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U.S. Election Coverage Results in Significant Digital Surge


VOA’s around-the-clock coverage of the U.S. presidential election resulted in noteworthy impact on all digital platforms. The VOA English Facebook page carried five hours of live programming streamed from Studio 22, as well as live shots from outside the White House, and at election result watch parties, garnering thousands of views. The VOA News Center is experiencing a surge of traffic on the English website and social media since Election Day, with the heaviest interest focused on stories explaining what a Trump administration foreign policy might look like, especially toward Asia and Africa. Audiences exhibited great interest in stories that sought to explain how and why Donald Trump won the election.

Due to VOA Indonesian Digital Team’s intensified efforts in covering the U.S. election, VOA Indonesian had the 10th most visited Facebook page in the country the day after the presidential election, ahead of competitor international broadcaster pages like CNN, BBC and DW. In addition, election coverage resulted in VOA Khmer’s post engagement increasing by 149 percent and video interaction (including the Facebook Live videos) by 247 percent. On election night, VOA Vietnamese’s website garnered nearly 700,000 page views. On Facebook, the service's simultaneous translation of Trump's victory speech received more than 180,000 video views with 24,000 reactions.

Tens of thousands of Facebook users viewed Facebook Live videos produced by VOA Eurasia Division reporters in Washington, New York and on the ground across America, from the headquarters of both candidates to the White House, as well as the watch parties organized by U.S. diplomatic missions in the region. VOA Eurasia Division Services syndicated VOA’s interactive election coverage map to key digital outlets in the region that had close to 700,000 visits. Facebook users viewed more than one million Eurasia Division video clips on November 8. The number of digital engagements, such as comments, likes and shares, also grew more than 50 percent and Facebook users netted more than 35,000 engagement reactions.

Thousands of people chose the VOA Spanish Facebook page to comment on the outcome of the election. A single post on Donald Trump's comments about undocumented individuals to be deported made during his first television appearance after his electoral triumph reached more than 530,000 people and garnered more than 8,600 reactions, comments, and shares.

VOA Learning English Facebook page saw a 700 percent increase in reach and post engagement during election week 2016. Facebook Live videos topped 50,000 views. Subtitled post-election videos reached 700,000 Facebook views. Learning English’s subtitled video of Hillary Clinton’s concession speech topped 497,000 views, 11,000 shares, 400 comments and an organic reach of more than 3 million. VOA Learning English live blog and subsequent article garnered 57,000 page views on November 9 alone.

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