has new media provided effective ways to politically motivate and engage citizens: a study of the...

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Has New Media Provided Effective Ways

to Politically Motivate and Engage

Citizens?

A study of the use of Twitter in the 2012 US

Presidential Election Campaign

- Matthew Trollope, 4739523

- School of Political, Social and International

Studies

- April 2013

- Sanna Inthorn

Word Count: 8785. Including the “text only, not including appendices, footnotes,

endnotes, bibliographies, graphs, charts, diagrams, tables and their labels.” (UEA Word

Count Policy, 2013)

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Table of Contents

List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... 2

List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................... 2

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 3

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Literature Review .................................................................................................................................... 4

Twitter Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 13

Methodology ......................................................................................................................................... 14

Data Collection ...................................................................................................................................... 15

Reliability Testing .................................................................................................................................. 16

Research Questions .............................................................................................................................. 17

Findings ................................................................................................................................................. 18

Discussion.............................................................................................................................................. 22

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 27

Appendices ............................................................................................................................................ 29

Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 30

List of Figures

Figure 1. Screenshot of data coding spread sheet in Microsoft Excel with categorisations and

coding added.

Figure 2. List of users who have retweeted a message. Twitter. (2013). 'RT if you agree...'.

Available: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/311545647436275712. Last accessed

16th April 2013.

Figure 3. Retweeted Message. Twitter. (2013). ‘@common_genious: RT if you agree…’.

Available: https://twitter.com/common_genius. Last accessed 16th April 2013.

List of Tables Table 1. Statistics of total number and frequency of tweets and how many retweets were

achieved.

Table 2. Data for tweets posted that called for offline action from the reader.

https://twitter.com/common_genius

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Table 3. Data for tweets posted that called for online action from the reader.

Table 4. Data for tweets posted that amounted to ‘one way’ communication with the reader.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my dissertation supervisor Giuseppe Veltri for his help whilst

completing this report, reading over drafts, providing me with materials and offering

technical guidance. Along with all the authors referenced in my bibliography I would like to

thank Twitter for making large amounts of content available and for providing an easy to

use, entertaining and exciting social media platform. Also, I would like to thank the websites

timeanddate.com and springfrog.com for providing tools to calculate the amount of hours

between two inputted times and the conversions between decimal and ‘standard’ time

respectively.

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Introduction

This dissertation will begin with a literature review that will explore the arguments

surrounding the effectiveness and use of new media in electoral campaigns. I will review

literature explaining how electoral campaigns have changed and how new media has

become a part of the new, permanent campaign. I will move on to literature explaining how

the internet has been used by political parties. There is much debate around how web 2.0

sites such as social networks are being used by political parties and whether these sites can

be utilised to motivate and engage voters, increasing motivation and participation due to

interactive messages or whether new media is merely a modernisation of traditional

political communication. The debates in the literature focus on whether online activity by

individuals is likely to translate in to offline activity due to the small amount of effort

needed to become connected with politics online. I will investigate how the Barack Obama

and Mitt Romney campaigns in 2012 used Twitter and whether it was used merely as a new

device for one way communication of political messages. I will assess whether the campaign

harnessed the power of the site to create an echo chamber, with interactive messages

inspiring discussion and debate in the attempt to mobilise individuals. Or even further than

this, whether campaign used Twitter as a call to arms to create strong ties with supporters

and inspire offline action or strong engagement with the campaign such as financial

donations.

Literature Review

Norris (1999) explains; since the late twentieth century we have experienced the

‘post-modern’ campaign. Norris attributes this to the emergence of a ‘more independent,

dealigned press’ (1999, 23) coupled with a ‘diversification of electronic media outlets’ (ibid)

which have led to political parties seeking new ways to control the media through strategic

management in what Norris calls the ‘permanent campaign’ (ibid). One key facet of the

post-modern campaign era is the rise of electronic media and ‘narrowcasting’ (1999, 33).

Narrowcasting enables citizens to choose what media they wish to consume from a large

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number of sources. The internet is a perfect example of this, with huge amounts of sites

offering political information. At the time of writing, internet usage was not as widespread

as it is today, Norris concludes; ‘the internet promises to provide new recourses for the

politically mobilized’ (1993, 34).

Margolis and Resnick (2000) explain that although the internet reduces

organisational costs of political groups, they do not believe the Internet will be as effective

as a campaigning tool, stating; ‘the flowers are not blossoming in the way the optimists

hoped’ (2000, 54).

Between 1996 and 1998 the authors contacted webmasters of American political

party websites and found; ‘none believed their websites had significant electoral impact’

(2000, 65). The authors explain they were told that websites were seen by political parties

as an excellent means of communication, however they did not raise large sums of money.

Margolis and Resnick explain ‘virtual party headquarters are no substitute for money and

organisation on the ground’ (2000, 66) and the existence of party websites serve merely as

‘demonstrations of modernity’ (ibid).

However, Howard Dean’s 2004 US Presidential campaign accumulated over

$15,000,000 in small donations after a successful use of online social networking site

MeetUp.com which allows users to create events and move their online groups into the

offline world (Wolf, 2004). This has set the trend for more extensive use of new media for

political communication and fund raising in electoral campaigning, particularly in the USA.

Margolis and Resnick conclude; the average person is not motivated or actively

engaged in politics and although the internet makes it easier for individuals to get

information and receive messages from political parties ‘we cannot expect people to

overcome their habitual indifferences unless parties motivate them to follow politics more

closely’ (2000, 72).

Hindman (2009) builds upon this study; explaining traffic to political websites is very

slight compared to traditional media sources of political information. He points out most

people get their political information online from a few sites which they revisit often; this

does not give them access to oppositional arguments or challenge attitudes. Hindman states

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‘in large part, citizens use search engines to seek out familiar sites and sources’ (2009, 132).

However, it is worth noting that for many people, social networks are sites they visit often,

these sites can expose users to the many different political views of their friends and from

the political news sources or parties they subscribe to.

