Disintermediation in Social Networks: Conceptualizing Political Actors’ Construction of Publics on Twitter

Scott A Eldridge Ii,Lucía García-Carretero,Marcel Broersma

doi:10.17645/mac.v7i1.1825

Scott A Eldridge Ii, Lucía García-Carretero + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i1.1825

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Abstract

While often treated as distinct, both politics and journalism share in their histories a need for a public that is not naturally assembled and needs instead to be ‘constructed’. In earlier times the role of mediating politics to publics often fell to news media, which were also dependent on constructing a ‘public’ for their own viability. It is hardly notable to say this has changed in a digital age, and in the way social media have allowed politicians and political movements to speak to their own publics bypassing news voices is a clear example of this. We show how both established politics and emerging political movements now activate and intensify certain publics through their media messages, and how this differs in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands. When considering journalism and social media, emphasis on their prominence can mask more complex shifts they ushered in, including cross-national differences, where they have pushed journalism towards social media to communicate news, and where political actors now use these spaces for their own communicative ends. Building upon this research, this article revisits conceptualizations of the ways political actors construct publics and argues that we see processes of disintermediation taking place in political actors’ social networks on Twitter.

Highlights

Building upon an empirical analysis of the Twitter networks of political actors in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain, via Twitter, we explore in this article a conceptual argument for how publics are constructed through the relationships between political actors’ Twitter accounts and those within their networks
In studying the networks within which political actors speak to members of the public, we argue the ways in which political actors have seized on the opportunities of Twitter may signal a power shift in who is the primary constructor of publics
We offer a social network analysis (SNA) of politicians’ and parties’ Twitter activities in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain to explore how political actors construct publics through Twitter and if this differs between media systems

Summary

Introduction

Building upon an empirical analysis of the Twitter networks of political actors in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain, via Twitter, we explore in this article a conceptual argument for how publics are constructed through the relationships between political actors’ Twitter accounts and those within their networks. This places a critical lens on how we understand the interrelation between the public, the press, and political power centers as they continue to evolve in a digital age

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