Although initially geared towards short, personal status updates, the microblog service Twitter is increasingly used in a variety of contexts and for various reasons, often going beyond answering the suggested question of ”What’s happening?”. As with the Internet itself, microblogging has been viewed as having the potential for increasing political participation among citizens. Although many of the initial hopes for “e-democracy” have gone unfulfilled, the success of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign has raised voices claiming that “social media” such as Twitter provide new opportunities for online campaigning. This paper presents a study on Twitter use during the 2010 Swedish general election. By archiving tweets tagged as relevant for the election at hand using the TwapperKeeper application, data was collected for a comprehensive study of political Twitter use. In total, 99 832 tweets dealing with the election are analyzed, focusing on the various users present in the “Twittersphere”, the networks that appear between these users and the conversations that they take part in. By providing findings on Twitter use before, during and after the height of the Swedish election campaign, this paper provides unique insights into the practice of civic microblogging. Moreover, by utilizing social network analyses of a large dataset collected with the aid of emerging online applications, the study contributes to the development of the methodological toolbox for research.
