Abstract
In recent years researchers have gravitated to social media platforms, especially Twitter, as fertile ground for empirical analysis of social phenomena. Social media provides researchers access to trace data of interactions and discourse that once went unrecorded in the offline world. Researchers have sought to use these data to explain social phenomena both particular to social media and applicable to the broader social world. This paper offers a minireview of Twitter-based research on political crowd behavior. This literature offers insight into particular social phenomena on Twitter, but often fails to use standardized methods that permit interpretation beyond individual studies. Moreover, the literature fails to ground methodologies and results in social or political theory, divorcing empirical research from the theory needed to interpret it. Rather, papers focus primarily on methodological innovations for social media analyses, but these too often fail to sufficiently demonstrate the validity of such methodologies. This minireview considers a small number of selected papers; we analyze their (often lack of) theoretical approaches, review their methodological innovations, and offer suggestions as to the relevance of their results for political scientists and sociologists.
Highlights
Since its founding in 2006, Twitter has become an important platform for news, politics, culture, and more across the globe [1]
Coppock et al [25] are notable in this regard. The authors base their methodological innovation in Twitter mobilization inducement on an extensive theoretical literature review, which yields three opposing hypotheses. They assess the political theory of collective action as it applies to Twitter via these three hypotheses, and find that the Civic Voluntarism Model is most consistent with their results
New disciplines have much to offer social research, as indicated in the methodology review of our sample papers; yet, these methodologies are often divorced from underlying social theory
Summary
This paper offers a minireview of Twitter-based research on political crowd behavior. This literature offers insight into particular social phenomena on Twitter, but often fails to use standardized methods that permit interpretation beyond individual studies. The literature fails to ground methodologies and results in social or political theory, divorcing empirical research from the theory needed to interpret it. Investigations focus primarily on methodological innovations for social media analyses, but these too often fail to sufficiently demonstrate the validity of such methodologies This minireview considers a small number of selected papers; we analyse their (often lack of) theoretical approaches, review their methodological innovations, and offer suggestions as to the relevance of their results for political scientists and sociologists
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