Researching the virtual constituency: methods for analysing politicians’ use of social media

@JoanneKnowlesUK@RussGlennonLiverpool John Moores University

Perspective & context

Rooted in research on social media and public relations theory & practice, and in teaching practices on 2 modules, Public Communication (L5) & Mass Communications: Policy & Practice (L6) on the Media, Culture, Communication degree programme

Social media have been posited as having the capacity to address accelerating public disengagement from politics, by enabling models of two-way symmetrical communication (Grunig & Hunt, 1984)

However, does e-campaigning actually replicate the patterns of offline campaigning (Vergeer, Hermans & Sams, 2011) and thus reinforce existing patterns of political and institutional dominance?

How can a tool feted for its global reach be effectively used for dialogue with local publics?

Likewise, how can they be used effectively at a local level with students?

Teaching & research methodology

Research training for students in both quantitative & qualitative approaches

Given pedagogical emphasis on developing the student as researcher (HEA; Healey & Jenkins, 2009) seeking to build an understanding of, and experience of, the research process into teaching sessions wherever possible

Content analysis forms part of Level 4 study and enables students to see how quantitative & qualitative approaches can be used in combination

Students can also test out the stages of conducting an analysis: selecting material, identifying categories for coding, carrying out coding and analysing the outcomes

Content analysis

‘A research technique based upon measuring (counting) the amount of something (violence, [...] women, professional types, or whatever) in a random sampling of some forms of communication(such as comics, sitcoms, soap operas, news shows)’ (Berger, 1991, p.92)

A research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context’ (Krippendorff, 1980, p.21)

‘The systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characteristics’ (Neuendorf, 2002, p.1)

Methodology for our project Content analysis as offering ability to conduct

qualitative & quantitative analysis and to scope out areas of interest for project in future

Opportunity sample of MPs – 10/15 selected Research questions turned into draft coding

structure, developed out of that used in Graham et al’s 2013 analysis of 2010 General Election

Coded against six main headings: type of tweet; content of tweet; primary topic; level at which the issue resides; level that the tweet focuses upon; hashtag use

Initial collection period January 2014: N=961

Previous research

Most focuses on the USA (Bimber and Copeland, 2013) with some also on EU elections (Lodge and Sarikakis, 2013; (Vergeer, Hermans and Sams, 2011) & national elections within Europe (Plotkowiak and Stanoevska-Slabeva, 2013; Graham et al. 2013) with some transnational work (Hyun, 2013)

Often either quantitative surveys of frequency (Lamarre &Suzuki-Lambrecht, 2013) or studies of public response within very specific period (Anstead and O’Loughlin, 2011)

Has either a national or local focus, but rarely addresses tensions between the two

We chose to examine a period not occupied by an active election campaign, examining how the PR objective of creating, maintaining and enhancing relationships over the long term was addressed (L’Etang, 2004) and how local and national publics were being addressed

RQ1: Are politicians in our sample using Twitter to discuss & present their position on key political issues?

RQ2: How prolific are the tweeters in our sample and how does this relate to their political affiliation?

1/1/

14

1/2/

14

1/3/

14

1/4/

14

1/5/

14

1/6/

14

1/7/

14

1/8/

14

1/9/

14

1/10

/14

1/11

/14

1/12

/14

1/13

/14

1/14

/14

1/15

/14

1/16

/14

1/17

/14

1/18

/14

1/19

/14

1/20

/14

1/21

/14

1/22

/14

1/23

/14

1/24

/14

1/25

/14

1/26

/14

1/27

/14

1/28

/14

1/29

/14

1/30

/14

1/31

/14

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

AEAMBEEMJPLBLEMESRST

RQ3: What proportion of our research subjects’ tweeting is personal tweeting, and what topics are being covered?

RQ4: What local-national balance is present in the tweets?

National issue, national focus

Local issue, local focus

National issue, local focus

International issue, Int focus

International issue, nat focus

International issue, local focus

National issue, regional focus

Regional issue, regional focus

International issue, regional focus

Regional issue, local focus

0

500

1000

RQ5: How interactive are the research subjects in their tweeting?

27%

10%

48%

3%

0%

10%

1%

BroadcastMentionsRetweetRetweet with commentsRetweet with men-tionsReplyPublic reply

Twitter research & learning opportunities

OPPORTUNITIES

Allows students to practice research techniques, and critical evaluation, on material with which they are familiar and engaged

Consequently students are more likely to integrate this into their independent and self-directed learning

Relevance to a wide range of humanities, education and social science fields of study

CHALLENGES

Difficulties of accessing and storing ephemeral material

Referencing! The medium is not

the message Questions of scope:

managing a potentially large amount of data