The Definitive Story of How President Obama Mined Voter Data to Win A Second Term | MIT Technology Review
►http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters
they had identified a three-step process they called “Wood’s Triangle.”
Within three or four days of a new entity’s entry into the conversation, either through paid ads or through the news cycle, it was possible to make a well-informed hypothesis about whether the topic was likely to win media attention by tracking whether it generated Twitter chatter. That informal conversation among political-class elites typically led to traditional print or broadcast press coverage one to two days later, and that, in turn, might have an impact on the horse race. “We saw this process over and over again,” says Lundry.
They began to think of ads as a “shock to the system”—a way to either introduce a new topic or restore focus on an area in which elite interest had faded.