Vaccari (2012) explains; electoral campaigns are finding new ways to improve the

reception and acceptance of their messages. The author explains the traditional view of new

media is that it merely reinforces political attitudes. Vaccari identifies the RAS (receive-

accept-sample) model first used by Zaller (1992), explaining there are three ways a political

message can be read and resisted; these are varying degrees of conscious and unconscious

resistance. See Vaccari (2012, 3). The most politically aware citizens will receive messages

but are less likely to accept them, and the least politically aware citizens are most likely to

accept messages but are less likely to receive them due to their media and news

consumption habits. The author explains; message intensity plays a part in how likely it is

that the message is accepted by individuals.

Vaccari (2012) explains that mundane internet tools (Nielsen, 2010) such as emails

from political parties are usually only accessed by those who are most politically aware who

have chosen to receive this media through mailing lists, potentially proving through the RAS

model that the online campaign has little other effect than reinforcement of views.

However, the author explains there have been qualitative changes in e-campaigning

such as the use of social networking sites. These sites offer a space where people can

publicly contribute to messages posted by politicians. The ability to view the actions of

friends on social media increases the likelihood of individuals encountering opposition

messages in non-political spaces and thus increases in intensity of messages. It is suggested

that e-campaigns have the potential to re personalise the campaign as individuals have the

ability to talk to politicians on social media sites (Gronbeck and Wiese, 2005, 529).

Vaccari (2012) used qualitative research methods to interview political consultants

about their use of new media. His findings were that the last few days of the campaign were

used to organise voters and get them to the polling station to vote, but for the most part,

new media use was for persuasion (2012, 7).

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Vaccari (2012) explains the ability of a campaign to reach undecided voters depends

on how much effort the online platform demands from the user. For example, connecting to

a candidate’s page on Facebook is very easy; this could lead to more undecided voters being

reached by campaign messages, this is called a low threshold activity. These activities are

key for Vaccari as acts such as following a candidate on Twitter are not demanding and

therefore less motivated voters do not avoid these activities. Supporters can redistribute

messages to contacts which can create increasing reception of messages and possible

persuasion (2012, 11). The intensity of the electoral campaign message can increase

through redistribution by individuals as this serves as an endorsement. Interpersonal

communication can lead to higher reception rates and can also increase the acceptance

rates due to the message being communicated between friends who are trusted sources to

each other.

This is a central point in the study of the mobilising effect of new media in my

opinion. Shirky (2011, 4) recalls a study by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) looking into the mass

media effect at the 1948 US presidential election. They concluded opinion forming was a

two step process, firstly, opinions are transmitted by the media and then they are echoed by

friends and family who act as opinion leaders and increase the intensity of the message and

the likelihood of acceptance. Shirky (ibid) explains how new media is useful in this opinion

forming stage. When a politician shares a message on a social media site that encourages

responses, they will be able to create a buzz around a certain issue. When an individual

responds to this message, all the people they are connected to will be able to see both the

responding message from their acquaintance, and also the original message from the

politician. This creates an echo chamber and can raise awareness, as well as acceptance

rates of the campaign message.

Gladwell (2010) however, questions how effective the ‘low threshold’ use of social

media actually is. Gladwell explores the recent ‘Twitter Revolutions’ in Moldova and Iran

and explains Twitter was not as useful as it may have been first thought, suggesting the

majority of Tweets came from the West. Gladwell draws upon the work of Doug McAdam

(1993) and his work on the ‘strong tie’ phenomenon. Gladwell explains ‘one study of the

Red Brigades, the Italian terrorist group of the nineteen-seventies, found that seventy per

cent of recruits had at least one good friend already in the organization’ (2010). By

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highlighting this research, Gladwell is suggesting that these strong ties are unlikely to

develop on the internet as opposed to through face to face communication with someone

already involved. However, as online social networks are merely used as modernisations of

communication techniques, it is my understanding that strong ties may still be able to

develop so long as the relationship between the members of a political group do not only

communicate through this method.

Linking to the thoughts of Vaccari (2012), Gladwell explains the ‘weak ties’ that social

networks can create. Gladwell argues ‘social networks are effective at

increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires’

(2010). Gladwell expands; ‘Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a

real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not

motivated enough to make a real sacrifice’ (2010).

Haridakis and Hanson (2011) studied the 2008 American presidential electoral

campaign and explain the salience of new media. They explain that YouTube, Facebook and

Twitter were all new websites and Myspace.com was also less than one year old before the

previous election. The authors write; ‘the rise of the media provided new conduits by which

information could flow in multiple directions between media professionals and the audience’

(2011, 61). They argue the ‘exponential increase’ in paths of communication has ‘changed

the media distribution model fundamentally’ (ibid). The claims of the authors are backed up

by Hall (2009), who explains from a survey by the Pew research centre, it was found that ‘52%

of those with a social networking profile on a site such as Facebook used it for political

purposes’ (2009).

The authors suggest whilst traditional forms of media such as newspapers and TV

were dominant in terms of disseminating political information in 2008, ’the landscape was

beginning to shift’ (2011, 62). Haridakis and Hanson draw upon the work of Tedesco (2006),

who explains social media has a positive effect of political efficacy. As social media is

interactive, a voter online can engage with a message posted by a party, they can share it

with their friends and debate the message with other followers of the party. Haridakis and

Hanson explain ‘young people who are more self-efficacious may be less politically apathetic’

and more likely to vote (2011, 65).

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Haridakis and Hanson’s research conclusions explain younger citizens used social

media significantly and also found the internet more useful in acquiring political. However,

the authors explain ‘younger voters turned to the internet as a whole more than they did to

the individual functions of social media’ (2011, 77). The study concludes with the authors

explaining that traditional use of the internet (newspapers online for example), TV and

newspapers are the ‘big 3’ when it comes to political communication, but as young voters

adopt social networks as their chosen media outlet ‘political wars of the future may play out

more and more in these mediated spaces’ (2011, 78).

