebook posts.
No matter what happens… People still just want to talk about the weather.
KTFV, an NBC affiliate based in Fairbanks, rocketed into third place after failing to crack the top 20 in October thanks to an ultra-viral Facebook post on Nov. 18 featuring a photo documenting the last sunset the far-north city of Utqiagvik will see until January 23. This single post racked up an eye-popping 187,730 Facebook engagements in November alone, and accounted for 96% of KTFV’s social media engagements across all platforms that month.
If all else fails, we’ll always have “Joe Biden’s inflation”
Power The Future, a right-leaning 501(c)4 organization that argues for continued use of fossil fuels over green energy alternatives and attacks public figures it deems members of “the eco left,” also jumped into the top 10 on the back of a single ultra-viral Facebook post: a link to a Real Clear Politics opinion piece by Power The Future Director Daniel Turner claiming that President Joe Biden is waging a “war on American fossil energy.”
I assume this is meant to be read in a deep movie trailer voice, “This Thanksgiving, Joe Biden and his bureaucrats…” This single post accounted for nearly 85% of Power The Future’s 76,680 social media engagements across all platforms in November – a massive jump from the 9,640 total social media engagements Power The Future saw across all platforms in October.
Top 10 AK Social Media Presences by Engagement: October to November 2022 Ranking Changes
All data courtesy of the 907 Policy Project / Semrush
Conservative political blog Must Read Alaska fell just outside of the top 10 – dropping from 5th overall in October to 11th in November. Apparently their *actual* political content doesn’t do as well as fridges and Ubers.
State Representative-elect Genevieve Mina (HD-19) also fell out of the top 10 after rocketing to 7th overall in October thanks to a viral tweet featuring Mina’s Halloween costume: the 14-story building home to 90% of the residents of Whittier, Alaska.
Finally, the Current would just like to give a shoutout to Alaska’s New Source for their top social media post of November. Bless you Ringo. Happy Holidays and we’ll see you in 2023.
The data provided for this article highlights the top 10 Alaska based individuals and organizations ranked by social media engagements – defined as total likes, comments, and shares on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The 907 Policy Project is using Semrush, a web analytics and social media listening software, to track social media metrics from a total of 196 organizations, individuals, and media outlets with public social media accounts that post about politics and current events in Alaska.
