The Social Media Election Agenda: Issue Salience on Twitter during the European and Swedish 2014 Elections

The role of issues in electoral preference formation has long been an established key factor, and what voters consider the most important problem i.e. issue salience is essential for party choice. Political issues (and their salience to the electorate) also play an important role in parties’ tactical campaign strategies. This study examines to what extent social media possibly can contribute in shaping the issue agenda around elections. The issue agenda on Twitter is likely to have its own characteristics and dynamics, shaped by the technical peculiarities, users and the new campaigning possibilities that social media offers. In conjunction with the European election 2014 and Swedish national election 2014 the distribution of issue attention on social media is analyzed in light of the issue agenda set forth by the voters for the different elections in the Swedish National Election Survey. The two elections, occurring only three months apart, offer a unique possibility to analyze how the election as such contributes in shaping the issue agenda and furthermore how the online community of Twitter users in turn respond to the different electoral contexts. This can give an indication as to whether social media is likely to have its own election agenda. The findings suggest that the agenda on Twitter mirrors the agenda of the electorate as measured by surveys; however, the shift in focus is greater between the elections. Measuring the political topics discussed on Twitter thus indicates a more flexible agenda than the one expressed by the population in the survey data. However, analyzing the agenda in terms of issues mobilizing on a traditional left/right dimension or the “newer” Green/Alternative/Liberal dimension- the more traditional issues are more salient.