However, Nielsen (2010) explains he believes that mundane internet tools such as

email are more important to political parties than emerging tools such as social media (2011,

4). Nielsen goes on to explains from his research, he found staffers used email to maintain

relationships with potential volunteers, explaining; ‘people are simply much more likely to

work for a campaign if someone asks them to.’ (2010, 6). The author goes on to state that in

recent years there has been a resurgence in attempts to mobilise participants to help out in

electoral campaigns by organizers. To do this they have used email for ‘personalized political

communication’ (ibid) to cut through the ‘clutter’ of advertising and direct mail individuals

are subjected to during electoral campaigns.

Nielsen explains that tools such as web searches and email ‘are increasingly

mundane, not developed specifically for political purposes, and equally available to staffers

and volunteers’ (2010, 9). The fact mundane internet tools such as email are available to

nearly everyone willing to participate in electoral campaigning means its reach is much

wider, unlike social networks where membership tends to consist of mainly young people.

Nielsen explains; ‘mundane internet tools like email and search are integral to the everyday

work of identifying, recruiting, and retaining campaign volunteers. The ubiquity of these

technologies attests to their importance’ (2010, 25).

Nielsen continues; whilst Facebook was used in the 2008 congressional campaign in

the US, its effectiveness was limited. Whilst many groups were set up, they were often only

updated by staffers and rarely got comments and thus amounted to one way

communication. To highlight this, he recalls when he asked ‘the volunteer coordinator in one

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campaign how many volunteers they had recruited via social networks like Facebook, he just

laughed at my question’ (2010, 17).

Through mundane internet tools, Nielsen explains it is possible to meet the public

‘where they are’ (2011, 26). When parties do this they can ‘actually realize some of the

much-vaunted mobilizing potential of the internet in practice, and get people involved.’

(2010, 26)

Pippa Norris (2000) supports the idea of the mobilising potential of ‘personalised

political communication’ online. The author draws upon the work of Putnam (2000) and his

famous work; Bowling Alone. Putnam explains that In the USA traditional social groups have

long been in decline. Putnam argues individuals no longer have large community networks

that contain politically mobilising influences, reducing their social capital which has

‘contributed towards long term erosion of American voter turnout’ (2000, 256). Therefore it

is up to political parties to act as mobilising forces. Norris explains that through direct

communication online, political parties ‘can serve to increase party and candidate support

amongst electors and the propensity to turn out’ (2000, 257). However, Norris qualifies her

conclusion and states; political communication by political parties through new media is

more likely to have a reinforcement effect upon individuals, explaining; ‘at present, politics

on the internet reinforces the activism of the activists, rather than magically transforming

the apathetic into engaged citizens.’ (2000, 266). At the time of writing (2000) however,

there were not the large amounts of social networks online as there are today. From

Nielsen’s (2010) and Norris’s (2000) conclusions about direct communication online I believe

through positive party messages directed at voters on sites such as Facebook and Twitter

where only low threshold activity is needed, there is a very real possibility that new media

can have a mobilising, motivational and engaging effect upon individuals, particularly as the

use of these sites becomes more widespread.

In 2008, campaign site MyBarackObama.com was used effectively. This site built

upon the ideas of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 using meetup.com to organise

supporters. The site allowed supporters to set up profiles to communicate with other

activists and donate to the campaign. Barko-Germany (2009) explains; ‘MyBarackObama

was designed to use the internet to recreate as much as possible offline relationships by

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allowing members to meet each other’ (2009, 156). Creation of offline relationships enabled

campaign activists and less motivated supporters to easily move between low threshold

activities of making a profile on the site and getting involved with public meetings and

campaign events. Barko-Germany explains this was an ingenious way of ‘harnessing the

excitement and energy’ (ibid) of the campaign and utilising all the positive aspects of the

online ‘echo chamber effect’ whilst also channelling ‘energy into real activities that met the

goals of the campaign’ (ibid). Through MyBarackObama.com, the Obama campaign

managed to create strong ties between members of an online social network. Successes of

this campaign are shown by the large sums of money the Obama campaign received in

donations, the campaign raised a total of $650,000,000, crediting online donors for this

success.

Ancu explains how Twitter became an important communication tool for both

candidates and supporters in the 2008 US Presidential Election campaign. She explains;

‘Political candidates adoption of Twitter and similar social network Web sites recognizes

changing media consumption patterns of the American electorate’ (Ancu, 2011, 14). The

type of internet media consumption is also changing, with 2009 figures suggesting ‘internet

users were spending more time on social networking websites than on email’ (ibid). This

surge in popularity seems to suggest social networking sites are moving in to the realm of

‘mundane internet tools’ rather than ‘emerging tools’ in the definition of Nielsen (2010).

Ancu concludes; Twitter use by both candidates and voters in the 2008 campaign

was mainly used for disseminating information instead of engaged political discussion, but

explains that this ‘communication mode has plenty of potential for important consequences

on political life’ (2011, 20). While some Twitter activity may be ‘ill-informed ranting’ from

voters, it can ‘create awareness of group activity’ (ibid) as it gives individuals a platform to

express personal opinions. Those that do not post Tweets can still become more engaged as

a result of being on the site due to the ability it hands politicians to disseminate campaign

information to large numbers of people and the ability of their supporters to ‘retweet’

(share) this information to their online friends. This argument extends to the idea that even

if politicians do not directly interact with followers they can still gain support online through

the use of Twitter.

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To conclude this section, I will sum up the key debates that exist in the literature

surrounding the use of new media in electoral campaigning. Norris (1999) brought about

the idea of narrowcasting in the post modern campaign, where individuals can chose the

media they consume from a huge range of sources, and as such, political parties can focus

their mobilising attempts to sections of media where niche groups are likely to be paying

attention. Margolis and Resnick (2000) and Hindman (2009) broadly agreed that political

advertising in new media spaces such as online was broadly a modernisation of old

campaigning techniques where the old political elites would be the only ones receiving

these new media messages. However, with the advent of social media there became a real

possibility that parties could begin to communicate to new sections of the population.

