twitter, politics & news

TWITTER, POLITICS & NEWS

Twitter and the 2012 Election

• Funding from the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) to examine twitter reactions to major political events

Twitter and the 2012 Election

• What are people talking about on Twitter during political events?

• How can we understand Twitter political conversation?

• How can new organizations understand and use talk on Twitter?

Partnering with Local News

• Dallas and Jacksonville papers• Promoted a local hashtag for the Presidential

debates– #dmndebate– #jaxdebate


• Dallas and Jacksonville papers• Promoted a local hashtag for the Presidential

debates• We collected and analyzed the tweets from the

debates• Papers reported next day


Throughout this project, the number of tweets using the hashtag grew


Second Presidential Debate – Issue MentionsDallas Jacksonville

1. Jobs 1. Women (full of binders)

2. Taxes 2. Taxes

3. Guns 3. Government (size, role)

4. Women (full of binders) 4. Sheldon Adelson

News Audience Survey

• Social watching political events– Watching Presidential debates while

communication with others (in person, via Facebook, via Twitter)

– How much people enjoyed the debates– How much of the debates they watched


• Watching debates while talking to others in person was related to enjoying the debates more– But not via Facebook or Twitter


• Talking to others in person or via Twitter was related to watching more debates– But not via Facebook

Young Voters Experiment

• Young voters watched a January 2012 GOP Primary debate

• Answered questions before and after debate• Tweeted while watching the debate


Who Tweeted More?• Those with larger Twitter networks• Those with more Political Information Efficacy

• More confident that they are knowledgeable and informed about politics

• Liberals


Candidate Tweets LikeWill win

nominationCould beat

Obama VotePaul 278 22.15 .82 .85 33%

Romney 158 16.38 .47 .54 6%

Santorum 111 3.78 .00 .05 1%

Gingrich 103 -14.19 -.46 -.22 -7%

Change from before debate to after debate

Challenges

• Twitter– Architecture is continually changing– Users are constantly growing

• Sentiment• Conversations

twitter, politics & news

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