scholarly journals Election campaigning on social media: Politicians, audiences and the mediation of political communication on Facebook and Twitter

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Stier ◽  
Arnim Bleier ◽  
Haiko Lietz ◽  
Markus Strohmaier
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Language Model ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Federal Election ◽  
Media Messages ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
Mass Audience ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Online Campaigning

Although considerable research has concentrated on online campaigning, it is still unclear how politicians use different social media platforms in political communication. Focusing on the German federal election campaign 2013, this article investigates whether election candidates address the topics most important to the mass audience and to which extent their communication is shaped by the characteristics of Facebook and Twitter. Based on open-ended responses from a representative survey conducted during the election campaign, we train a human-interpretable Bayesian language model to identify political topics. Applying the model to social media messages of candidates and their direct audiences, we find that both prioritize different topics than the mass audience. The analysis also shows that politicians use Facebook and Twitter for different purposes. We relate the various findings to the mediation of political communication on social media induced by the particular characteristics of audiences and sociotechnical environments.

No Interaction on Instagram

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-51
Author(s):  
Uta Russmann ◽  
Jakob Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
National Election ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Quantitative Content Analysis ◽  
Interaction Processes ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
Social Media Platforms

This chapter addresses a neglected issue within the field of social media and political communication. It focuses on interaction processes on Instagram asking how political parties used Instagram—a platform that is centered around images—when engaging in interaction with their followers on the platform. The focus is on political parties' use of Instagram in the 2014 Swedish national election campaign. This gives an impression of the first attempts of political parties' use of this communication platform. The quantitative content analysis focuses on Instagram images including their captions and comments (posts) that Swedish parties published four weeks prior to Election Day. The results suggest that not much changes on Instagram compared to other social media platforms: Swedish political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers, and the very few interactions taking place did not contribute to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics. Interaction and deliberation are also not enhanced by the images.

scholarly journals Introduction to special issue about election reporting: Why journalism (still) matters

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 985-993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion ◽  
Daniel Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Campaign Coverage ◽  
Election Coverage ◽  
Social Media Platforms

This introduction unpacks the eight articles that make up this Journalism special issue about election reporting. Taken together, the articles ask: How has election reporting evolved over the last century across different media? Has the relationship between journalists and candidates changed in the digital age of campaigning? How do contemporary news values influence campaign coverage? Which voices – politicians, say or journalists – are most prominent? How far do citizens inform election coverage? How is public opinion articulated in the age of social media? Are sites such as Twitter developing new and distinctive election agendas? In what ways does social media interact with legacy media? How well have scholars researched and theorised election reporting cross-nationally? How can research agendas be enhanced? Overall, we argue this Special Issue demonstrates the continued strength of news media during election campaigns. This is in spite of social media platforms increasingly disrupting and recasting the agenda setting power of legacy media, not least by political parties and candidates who are relying more heavily on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to campaign. But while debates in recent years have centred on the technological advances in political communication and the associated role of social media platforms during election campaigns (e.g. microtargeting voters, spreading disinformation/misinformation and allowing candidates to bypass media to campaign), our collection of studies signal the enduring influence professional journalists play in selecting and framing of news. Put more simply, how elections are reported still profoundly matters in spite of political parties’ and candidates’ more sophisticated use of digital campaigning.