Vaccari (2012) brilliantly explains the theory of how political messages are received,

explaining the paradox that those who are most likely to receive messages are those who

are less likely to be influenced. This is a key debate over whether these campaign messages

online are merely reinforcing ideas already held by politically engaged voters, or mobilising

new supporters. The debate over high and low threshold activities when identifying and

participating with a political message online is important. Most agree; simply linking your

social network profile to a political party online is a low threshold activity, Gladwell (2010)

explains that this will only create weak ties between the individual and political party, and

the political messages received are unlikely to make them act offline due to the voter’s

apathy. Haridakis and Hanson (2011) however explain this activity can increase political

efficacy as individuals engage with the messages of parties and as such, friends they are

connected to online will also become exposed to these messages. There is still the debate

however that strong ties between individuals and the party are needed in order to have any

mobilisation effect. Nielsen (2010) explains how mundane internet tools such as email are

more important than web 2.0 tools for parties due to their ubiquity and ability to

communicate personally with voters to get them to act in the offline world, creating strong

ties. The example of MyBarackObama.com in the 2008 presidential election however, seems

to have combined the echo chamber effect of creating hype about a campaign whilst

simultaneously creating strong ties between individuals offline. Whilst the use of Twitter by

Obama in 2008 was largely for one way communication as explained by Ancu (2009), I will

explore whether any lessons were learned from MyBarackObama.com in 2008 and whether

the usage of the site changed in attempt to create more strong ties from low threshold

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activities. Ancu’s analysis of Twitter use in 2008 is interesting, but as Wortham puts it; ‘If the

presidential campaigns of 2008 were dipping a toe into social media like Facebook and

Twitter, their 2012 versions are well into the deep end’ (2012, 1).

Twitter Analysis

I will analyse the use of Twitter by both Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s

campaign teams in the week leading up to polling day for the 2012 US Presidential Election

on November 6th. For an in depth explanation of Twitter and the explanation of ‘retweets’,

see appendix A.

Retweets on Twitter are particularly important as they have the ability to draw the

attention of individuals who do not follow political candidates on the site. Vaccari (2012)

and Shirky (2011) explain how the opinion forming process is influenced by acquaintances

and how the endorsement of a friend can increase the intensity of a message. From the

example in Appendix A, a follower of @common_genius who is not engaged with the

political debate may see the message from Obama through the retweet shown. This

endorsement combined with the content of the tweet from Obama, may increase his

support for Obama. This is low threshold political activity online, but the dissemination of

messages by supporters can help to foster public support for a candidate amongst those

who are not specifically on the site to debate political matters. This can be seen to be a case

of politics attempting to meet the public ‘where they are’ (Nielsen, 2010, 26). For this

reason I have used the number of retweets a tweet from either campaign achieved as the

main marker of how successful the message was.

Interactivity on Twitter can have a twofold mobilising potential. Firstly, the individual

connected to the political candidate will increase their political efficacy as they become

engaged in a political debate (Haridakis and Hanson, 2011). Secondly, their followers will

become aware the individual is communicating campaign information, and thus will become

more aware of the political messages. Whilst these are weak ties that are being created,

once the individual is convinced by the campaign message, the Twitter campaign can then

attempt to create stronger ties and demand more action from the individual. I will assess to

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what extent the Obama and Romney campaigns used Twitter as a ‘call to arms’, using the

site to mobilise individuals to volunteer, donate money or merely just to vote. Secondly I

will assess to what extent each campaign used the interactive nature of the site to create an

echo chamber.

Methodology

My research method will be a content analysis of tweets, as described by

Krippendorff (2004) and Weber (1990). Krippendorff defines content analysis as ‘a research

technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts to the contexts of their use’

(2004, 18). Weber (1990) lists a number of ways in which content analysis can be used, from

this, my content analysis will be used to; ‘identify the intentions of the communicator’, and

to ‘describe trends in communication content’ (1990, 9).

My content analysis will be done through classification of tweets, coded by myself

and then checked by another coder to ensure reliability. My coding scheme will be to

analyse one tweet at a time. I will create classifications through a top down approach where

I will pre determine the type of tweets I am likely to encounter and then create categories

for these tweets. I will then move on to a bottom up approach where I will create new

categories for tweets that contain new types content not previously anticipated during data

collection. My categories are not mutually exclusive as a single tweet can contain many

defining features, for example the use of an embedded photo and a call for an offline action.

I will use thematic networks as explained by Attride-Stirling (2001) in order to group the

large numbers of basic themes into organising themes. For example, the basic themes of

tweets containing embedded pictures and embedded videos can be grouped into the

organising theme of ‘containing visual media content’.

My categorizations will be tested on a sample of tweets to ensure there are no

ambiguities in my coding scheme, also, through inter coder reliability testing I will ensure

not only that my data is coded correctly but also that my coding scheme is reliable.

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Data Collection

To access the Tweets from the Barack Obama campaign, I searched Twitter using the

term ‘Find:BarackObama’. This enables the user to view all tweets posted from the account

@BarackObama. I then scrolled through posts to October 31st 2012, one week before

polling day on November 6th. I did the same, instead using the search term

‘Find:MittRomney’ to find tweets posted from the official campaign page of Mitt Romney.

I then created a spread sheet using Microsoft excel to code my data, adding

categorisations that can be seen in Figure 1.

At this point I began to collect my data, coding the results of the content analysis by

entering a ‘1’ if the tweet did not contain the type of content explained in the category

column above and a ‘2’ if the tweet did contain the type of content.

