How and to What Extent Societal, Political and Media Events Create a Twitter Awareness System for Political Campaigning

Even though electoral campaigning using “traditional” websites is still “mandatory” (Vergeer, Hermans, & Cunha, 2013), a campaign without the presence of social media is unthinkable in this modern age: politicians, candidates, journalists and citizens use these social media extensively. There are many studies focusing on politicians’ use of social media, particularly their networks and adoption rates (Vergeer & Hermans, 2013). Other types of study particularly focus on the general Twitter sphere during these campaigns (Bruns, Burgess, Highfield, Kirchhoff, & Nicolai, 2011). This concept of the Twitter sphere (referring to Habermas’ concept of the public sphere (Habermas, 1989)) can also be viewed as a so-called awareness system: an “always on systems” – leading to a mental model of news and events that surrounds people in general and journalists in particular. In this context the value lies not in the individual tweet but by the mental portrayal based on many tweets over time (Hermida, 2010). Although this “mental model” may exist, it may be very dynamic, even volatile during election campaigns: actual societal, political or media events that happen during these campaigns may alter this awareness system in terms of (a) prominence of particular parties and candidates and (b) sentiment regarding these parties and candidates. The first research question is to what extent these events affect prominence and sentiment within this awareness system. Given a specific awareness system with specific prominence of and sentiment regarding candidates and parties, to what extent does this affect the opinion polls during the election campaign and the subsequent election outcome (Research Question 2)? Data The Twitter data (tweets) were collected for a 24-day period in the entire election campaign of 2012 in the Netherlands. Television appearances of candidates in talk shows and news shows were collected. The mentioning of candidates and parties were collected by analyzing newspaper articles. The relative popularity of parties will be measured by using the regular opinion polls as published by Synovate (www.synovate.com). References Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Highfield, T., Kirchhoff, L., & Nicolai, T. (2011). Mapping the Australian networked public sphere. Social Science Computer Review, 29(3): 277–287. Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere : An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Hermida, A. (2010). Twittering the news. Journalism Practice, 4(3): 297–308. Vergeer, M., & Hermans, L. (2013). Campaigning on Twitter: Microblogging and online social networking as campaign tools in the 2010 General Elections in the Netherlands. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Vergeer, M., Hermans, L., & Cunha, C. (2013). Web campaigning in the 2009 European Parliament elections: A cross-national comparative analysis. New Media & Society, 15(1): 128–148.