On November 6, Americans voiced their decisions at the polls and shared their experiences on social media. People posted a million photos to Instagram tagged with either “vote,” “ivoted,” “election,” or similar phrases, and more than 8 million people on Facebook said they voted.
On Election Day, a massive volume of conversation also transpired on Twitter. Twitter’s engineering team reported that more than 31 million election-related tweets were sent on Election Day, at a rate of 327,452 tweets per minute — which all represented the largest election-related Twitter conversation since the platform’s debut.
Pulled from elections-related hashtags and Twitter surveys by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Storify below captures common experiences on Election Day, from voters’ motivations to the problems they confronted at polling centers.
Jenny Xie is the PBS MediaShift editorial intern. Jenny is a senior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying architecture and management. She is a digital-media junkie fascinated by the intersection of media, design, and technology. Jenny can be found blogging for MIT Admissions, tweeting @canonind, and sharing her latest work and interests here.