Tweet #1 read:

@BarackObama: Foreign policy heavyweights break down the stark contrast between the

President & Gov. Romney on Iran: http://OFA.BO/DKdUXm #RomneyNotReady

This tweet had ‘2’s placed in the category columns for ‘Embedded Video’, ‘Hashtag

Used’ and ‘Policy Detail’. As a note, whilst the tweet contains a link, Twitter automatically

embeds videos into the tweet, thus this link is not counted as an external link. The Tweet

also does not directly ask the user to watch the video, whilst this may be implied there is not

a direct call for online action so there was a ‘1’ placed in the ‘Calls for Online Action’ column.

The tweet clearly states the video contains details of Obama’s policy on Iran so a ‘2’ was

placed in the ‘Policy Detail’ category. Also, the hash tag ‘#RomneyNotReady’ was used in

this tweet. Hash tags are used commonly on Twitter and allow users to categorise their

tweets and when clicked, they allow the user to view all other tweets with the same hash

tag. Thus I included the ‘Hash Tag Used’ category through a ‘bottom up’ categorisation

technique and entered a ‘2’ in the column.

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Next to the Tweet number and date/time column, I added the number of retweets

the tweet achieved, which in this case was 494.

Reliability Testing

After analysing 30 tweets I felt I had an adequate amount of categories and began to

test my coding scheme on a further sample of 10 tweets, as well as giving another coder a

sample of 15 to assess my accuracy.

From content analysis of 15 tweets I made 34 categorisations, my coding partner

matched my results on 28 out of these 34 categorisations, an accuracy rating of 82%. My

coding partner suggested a new category for ‘direct links to other users’ on Twitter. This

bottom up categorisation enabled me to create a new category of tweet in my coding

scheme.

The inter coder reliability test highlighted the ambiguity of the ‘calls for online action’

categorisation. My coding partner suggested that a tweet that asks the user to retweet

could also be categorised as a ‘call for online action’. From this debate I have edited my

coding scheme to only categorise a ‘call for online action’ as actions that are asked for on

websites outside of Twitter. The other categories in the coding scheme such as ‘asks for

retweet’ assess fully how the campaign teams attempt to get their followers to create an

echo chamber on Twitter. Once all these basic themes are detected and recorded in the

data, tweets that call followers into action both on Twitter and on other websites can be

grouped together into the organising theme of ‘online action’. I feel from this inter coder

reliability testing that my coding scheme has been tested well and is more accurate as a

result.

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Figure 1. Screenshot of data coding spread sheet in Microsoft Excel with categorisations and

coding added.

Research Questions

1. Barack Obama’s campaign will attempt to mobilise voters and create offline action

through his tweets more frequently than Mitt Romney’s campaign.

2. Obama’s campaign will use interactive tweets more frequently than the Romney

campaign; conversely, the Romney campaign will use non interactive tweets more

frequently than the Obama campaign.

In order to determine the frequency of tweets attempting to mobilise followers into

offline action, I shall create a frequency table to determine how often each campaign

attempted to foster offline activities from voters. From these frequency tables I can read

which campaign was most committed to the creation of strong ties through its Twitter

campaign. I will also be able to sort my tweets so all tweets calling for offline action are

placed at the top of my spread sheet, from this I can view how successful in terms of

retweets these tweets were. My secondary hypothesis is that these tweets will gain more

retweets than the mean across all tweets.

By viewing the coded data I can analyse how often each candidate used tweets that

amounted to merely ‘one way communication’ and conversely, how often they attempted

to get a response from the public. By organising my data into thematic networks by creating

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categories for the organising themes of both interactive and non-interactive tweets I can

create frequency tables to read my data.

Findings

An initial finding from my data was the extent to which the Barack Obama campaign

was used Twitter compared to the Romney campaign. In the same one week period, the

Obama campaign twitter account posted 325 tweets, whereas the Romney campaign

account posted 37.

Tweets posted from the Mitt Romney Twitter account received a mean of 2953

retweets and on the Obama Twitter account a mean of 2952 retweets was recorded. When

assessing total support, @BarackObama received 959,295 retweets in total, whereas

@MittRomney received 109,250.

The Barack Obama campaign posted 325 tweets between 12.33am on the 31st

October 2012 and 10.01pm on the 6th November 2012. This time period accounts for 165.5

hours (rounded up by 2 minutes). However, the latest tweet posted from either the Mitt

Romney or Barack Obama account was at 1.07am (@BarackObama on 6th November 2012)

and the earliest was posted at 6.07am (@MittRomney on 6th November 2012). Removing

this 5 hour time period where both Twitter accounts were inactive on all days of the

investigation means we are left with an active time period of 135.5 hours. Thus, a tweet was

posted from the Obama account every 0.42 waking hours, converting to a tweet being

posted every 25 minutes.

The Romney account posted 37 tweets in this time period with the first posted on

the 31st October 2012 at 10.51am, and the final tweet posted at 5.55pm on November 6th

2012. Using the same 135.5 hour time scale, the Mitt Romney campaign posted a tweet

every 3.6 waking hours, converting to a tweet being posted every 3 hours and 41 minutes.

19

Mitt Romney Barack Obama

Total number of tweets 37 325

Frequency of tweets

(average)

every 3 hours and 41

minutes

every 25

minutes

Mean number of retweets 2953 2952

Total number of retweets 109,250 959,295

Table 1. Statistics of total number and frequency of tweets and how many retweets

were achieved.

My first research question assesses to what extent each campaign used Twitter to

foster offline action. This excludes tweets asking the reader to go out and vote, these tweets

ask the reader to participate in action such as calling friends persuade them to vote, donate

money to the campaign or to go out and canvass support. The Obama campaign posted 37

tweets which asked the reader to engage in an activity offline. This amounted to 11.38% of

tweets, meaning for every 9 tweets posted (rounded up from 8.783), one would ask the

reader to engage in offline. This relates to a tweet calling for offline action being posted on

average every 3 hours and 47 minutes.

In the Romney campaign, 6 tweets were posted asking the reader to engage in

offline action. This amounted to 16.21% of tweets posted, meaning for every 6 tweets

posted (rounded down from 6.169), one would ask the reader to engage in offline action.

