seminar at australian national university

Political communication and social media

Maurice VergeerRadboud University Nijmegen

m.vergeer@maw.ru.nlwww.mauricevergeer.nl

@mauricevergeer

CV

1992-1996 ◦department of communication

1996-2000 ◦department of methodology

2000-2004 ◦Dutch Media Authority

2004- ◦department of communication

2009-2011 ◦Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, South Korea

outline

Political communication◦ My research

Theory◦ Social capital◦ Personalization◦ Political playing field / innovation vs normalization vs equalization

Methodology◦ Content◦ Actions / behavior◦ Unobtrusive measurements◦ Time series analysis◦ Cross-national comparative analysis

Issues and challenges◦ Spam accounts◦ Issues related to the API

Web feature analysis

Web features

Norris (2001)Foot, Schneider, Kluver & Jankowski

(2007)

Norris P (2001) Digital Divide? Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Foot KA, Schneider S M, Kluver R, Xenos M and Jankowski NW (2007) Comparing Web production practices across electoral Web spheres. In: Kluver R, Jankowski NW, Foot KA and Schneider SM (eds), The Internet and National Elections. A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning. London: Routledge, 243-260.

Informing Involving About the producer

Issue positions

Information about campaign

process

Information about voting process

Discussion forum

Join/become a member

Get e-mail from site

Information about donating

money

Opportunity to sign up to

volunteer

Calendar of events

Connecting Mobilizing Endorsement of candidates or

party

Comparison of candidates or

parties on issues

Voter registration information

Offline distribution of online

materials

Send link to page

E-paraphernalia

Facilitating statements of public

support

Web feature analysisResearch questions

To what extent do political parties and candidates for the 2009 EP elections across the EU differ on these Website-feature dimensions?

How can these differences be interpreted in terms of differences in developmental theory and political system characteristics and individual characteristics?

Developmental theory

Human developmentalTechnological developmentPolitical development

Hypotheses

The more fractionalized a political system is, on average the more Website-features will be utilized.

Utilization of Website-features in countries with preferential voting is higher than in countries without preferential voting.

To what extent is the general level of trust in political institutions in countries related to the utilization of Website-features?

The higher the level of human development, the more Website-features will be utilized.

The higher the technological development, the more Website-features will be utilized.

improvements

Party and candidate websites17 countriesRandom instead of selective sampling of

candidatesEmpirical validation of scalesMulti level analysis

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

4,5

Party Candidate

InformingPersonal ReputationConnecting and SharingAudio Visualizations

0,0

0,1

0,2

0,3

0,4

0,5

0,6

0,7

0,8

0,9

1,0

informing personal info social networking AV supply

Different types of dimensions of web features

Contrary to Norris´ and Foot et al.´s studies◦Hardly any country effects

Social media and political communication

New modes of campainging

Premodern campaigns

Tools Print media, rallies,

meetings, foot soldiers

Mode / style Labor-intensive,

interpersonal, amateur

Orientation to

voter

Mobilizing, voters =

loyal partisans

Internal power

distribution

Local-centric

Premodern campaigns Modern campaigns

Tools Print media, rallies,

meetings, foot soldiers

Broadcast television

news, news

advertisements, polls

Mode / style Labor-intensive,

interpersonal, amateur

Capital-intensive,

mediated, indirect

Orientation to

voter

Mobilizing, voters =

loyal partisans

Converting and

mobilizing, voters = loyal

partisans and floating

Internal power

distribution

Local-centric National-centric

Premodern campaigns Modern campaigns Professional

campaigns

Tools Print media, rallies,

meetings, foot soldiers

Broadcast television

news, news

advertisements, polls

Internet, direct mail

Mode / style Labor-intensive,

interpersonal, amateur

Capital-intensive,

mediated, indirect

Capital-intensive,

marketed, targeted,

continuous

Orientation to

voter

Mobilizing, voters =

loyal partisans

Converting and

mobilizing, voters = loyal

partisans and floating

Interactive, voters =

consumers

Internal power

distribution

Local-centric National-centric Local-/national centric,

bifurcation

Premodern campaigns Modern campaigns Professional

campaigns

Personal campaigns

Tools Print media, rallies,

meetings, foot soldiers

Broadcast television

news, news

advertisements, polls

Internet, direct mail Weblogs, micro-blogs,

social network sites

Mode / style Labor-intensive,

interpersonal, amateur

Capital-intensive,

mediated, indirect

Capital-intensive,

marketed, targeted,

continuous

Low-cost, computer-

mediated, networked,

personalized, amateur

Orientation to

voter

Mobilizing, voters =

loyal partisans

Converting and

mobilizing, voters = loyal

partisans and floating

Interactive, voters =

consumers

Hyper interactive,

voters = interested,

personal

Internal power

distribution

Local-centric National-centric Local-/national centric,

bifurcation

Local-/national-centric,

individual and

networked

Based on Norris and Gibson and Römmele, finsl column by Vergeer, Hermans & Sams

Social media

Many platform- Facebook- Twitter- Linkedin- Hyves- RenRen- Cyworld- Orkut- Youtube- Flickr- Plurk- Sina Weibo- Mixi- Etc

Empty platform / infrastructure- Facility

User generated content- Text- Audio- Video- Pictures

Social Networking Sites(SNSs)

Twitter

Hybrid◦Networking

Social Communicative

◦Information news provision

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Internet and politics (query 1) Social media and politics (query 2) Internet, social media and politics (query 3)

Num

ber o

f arti

cles

Source: Vergeer (in press / 2012) in New Media & Society

Number of articles on politics, Internet and social media

The Netherlands

A special case?