scholarly journals 1414. #Vaccine Twitter Influencers: is it Just About Reach and Followers?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S714-S715
Author(s):  
Jean-Etienne Poirrier ◽  
Theodore Caputi ◽  
John Ayers ◽  
Mark Dredze ◽  
Sara Poston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Standard Deviation ◽  
Small Proportion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Media Messages ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background A small number of powerful users (“influencers”) dominates conversations on social media platforms: less than 1% of Twitter accounts have at least 3,000 followers and even fewer have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. Beyond simple metrics (number of tweets, retweets...) little is known about these “influencers”, particularly in relation to their role in shaping online narratives about vaccines. Our goal was to describe influential Twitter accounts that are driving conversations about vaccines and present new metrics of influence. Methods Using publicly-available data from Twitter, we selected posts from 1-Jan-2016 to 31-Dec-2018 and extracted the top 5% of accounts tweeting about vaccines with the most followers. Using automated classifiers, we determined the location of these accounts, and grouped them into those that primarily tweet pro- versus anti-vaccine content. We further characterized the demographics of these influencer accounts. Results From 25,381 vaccine-related tweets available in our sample representing 10,607 users, 530 accounts represented the top 5% by number of followers. These accounts had on average 1,608,637 followers (standard deviation=5,063,421) and 340,390 median followers. Among the accounts for which sentiment was successfully estimated by the classifier, 10.4% (n=55) posted anti-vaccine content and 33.6% (n=178) posted pro-vaccine content. Of the 55 anti-vaccine accounts, 50% (n=18) of the accounts for which location was successfully determined were from the United States. Of the 178 pro-vaccine accounts, 42.5% (n=54) were from the United States. Conclusion This study showed that only a small proportion of Twitter accounts (A) post about vaccines and (B) have a high follower count and post anti-vaccine content. Further analysis of these users may help researchers and policy makers better understand how to amplify the impact of pro-vaccine social media messages. Disclosures Jean-Etienne Poirrier, PhD, MBA, The GSK group of companies (Employee, Shareholder) Theodore Caputi, PhD, Good Analytics Inc. (Consultant) John Ayers, PhD, GSK (Grant/Research Support) Mark Dredze, PhD, Bloomberg LP (Consultant)Good Analytics (Consultant) Sara Poston, PharmD, The GlaxoSmithKline group of companies (Employee, Shareholder) Cosmina Hogea, PhD, GlaxoSmithKline (Employee, Shareholder)

Political communication Modi style: A case study of the demonetization campaign on Twitter

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Usha M. Rodrigues ◽  
Michael Niemann
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
Direct Communication ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Government Websites

Abstract Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) is one of the world's most followed political leaders on Twitter. During the 2014 and 2019 election campaigns, he and his party used various social media networking and the Internet services to engage with young, educated, middle-class voters in India. Since his first sweeping win in the 2014 elections, Modi's political communication strategy has been to neglect the mainstream news media, and instead use social media and government websites to keep followers informed of his day-to-day engagements and government policies. This strategy of direct communication was followed even during a critical policy change, when in a politically risky move half-way through his five-year prime ministership, Modi's government scrapped more than 85 per cent of Indian currency notes in November 2016. He continued to largely shun the mainstream media and use his social media accounts and public rallies to communicate with the nation. As a case study of this direct communication strategy, this article presents the results of a study of Modi's Twitter articulations during the three months following the demonetization announcement. We use mediatization of politics discourse to consider the implications of this shift from mass communication via the mainstream news media, to the Indian prime minister's reliance on direct communication on social media platforms.

scholarly journals Tweeting to save the furniture: the 2013 Australian election campaign on Twitter

2016 ◽  
Vol 162 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Bruns
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Small Target ◽  
Major Party ◽  
Federal Election ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Campaigning ◽  
Target Strategy ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Past years have seen continuing experimentation in the use of social media for political campaigning. By the time of the 2013 Australian federal election, social media of various forms had become comparatively mainstream in Australia and were widely used by members and candidates: more than 350 candidates operated Twitter accounts during the campaign, for instance. This article explores the key patterns both in how politicians and their parties campaigned on Twitter during the 2013 federal election campaign and in how the public responded to and engaged with these campaigns. It documents significant, systematic differences between the major party blocs and interprets these as reflecting the Coalition’s ‘small target’ strategy and Labor’s last-ditch attempts to ‘save the furniture’, respectively.

scholarly journals E-Electioneering 2007–13: Trends in Online Political Campaigns over Three Elections

2014 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Macnamara ◽  
Gail Kenning
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Democratic Engagement ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Following the 2004 US presidential election campaign, which was described as ‘a critical turning point’ in use of social media, and particularly the 2008 Obama campaign, there has been increasing focus on use of social media for political campaigning and what is termed e-electioneering and e-democracy. However, studies of election campaigns between 2010 and 2012 in a number of countries have identified what Steve Woolgar (2002) calls cyberbole in relation to social media for political engagement. With substantive patterns of change in political communication yet to be identified, a quantitative and qualitative study of social media use in the 2013 Australian federal election campaign was conducted using the same methodology as studies of the 2007 and 2010 campaigns to gain comparative longitudinal data. This identified trends in the volume of e-electioneering and the ways in which social media are being used for political communication and democratic engagement.

scholarly journals For the many (but especially for you): The personal, participatory narratives of videos supporting the UK Labour Party’s 2017 election campaign