Despite the Romney campaign posting these types of tweets more frequently as a

percentage of total tweets, a tweet calling for online action was posted on average every 22

hours and 12 minutes.

Also, the Romney campaign achieved a total of 11,127 retweets on all tweets asking

for offline action, whereas the Obama campaign achieved 112,968 total retweets.

My secondary hypothesis for this research question was that these tweets calling for

offline actions from supporters would gain more retweets than the average tweet. The

Obama campaign achieved a mean of 3053 retweets with these tweets compared to the

total mean number of retweets of 2952. In the Romney campaign, tweets calling for offline

action received a mean of 2117 retweets, less than the total mean number of retweets of

2953.

20

Table 2. Data for tweets posted that called for offline action from the reader.

My second research question assessed to what extent each campaign aimed to

engage the individual by promoting low threshold online activity and actively attempting to

create an echo chamber for messages. Interactive tweets attempt to engage the user by

asking them to retweet posts, submit replies, follow links, watch videos or sign up to mailing

lists. By using the method of grouping categorisations into organising themes as explained

by Attride-Stirling (2001), I grouped the categorisations of; ‘asks for response’, ‘asks for

retweet’ and ‘calls for online action’ into the organising theme of ‘Interactive Tweets’.

The Obama campaign posted 42 tweets grouped into the organising theme of

‘interactive tweets’, this amounted to 13% (rounded up from 12.932%) of all tweets

meaning for every 8 (rounded up from 7.738) tweets posted, one asked the reader to

engage in a low threshold online activity. An interactive tweet was posted on average every

3 hours and 6 minutes by the Obama campaign. As a side point, these tweets received a

mean number of retweets of 9477, significantly higher than the mean of all Obama’s

campaign tweets which was 2952.

The Romney campaign posted 8 tweets grouped into the organising theme of

‘interactive tweets’. Interestingly, all of these tweets asked the reader to complete an action

online such as finding out where their local polling station was or watching a video rather

than asking them to retweet or respond to a question. These 8 interactive tweets accounted

for 21.62% of all tweets, meaning for every 5 (rounded up for 4.625) tweets, one would be

Tweets calling for Offline

Action @MittRomney @BarackObama


Percentage of total tweets 16.21% 11.38%

Frequency of tweets


minutes


minutes



Percentage of total retweets 10.18% 11.78%

21

interactive. This means an interactive tweet was posted by the Mitt Romney campaign

every 16 hours and 39 minutes. Again, as a side note; the mean number of retweets for

these interactive tweets was 2952, slightly below the mean number of retweets for all posts

from the @MittRomney account which was 2953.

Online Interactive Tweets @MittRomney @BarackObama


Percentage of total 21.62% 13%

Frequency of tweets


minutes

every 3 hours and 6

minutes




Table 3. Data for tweets posted that called for online action from the reader.

My secondary hypothesis was that the Romney campaign would use ‘non interactive’

and one way tweets more frequently than the Obama campaign. To correctly assess the

number of non-interactive tweets, I took the same organising theme of ‘interactive tweets’

and added the categories of ‘calls for offline action’, ‘calls for funds’ and ‘specifically asks for

vote’ to it. These tweets still recognise the audience. Once this larger organising theme of

‘instructional tweets’ had been created, I could view all other tweets as non-interactive,

non-instructional and as one way communication.

The Obama campaign posted 245 tweets which can be seen as one way

communication. This accounted for 75.38% of all tweets, meaning 3 out of every 4 tweets

were merely one way communication. On average, every 33 minutes a tweet that was

neither interactive, nor instructional and did not communicate with the reader was posted.

147 of these 245 non interactive tweets were quotes from Obama’s speeches, making up

60% of the category. The mean number of retweets for these posts was 1772 exactly, less

than the overall mean.

22

The Romney campaign posted 17 tweets which can be seen as one way

communication. This accounts for 46% (rounded up from 45.94) of all tweets. More than

half of the tweets posted by the Romney campaign attempted to engage the reader in some

way. On average, a non-interactive tweet was posted every 7 hours and 50 minutes. The

mean number of retweets for these posts was 2226 (rounded up from 2225.70), less than

the overall mean.

‘One Way’ Tweets @MittRomney @BarackObama


Percentage of total 45.94% 75.38%

Frequency of tweets


minutes every 33 minutes




Table 4. Data for tweets posted that amounted to ‘one way’ communication with the reader.

I will now discuss these findings and work towards concluding whether new media

has provided effective ways to engage and motivate citizens.

Discussion

My rationale for carrying out this content analysis of election campaign tweets was

to assess for what purpose new media was used by politicians. Margolis and Resnick (2000)

stated; the existence of party websites served merely as ‘demonstrations of modernity’

(2000, 66). My data can be seen to further this argument. Over 75% of tweets from Barack

Obama’s Twitter account were classified as ‘one way communication’. A majority of these

tweets were quotes from party rallies. This is a clear example of a modernisation of the

dissemination of traditional political communication. Previously, a citizen would have had to

attend the rally to hear the speech, or wait for it to be broadcast. Through Twitter, they can

read the speech as it is being given. Whilst this new media creates opportunities for a larger

23

audience to receive a message, the use of web 2.0 tools in this way ignores the ‘social

network’ and interactive aspect of the site.

Bringing in the comparative nature of my study, the Mitt Romney campaign posted

far fewer ‘one way’ tweets than the Obama campaign. 46% of tweets from the Mitt Romney

campaign amounted to ‘one way communication’. This can be attributed partly to the

significantly lower total number of tweets posted by the Mitt Romney campaign however.

