Expert: Social media helping Romney momentum post-debate

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE)--Twitter reports more than 10 million tweets during Wednesday night’s presidential debate.  That makes it the most tweeted event in U.S. politics.   A professor at IPFW said a statistic like that could be helping Romney’s momentum Thursday.

Michael Wolf is an associate professor of political science at IPFW.  He said the reaction to the first debate in the 2012 election has been unique.  In previous years, the majority of evaluation would include a lot of talk from the traditional media.

“We've added something to it now with social media kind of providing its own spin room live as things are going,” Wolf said.  “So it is an interesting addition.”

Wolf agrees with polls that have Romney winning the first presidential debate.  He thinks the mass amount of knee-jerk reactions online added an element that gave more life to Romney.

“I think in some level you get the social media component providing a more vivid and quick [reaction],” Wolf said.  “They don't have time to think about it.  They're hitting their thumbs and giving a response that's probably a little more direct and genuine than when we get in the post-debate.”

President Obama and Mitt Romney were back on the campaign trail Thursday.  Wolf said voters should look for lots of fact-checking in the post-debate follow up.

“The next stage that usually happens is a lot of digging into the details of what people said and fact checking,” Wolf said.  “I think the one area the president really went after was whether Mitt Romney provided enough detail and I think that will be kind of an issue.”

NewsChannel 15 will be covering the 2012 presidential election , including all the debates, on all platforms, including social media.  Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

The vice presidential debate is October 11.  The next presidential debate will be in a town hall format.  It will be October 16.

The final Presidential Debate is scheduled for Oct. 22 with a focus on Foreign Policy.