seminar at australian national university
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Political communication and social media
Maurice VergeerRadboud University Nijmegen
@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)
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).