Ancu (2011, 13) noted how in over 5 weeks of the presidential election campaign in

2008, the Obama campaign posted 261 tweets and the McCain campaign posted 26. In one

week in the 2012 presidential election campaign both Obama and the new republican

candidate, Mitt Romney, posted more tweets than this respectively. This proves new media

use is being taken increasingly seriously by candidates. Ancu also noted Obama’s Twitter

page was mainly used as a ‘one way information push’ (2011, 16) but still managed to gain a

large audience on the site in 2008 and briefly became the most popular Twitter account on

the site. Obama’s account is still one of the most popular on the site and can still be seen in

part as a ‘one way information push’. I believe whilst many posts on the Barack Obama

Twitter account amount to one way communication, it is the sheer amount of posts that

make the site popular and this furthers the popularity of the president. The constant

updating of the site act as a kind of transparency as the reader can always see a recent post

relating to something Obama is doing, or a policy he is promoting, the use of pictures and

video create a more personal relationship with the president and make him seem less

anonymous.

Vaccari (2012) explains the paradox of the most politically aware voters being the

only voters receiving messages online and the least aware voters remaining ignorant can be

overcome by Twitter. The Obama Twitter account has amassed a huge amount of followers,

29,279,859 as of the 5th April 2013, and posted a phenomenal number of tweets during the

electoral campaign. It is assumed most of these followers are at least slightly politically

aware due to their choice to follow the president. However, each tweet posted from the

account received a mean number of retweets of 2952, a total of 959,295 in just one week of

the electoral campaign. Both Shirky (2011) and Vaccari (2012) explain how messages shared

by friends can increase the ‘intensity’ of a message and increase the possibility that opinions

24

can be formed and changed as a result of new information provided by friends. As so many

tweets from Obama were shared, the chance that these messages were received and

accepted by individuals with fairly low political awareness is great. Whilst the Romney

campaign received the marginally higher mean rate of retweets of 2593, due to the

relatively small number of tweets in total, the overall figure for the number of retweets was

109,250. Whilst the same logic applies to the Romney campaign, as of the 5th April 2013 the

account only has 1,598,858 followers, this makes it likely that a smaller, core group of

supporters were responsible for these retweets, meaning a smaller overall network of

Twitter users would come in to contact with these messages.

Gladwell (2010) explains pessimistically that new media can increase participation in

political activity by reducing the amount of motivation needed to participate. This relates to

the idea of ‘low threshold’ political activity. My research aimed to assess the extent to which

this was true in the 2012 election. The Barack Obama campaign posted 42 tweets (13% of

the total) which specifically asked users to complete a task online which supported the

campaign, for example at 7am on November 6th 2012 @BarackObama posted:

It’s Election Day! This is your last chance to help win this thing—RT this link so your friends

know where to vote: http://OFA.BO/chM7LH

This tweet received over 10,000 retweets, significantly more than the mean for all

tweets, showing the followers were happy to follow instructions to complete a simple task

to support the campaign. The same result was clear across all tweets which asked the

reader to complete an online task. The mean number of retweets for this category of tweet

was 9477, significantly higher than the total mean number of retweets which stood at 2952.

These 42 tweets accounted for 13% of all the tweets posted in the research period yet

received 41.5% of the total retweets for period (398,028 out of 959,295). Interestingly,

tweets asking the reader to complete an offline action such as calling friends in key states to

ask them to vote, or tweets asking for donations did significantly worse in terms of gaining

retweets in the Obama campaign. 37 tweets (11.38% of the total) were posted asking the

reader to complete an offline action; these tweets achieved a mean number of retweets of

3053, only marginally above the mean rate of response. This significant drop in willingness

to share tweets which call for action requiring more motivation and commitment to the

http://ofa.bo/chM7LH

25

cause seems to show that the Twitter followers of Obama are much more comfortable with

low threshold support of the campaign.

The same relationship can be seen in the mean number of retweets of posts calling

for online action and those calling for offline action from the Romney campaign but to a

lesser degree. The Romney campaign received a mean number of retweets of 2952 for

‘online action tweets’ but 2117 for ‘offline action tweets’.

These figures seem to prove that supporters of the campaign online are much more

willing to support the campaign when it involves doing only a small amount of work.

Margolis and Resnick (2000) explained from interviews with webmasters of campaign

websites in the late 1990’s, the general consensus was that websites and online activity was

useful for communication but was ‘no substitute for money and organisation on the ground’

(2000, 66). They explain; websites must do much in the way of motivating individuals online

in order to make them overcome their ‘habitual indifferences’ (2000, 72). These figures

seem to prove the conclusions of Gladwell (2010). Twitter can be seen to be excellent in the

communication of messages that inform the individual about what is happening in the

campaign, and disseminating the contents of speeches. Whilst there is a small attempt to

motivate citizens to volunteer to help the campaign and to donate money online, the

audience is more reluctant to support this. However, as Haridakis and Hanson (2011),

Tedesco (2006), Vaccari (2012) and Shirky (2011) explain, whilst the response to overt calls

from the campaign to volunteer for the campaign are not particularly well received, through

the reception of messages either directly from the campaign or from friends, greater self-

efficacy can be evoked leading to higher levels of political motivation offline.

These figures show that activists seem to be active away from Twitter. Whilst they

will be in the core number of people who will share almost all messages posted from the

account of their preferred candidates, it is most likely they will mainly operate in other

places online, through mundane internet tools and most importantly, offline. In the case of

the Barack Obama, the specific social network mybarackobama (MyBO) was set up to

harness the power of sites like Facebook and Twitter to create an echo chamber for

messages but also move beyond this and create strong ties between members in the offline

world (Barko-Germany, 2012, 156). The Obama campaign posted 71 tweets with links to

26

other sites, the majority of these were links to MyBO, this related to 22% of all tweets in the

week leading up to Election Day. On this site, users are given detailed policy information,

added to mailing lists, asked for donations and are prompted to add their zip code so their

location data could be accessed and could be added to campaign events local to them. A

particularly interesting further study could be to analyse the features of this site and how

responses to calls to offline action varied to responses on other social media such as Twitter

and Facebook.

