The Edelman Global Public Affairs team has released findings from the 2011 Capital Staffers Index, an annual global study that analyzes top trends in global public affairs and communications.

This year’s expanded report is the third annual survey based on interviews with over 500 senior staffers (legislative directors and above) from capital cities in 11 different countries around the world including Washington DC, Brussels, London, Beijing, Ottawa, Mexico City, Paris, Berlin, New Delhi, Buenos Aires and Brasilia.

Although traditional methods public affairs components are still valuable, social media channels have experienced a meteoric rise in their ability to shape and influence policy worldwide over the past year.

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As the 2012 presidential campaign continues to heat up, Election Day 2011 is just around the corner. In less than twelve days, Americans will head to the polls on Tuesday, November 8th to cast votes for various state and local candidates. And, we’ll be almost exactly one year away from voting to determine whether President Obama will serve a second term.

This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Holmes Report’s ThinkTank Live event here in Washington, DC where I discussed the evolving media landscape and the role of social media in shaping politics and public policy. In preparation, I got to thinking about how social media was impacting the election process this early in the race. Between the Romney-Perry video battles and the buzz around Herman Cain’s “smoking” ad featuring his chief of staff Mark Block, it was a perfect week to perform a little deeper analysis.

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Over the past couple weeks, the White House has been all about Twitter.

Of course, President Obama’s team isn’t exactly new to Twitter — and neither is the White House. His official @whitehouse Twitter account has been in use since April 2009 and his @BarackObama campaign handle launched in March 2007. Today, the campaign’s Twitter feed seems to be in full re-election mode with almost 9 million followers and the #Obama2012 staff working to keep it updated with both campaign and official White House news.

So, what’s new? The most recent activity of note is that the president himself is beginning to tweet.

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2009 will most likely be remembered as the year that the Internet expanded beyond the tech set as more people flocked to the web to search and share information — largely due to the growth of social media and the rapid advancements in mobile handheld technology.

Whether in news, entertainment, sports or politics, just about everyone launched a Twitter account this year. At the time of this post, Ashton Kutcher topped the list with 4.2 million followers with Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, John Mayer, CNN, Twitter, Ryan Seacrest and Kim Kardashian rounding out the Top 10 Twitter users.

Facebook, with 350 million users, was the top search term in 2009 and hit #1 for the first time as the most visited site in the U.S. on Christmas and Christmas Eve.

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Well, sort of. I started using Hootsuite, a web based Twitter app, in mid-April 2009. I like many of the site’s features, especially the ability to schedule tweets, manage multiple social media accounts, monitor keywords and track link stats via their propietary URL shortener ow.ly. Get it? Hoot as in “owl.” Pretty clever and just as effective as bit.ly, though I use that occasionally, as well.

At any rate, I have become pretty reliant on Hootsuite and use it almost exclusively when tweeting from my desk. When on Blackberry, I use ÜberTwitter which also offers built in bit.ly URL shortening functionality.

Basically, I was curious to see which of my tweets generated the most interest in 2009. The challenge, however, comes in determining how to measure that. The closest I can estimate is by looking at those with the most clicks.

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This week, Edelman released TweetLevel, the latest web-based tool designed to measure one’s “importance” on Twitter.

For those who haven’t given in to peer pressure to join the site yet, Twitter is a “microblog” that enables users to share thoughts, activities and news via 140 character text updates.

Twitter’s founders had a pretty basic, yet novel idea. They wanted to create a platform where users could connect with each other online to answer one simple question, “What are you doing?”

I’ll admit that when I first joined (@almacy), I just didn’t get it. Besides a few close family members and friends, I remember thinking, “Who really cares what I’m doing?” In fact, my first tweet isn’t exactly going to assist in solving global strife.

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My, what a difference a month makes. That’s right, this past Friday marked exactly one month since Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled those two “spontaneous” words during a Joint Session of Congress in response to President Obama’s claim that his healthcare plan wouldn’t cover illegal immigrants.

President Obama has come a long way from “You Lie!” to being named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize recipient!

Reaction around the world and in the media was certainly mixed with many feeling that this honor was bestowed way too soon – just eight months into his Presidency. In fact, the nomination application deadline for the prize was February 1, just 11 days after Obama took office. We don’t know who nominated him either and we won’t know a long time. They don’t release that information for 50 years.

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From Moldova to Motrin Moms, Twitter has become the arena of coordinated, widespread revolution several times over the last year. Still, when we look back on how the microblogging platform has evolved into a low-barrier tool for grassroots organizing, these will only be footnotes to the events of the last few days in Tehran. As protestors took to the streets of Iran to voice their discontent with the 2009 presidential election results, people from around the world were attentively watching updates from the ground on Twitter, long before hearing reports from any major news outlets.

The collection of status updates on Twitter provided the world an inside look on the dire situation within Iran from firsthand accounts, each message deeply personal and compelling to a worldwide audience. But when the masses turned to their favorite cable news network for more information, they were met with Mike Huckabee talking about credit cards or other irrelevant programming. With no recognizable coverage in mainstream media as events unfolded, it led users to cry foul on the news networks, demanding more information than 140 characters could deliver.

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Last week, the Politico’s Patrick Gavin (@pwgavin) wrote this piece, The Top 10 Most Influential DC Twitterers. According to Patrick, they are:

1. Karl Rove (@karlrove), former White House senior advisor & “Architect”
2. Sen. Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc), U.S. Senator, D-Missouri
3. David Gregory (@davidgregory), host of NBC’s Meet the Press
4. President Barack Obama (@barackobama)
5. Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich), former House Republican Speaker
6. Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox), former Wonkette
7. Sen. Chuck Grassley (@chuckgrassley), U.S. Senator, R-Iowa
8. Joe Trippi (@joetrippi), Democratic campaign adviser
9. Patrick Ruffini (@patrickruffini), GOP strategist
10. Al Gore (@algore), former U.S. Vice President

Of course, as with most lists, there will usually be some disagreement. However, with all due respect, I think that Patrick’s list is way off the mark. All of these folks (with the possible exceptions of Ana Marie, Patrick and Joe) would be influential whether they are on Twitter or not.

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We haven’t seen a whole lot of former Vice President Al Gore lately. He has been relatively quiet since his 2000 presidential run and his endorsement of former Gov. Howard Dean in 2004. There was some conjecture that he might even throw his hat in the ring in 2008. During a keynote at the 2007 PRSA Conference in Philadelphia, the late host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert, pointed out that since losing his bid for the presidency, Gore has won an Oscar, an Emmy and the Nobel Peace Prize, and sits on the boards of numerous corporate giants, including Google. Russert joked that the Oval Office might actually be a step down for Gore!

This cycle, it seems that the former veep has gone from counting chads to tracking tweets via the global TV network Current, which he owns with business partner Joel Hyatt. Current has been on the air since 2005 and provides a variety of short programs, or “pods,” created by users called VC2 producers, as well as longer programs produced by the network.

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