South Korea

A special case?

Twitter in South Korea

Extremely wired country◦See e.g.

Banned from the election campaign◦Overruled in court

Massively popularSmartphones offered to MPs of the GNP

0,00

0,20

0,40

0,60

0,80

1,00

1,20

1,40

1,60

1,80

2,00

rate1 # following for each follower

rate2 # tweets for each follower

rate3 # reciprocal relation for each follower

rate4 # reciprocal relation for each following

Korea parliament Korea local elections 2010Netherlands general elections

Hypotheses

Candidates from parties that do not belong to the establishment have adopted Twitter more frequently and micro-blog more frequently than candidates from parties that belong to the establishment.

To what degree is ideology related to candidates’ adoption and micro-blogging activity?

The less priority the party has given a candidate, the more likely this candidate adopts and uses Twitter more actively.

The more seats a party has lost in the last general elections (external shock), the more likely it is that its candidates use Twitter;

Candidates from political parties with uncertain leadership (internal shock) will use micro-blogging more extensively.

Data sources

• Within Twitter (using the API)• Username• Account creation data• # of followers

• And the actual usernames of these followers• # of followers

• And the actual usernames of those being followed• Tweet text

• And many more (see dev.twitter.com)

Tweet◦ Tweet text

◦ Whether or not it was a reply to another tweet To whom it was a reply (username/screenname and numerical

userid)

◦ Whether or not it was a retweet (according to Twitter) Which tweet was retweeted (nunerical tweetid)

Type of content

Message of tweet

Whether or not is was a directed tweet (sent to someone in particular)◦Identified by an @-sign

Whether or not is was a retweet◦Identified by RT

Tweet examples

Undirected tweet◦ RCMP Commissioner appearing before Public Safety Cmte now. What a

popular guy - he has his own paparazzi!

Directed tweet◦ Fantastic blog by my good friend @GlenPearson - http://bit.ly/hlAKXp

#lpc

Directed tweet to two usernames◦ @miken32 @CBCEdmonton probably because that is NOT what I said--

more commercially viable is different than not needed.

Retweet◦ RT @liberal_party: Think Durham deserves better than Bev Oda? Join

@BobRaeMP for a rally tomorrow at 1pm http://lpc.ca/durham #cdnpoli #lpc

Content analysis of tweets

Traditional material◦ Produced by professional actors◦ Newspapers◦ Public administration documents

Social media◦ Produced by

professional actors general public

Data extraction

Large quantities of data

Word frequencies◦ Identifying the most important words in the corpus◦ Code these words into more general categories

Switch to SPSS (or other type of data management tool)◦ Search for the words in the actual tweets◦ Assign tweet to a specific code

Improvements in SPSS◦ Compute command facilitates many new text operators◦ Char.index, Char.substr, etc

Alternative◦ Regular expressions◦ complex

Communication network

Communication network analysis

Total tweets by candidates, followers and followed:◦ 4,536,854 tweets

Breakdown◦ Tweets among candidates: appr 2%◦ Tweets to inner circles (followers or being followed)

appr 18%◦ Tweets to outer circle: appr 33%◦ Tweets not directed to anyone in particular

appr 49%

◦ Extracting users from tweets (@adresses)

Communication network analysis

Communication network based on candidates identified in tweets

Excluding the general public

Limitations in data collection

Retrospective◦3200 tweets back in time

Cost technical◦Access to Firehose for real time data

Reliability of data as provided by the API

Date of tweet◦ Minute fraction is time stamped with the wrong date

Solution◦ Estimate date and time using the tweetid

Status of tweet as retweet◦ RT

Solution: Use text search operators to identify real retweets (“RT ”, “rt “)

Also see http://tinyurl.com/bohhjzn

Reply to tweets◦ Only the first address is identified

Solution◦ Search for multiple @-addresses using text extraction methods

Thank you for your attention

Referenced articles

Vergeer, M. (accepted for publication/2012). Politics, elections and online campaigning: Past, present ... and a peek into the future. New Media & Society.

Hermans, L. & Vergeer, M. (accepted for publication/2012). Personalisation in e-campaigning: Cross-national comparison of personalisation strategies used on candidate websites of 17 countries in EP-elections 2009. New Media & Society.

Vergeer, M. & Hermans, L. (accepted for publication/2013). Campaigning on Twitter. Micro-blogging and online social networking as campaign tools in the 2010 general elections in the Netherlands. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

Vergeer, M., Hermans, L. & Cunha, C. (accepted for publication/2012). Political parties, candidates, and Web campaigning in the 2009 European Parliament elections. New Media & Society.

Vergeer, M., Hermans, L., & Sams, S. (forthcoming). Online social networks and micro-blogging in political campaigning: The exploration of a new campaign tool and a new campaign style. Party Politics. DOI: 10.1177/1354068811407580

Vergeer, M., Eisinga, R. & Franses, Ph.H. (2012). Supply and demand effects in television viewing. A time series analysis. Communications - The European Journal of Communication Research, 37, 79-98.

Vergeer, M., Hermans, L., & Sams, S. (2011). Is the voter only a tweet away? Micro-blogging in the 2009 European Parliament elections. First Monday, 16(8).