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel West
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
High Effort

There is a growing body of research on the interplay between increasingly digitally informed political campaigning and citizen engagement in the political sphere both on and offline. While much of the existing scholarship concerns how digital technology impacts engagement, participation and the spread of information, there is limited research into the ways in which specific digital content modes and social media platforms intersect in ways that can lead to increased involvement of individuals in high-effort political activities. This research paper focuses on the personal action framing of campaign videos created in support of the Labour Party’s general election campaign in 2017. Videos created by both the central campaign and the grassroots political organization Momentum were designed to be shared widely over social media platforms to achieve visibility over a broad network of supporters and undecided voters over the course of the campaign. By analyzing the content of these videos, I will show how specific instances of digital media, such as videos, can invite instances of high-effort political participation through personalized political action framing. Drawing on connective action theory, and in particular, the discussion of personalized politics (Bennett, 2012; Bennett & Segerberg, 2013), this research uses thematic content analysis to identify which high-effort political activities are alluded to most often in the video content. By comparing the videos produced by Labour with those of Momentum, this contribution addresses a gap in the existing literature as it relates to how campaigns can benefit from loosely connected ties to organizations that use digital media to expend their networks of influence to develop their strategic capacity. The methods explored in this research can inform future study on the use of campaign videos in political movement building and election campaigns.

scholarly journals Sosiaalisen median kommenttien analyysi multimodaalisesta näkökulmasta digitaalisen journalismin ja poliittisen viestinnän tutkimuksessa

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margareta Salonen ◽  
Elisa Kannasto ◽  
Laura Paatelainen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Individual Mode ◽  
Digital Journalism ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The One

Societal discussions flow on social media platforms that are studied by researchers in multiple ways and through various kinds of data sets that are extracted from them. In the studies of these discussions, multimodality unravels the semiotic modes that are communication resources through which meanings are socially and culturally created and expressed. In addition, the viewpoint of affordances can be used for viewing the functions of social media platforms and their discussions. Furthermore, this review was conducted to better understand how social media comments are researched from the perspective of multimodality in the context of digital journalism and political communication. A systematic literature review and qualitative content analysis were used as methods. The review discovered that the studies under review were not that high in multimodality and that text as an individual mode was the most common one. Furthermore, Twitter was the most researched platform and the one where the use of modes was more thoroughly explained.

scholarly journals Logics of the Icelandic Hybrid Media System

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Birgir Guðmundsson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Media System ◽  
Network Media ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Logic

AbstractThe increased importance of social media platforms and network media logic merging with traditional media logic are a trademark of modern hybrid systems of political communication. This article looks at this development through the media-use by politicians before the 2016 and 2017 parliamentary elections in Iceland. Aggregate results from candidate surveys on the use and perceived importance of different media forms are used to examine the role of the new platform Snapchat in relation to other media, and to highlight the dynamics of the hybrid media system in Iceland. The results show that Snapchat is exploited more by younger politicians and those already using social media platforms. However, in spite of this duality between old and new media, users of traditional platforms still use new media and vice versa. This points to the existance of a delicate operational balance between different media logics, that could change as younger politicians move more centre stage.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel C. Woolley ◽  
Philip N. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The People ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Qualitative Work

Computational propaganda is an emergent form of political manipulation that occurs over the Internet. The term describes the assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, algorithms, and big data tasked with manipulating public opinion. Our research shows that this new mode of interrupting and influencing communication is on the rise around the globe. Advances in computing technology, especially around social automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, mean that computational propaganda is becoming more sophisticated and harder to track. This introduction explores the foundations of computational propaganda. It describes the key role of automated manipulation of algorithms in recent efforts to control political communication worldwide. We discuss the social data science of political communication and build upon the argument that algorithms and other computational tools now play an important political role in news consumption, issue awareness, and cultural understanding. We unpack key findings of the nine country case studies that follow—exploring the role of computational propaganda during events from local and national elections in Brazil to the ongoing security crisis between Ukraine and Russia. Our methodology in this work has been purposefully mixed, using quantitative analysis of data from several social media platforms and qualitative work that includes interviews with the people who design and deploy political bots and disinformation campaigns. Finally, we highlight original evidence about how this manipulation and amplification of disinformation is produced, managed, and circulated by political operatives and governments, and describe paths for both democratic intervention and future research in this space.

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