Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how the use of social media by citizens has impacted the traditional conceptualization and operationalization of political participation in the society.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on Teorellet al.’s (2007) classification of political participation which is modified to suit the current context of social media. The authors classified 15,460 tweets along three parameters suggested in the framework with help of supervised text classification algorithms.FindingsThe analysis reveals that Activism is the most prominent form of political participation undertaken by people on Twitter. Other activities that were undertaken include Formal Political participation and Consumer participation. The analysis also reveals that identity of participant does not play a classifying role as expected from the theoretical framework. It was found that the social media as a platform facilitates new forms of participation which are not feasible offline.Research limitations/implicationsThe current work considers only the microblogging platform of Twitter as the data source. For a more comprehensive insight, analysis of other social media platforms is also required.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few analyses where such a large database covering multiple social media events has been created and analysed using supervised text classification algorithms. A large proportion of previous studies on social media have been based on case study and have limited analysis to only a particular event on social media. Although there exist a few works that have studied a vast and varied collection of social media data (Gaby and Caren, 2012; Shirazi, 2013; Rane and Salem, 2012), such efforts are few in number. This study aims to add to that stream of work where a wider and more generalized set of social media data is studied.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.