Twitter Debate Research Articles

Exploring the hidden influence of international treaty secretariats: using social network analysis to analyse the Twitter debate on the ‘Lima Work Programme on Gender’

ABSTRACTWhile there is little doubt that international public administrations (IPAs) exert autonomous influence on international policy outputs, scholars struggle with the problem of how to measure this influence. Established methods for assessing political influence are of limited use when focusing on international bureaucracies. The main reason is that IPAs do not explicitly state their policy preferences. Instead, they tend to present themselves as neutral administrators, aiming to facilitate intergovernmental agreement. They normally act ‘behind the scenes’. We propose social network analysis (SNA) as an alternative method for assessing the hidden influence of international treaty secretariats. SNA infers influence from an actor’s relative position in issue-specific communication networks. We illustrate the application and usefulness of this method in a case study on the role of the United Nations climate secretariat in a policy-oriented Twitter debate on incorporating gender issues into the global climate policy regime.

# Living/minimum wage: Influential citizen talk in twitter

There has been a major cultural shift away from ׳passive׳consumption to more active production of digital texts by citizens. Yet,this does not mean that we all participate in digital media in the same ways and for the same reasons. Nor does it mean that we all have the same level of access to digital networks. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the diversity and fluidity of citizen participation in digital environments by examining the discourse style of a particular group of digital users, namely citizens whose contributions become crowdsourced to prominence in microblogging. We refer to this form of citizen participation as ׳influential׳, in as much as the discourse of these citizens attracts inordinate levels of attention and can trigger social contagion. We conduct a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study of a corpus of tweets posted by a group of citizens who emerge as ׳influential׳ within a Twitter debate about the minimum/living wage. Our analysis reveals that their discourse style is characterised by (i) limited content originality but a high participation rate; (ii) a continuum of thematic engagement; (iii) high levels of emotionality; and (iv) a preference towards stance-taking acts that convey full confidence in one׳s views.

Digital Democratic Voices: Intersecting Student Research, Twitter, and Presidential Debates

Courses: Mass Communication and Public Opinion, Political CommunicationObjectives: Often, there are media events (e.g., local and national elections, the Super Bowl) that match up with what we hope to accomplish in a particular class. The purpose of this semester-length project for students was threefold: (1) to read and comprehend literature related to communication studies, media, and political strategy; (2) to collect and analyze data; and (3) to participate in civic engagement by taking part in Presidential DebateWatch events, both as an audience member and through the use of Twitter.

Two Different Debates? Investigating the Relationship Between a Political Debate on TV and Simultaneous Comments on Twitter

While watching television, more and more citizens comment the program live on social media. This is especially interesting in the case of political debates, as viewers’ comments might not only allow us to tap into public opinion, but they can also be an influential factor of their own and contribute to public discourse. This article analyzes how the TV debate between the candidates for chancellor during the German election campaign 2013 was discussed on Twitter. To do so, the transcript of the debate is linked to a set of N = 120,557 tweets containing the hashtag #tvduell. The results indicate that the candidates were only to a minor degree successful in getting their topics to the Twitter debate. An optimistic reading of the results suggests that Twitter serves as a complement to draw attention to topics neglected in the official debate. A more pessimistic reading would point to the fact that the discourse on Twitter seems to be dominated by sarcastic or funny rather than by substantial content.

Journalists’ twitter networks, public debates and relationships in South Africa

Journalists at major media houses in South Africa use Twitter as a journalistic tool for crowd sourcing, breaking news events, live blogging and to balance, check and cultivate sources. This paper analyses the use of the social network platform by the top 500 South African journalists. The findings suggest that pluralism and openness are important characteristics of the South African Twitter network. Although two strong sub-networks can be detected, we conclude that they give structure to the network and enhance the role of journalists in public debates and democratic decision-making. This is shown in the analysis of three trending news topics related to politics and crime. The last trending topic of the study questions the process of the individualization of journalism through Twitter. The paper concludes by confronting its generic findings from the perspectives and opinions of leading journalists and editors.