Interestingly, the use of mundane internet tools is strong once a user signs up to the

MyBO site. As a part of my research I added my email address to the site and since signing

up on the 18th March 2013, I have received 4 emails addressed to me personally asking for

donations to the campaign. More research is needed in this area and it could be a very

enlightening future study. Nielsen (2010) explains that mundane internet tools such as email

are the most useful tools for online mobilization of support. From my research into the

Obama campaign, Twitter can be seen as being used as an excellent communicating device

to update the casual supporters of the campaign, whilst partly actively attempting to create

an echo chamber for messages and enlighten new supporters, but also as a recruitment

drive to get casual supporters to connect with the campaign on another site where the real

campaign organisation begins.

A fantastic example I feel demonstrates the relationship between the use of Twitter

in the campaign and the offline campaign comes from a speech Barack Obama made in Iowa,

telling the story of an activist he met in the primaries before the 2008 election. Obama

explained how Edith Childs had a chant she would use to motivate other activists when out

campaigning. This chant became famous and Barack Obama had invited her to the rally in

Iowa to lead the chant and to end the campaign. Obama explained; ‘She said, I’d love to see

you, but I think we can still win North Carolina…I don’t have time just to be talking about it.

I’ve got to knock on some doors. I’ve got to turn out the vote. I’m still fired up, but I’ve got

work to do’ (Obama, 2012). Twitter can be seen as the part of the campaign where action is

just talked about, there is the possibility of motivation of citizens through exposure to

messages, but the real campaign work is still done offline, through interpersonal

communication, and this is where votes are won.

27

However, whilst we can use this data to argue the point that activism is not fostered

on Twitter, nor do activists use the site as a key way of gaining votes, we are still left

wondering about what effect the largely one way communicative nature of the campaign

Twitter accounts has on the public. There is strong theoretical backing to suggest the active

creation of an echo chamber can increase knowledge and thus increase political

participation. I have also hypothesised that the frequent use of Twitter by the Obama

campaign creates a more personal relationship with his followers and supporters and can

greatly increase his popularity. To fully explore this however, it would be useful to assess a

selection of responses to tweets posted by citizens and to assess whether these sparked

political discussion. Also, interviews with followers of either Twitter account would be

particularly enlightening as conclusions could be drawn as to how big a part the site played

in their political motivation. The drawback of merely using retweets as a marker of how

successful a piece of political communication was is that we do not know why the user has

chosen to do this. A more qualitative approach, attempting to find out the motivations

behind political twitter use from individuals and what effect the site has on an individual’s

political efficacy is the next logical step in this field of research.

Conclusion

To conclude this dissertation, I believe there is clear evidence that for the most part

in the 2012 US presidential election; Twitter was not actually used to actively create an echo

chamber or to actively attempt to get the reader to engage with the campaign offline. The

majority of tweets from the Obama account were simple campaign messages and quotes

from speeches, both of which can be seen as merely demonstrations of modernity. Whilst

the Romney campaign posted a majority of tweets attempting to engage with the reader,

the limited number of tweets overall and the significantly smaller reach of the Twitter

campaign compared to Obama means I do not believe this had a significant effect. Whilst

the Obama account posted many tweets, there seemed to be a reliance on the users of the

website creating an echo chamber of messages without being prompted. From the Obama

campaign, tweets merely asking the user to retweet a link, watch a video or reply to a

question were significantly more likely to be shared by readers of the site. Calls for low

28

threshold action were much better received by the audience than messages calling for

offline action. However, the limitations of my research were that this conclusion is only

based on the number of retweets these messages achieved.

From this data I believe the ideas of Norris who explains; ‘politics on the internet

reinforces the activism of the activists’ (2000, 266) can be challenged. Twitter use in the

2012 US presidential campaign seemed to reinforce the lethargic support of the majority of

fairly indifferent individuals who are slightly politically engaged. There are attempts by both

campaigns to foster offline support with the Obama campaign encouraging the audience to

sign up to the MyBarackObama website where stronger ties are developed. However, as

Vaccari (2012), Shirky (2011), Haridakis and Hanson (2010) explain, Twitter use as a means

of one way communication to a large group of followers can still convince people to vote a

certain way and aid learning about policy debates, this is no bad thing, but the grassroots

activism is occurring away from the site and in more specialised places online and more

importantly, offline. Twitter is used as an excellent communicative device and has the

possibility to politically engage and motivate citizens to an extent, and its use by politicians

in a campaign can have a positive effect. However, the key to a successful campaign is not

the use of Twitter. Obama has used new media effectively to engage his supporters through

a strong presence online; this informs individuals and creates a more personal relationship

with the campaign. The Romney campaign did not do this to anywhere near the same

extent, yet still gained a large share of the vote at the 2012 election (47.2%). New media use

can entertain, engage and motivate citizens to an extent, but as Margolis and Resnick

explain, new media use is ‘no substitute for money and organisation on the ground’ (2000,

66). My conclusion states that whilst Twitter is an important factor in the awareness of a

campaign, other efforts are needed to foster motivation to get out the vote.

29

Appendices

Appendix A

Twitter is an online microblogging service and also a social network, it is free to use

and anyone can create an account. The user can then post ‘tweets’, of 140 characters which

become public. Users on the site can ‘follow’ other users, which means they subscribe to

another accounts tweets and these will be posted on the user’s homepage. Users can follow

whoever they wish to personalise their homepage, meaning different users will see a unique

homepage with only messages from users they have decided to subscribe to. Users can post

public messages to each other by using the ‘@’ sign and then typing the username. Users

can also interact with other users by using ‘retweets’, this means a user forwards a message

posted from another account. One example of this from my research is shown below.

Figure 2. List of users who have retweeted a message

This tweet was posted from Barack Obama’s account. Once you click on a tweet, details are

given of the number of retweets and the users that retweeted the post. If we click on one of

the names we can see how the message is reposted by another user.

30

Figure 3. Retweeted Message

This user, @common_genius, has retweeted the original message posted from

Barack Obama’s account and thus it has appeared on his personal timeline. This message is

then forwarded to his 273 followers and will appear on their homepages, despite the fact

that they may not follow Barack Obama.

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