51,560 research outputs found
The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election
The present study argues that political communication on social media is
mediated by a platform's digital architecture, defined as the technical
protocols that enable, constrain, and shape user behavior in a virtual space. A
framework for understanding digital architectures is introduced, and four
platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat) are compared along the
typology. Using the 2016 US election as a case, interviews with three
Republican digital strategists are combined with social media data to qualify
the studyies theoretical claim that a platform's network structure,
functionality, algorithmic filtering, and datafication model affect political
campaign strategy on social media
Dancing to the Partisan Beat: A First Analysis of Political Communication on TikTok
TikTok is a video-sharing social networking service, whose popularity is
increasing rapidly. It was the world's second-most downloaded app in 2019.
Although the platform is known for having users posting videos of themselves
dancing, lip-syncing, or showcasing other talents, user-videos expressing
political views have seen a recent spurt. This study aims to perform a primary
evaluation of political communication on TikTok. We collect a set of US
partisan Republican and Democratic videos to investigate how users communicated
with each other about political issues. With the help of computer vision,
natural language processing, and statistical tools, we illustrate that
political communication on TikTok is much more interactive in comparison to
other social media platforms, with users combining multiple information
channels to spread their messages. We show that political communication takes
place in the form of communication trees since users generate branches of
responses to existing content. In terms of user demographics, we find that
users belonging to both the US parties are young and behave similarly on the
platform. However, Republican users generated more political content and their
videos received more responses; on the other hand, Democratic users engaged
significantly more in cross-partisan discussions.Comment: Accepted as a full paper at the 12th International ACM Web Science
Conference (WebSci 2020). Please cite the WebSci version; Second version
includes corrected typo
When Politicians Talk: Assessing Online Conversational Practices of Political Parties on Twitter
Assessing political conversations in social media requires a deeper
understanding of the underlying practices and styles that drive these
conversations. In this paper, we present a computational approach for assessing
online conversational practices of political parties. Following a deductive
approach, we devise a number of quantitative measures from a discussion of
theoretical constructs in sociological theory. The resulting measures make
different - mostly qualitative - aspects of online conversational practices
amenable to computation. We evaluate our computational approach by applying it
in a case study. In particular, we study online conversational practices of
German politicians on Twitter during the German federal election 2013. We find
that political parties share some interesting patterns of behavior, but also
exhibit some unique and interesting idiosyncrasies. Our work sheds light on (i)
how complex cultural phenomena such as online conversational practices are
amenable to quantification and (ii) the way social media such as Twitter are
utilized by political parties.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, Proc. 8th International AAAI
Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2014
#ausvotes: How Twitter covered the 2010 Australian federal election
While the 2007 Australian federal election was notable for the use of social media by the Australian Labor Party in campaigning, the 2010 election took place in a media landscape in which social mediaâespecially Twitterâhad become much more embedded in both political journalism and independent political commentary. This article draws on the computer-aided analysis of election-related Twitter messages, collected under the #ausvotes hashtag, to describe the key patterns of activity and thematic foci of the electionâs coverage in this particular social media site. It introduces novel metrics for analysing public communication via Twitter, and describes the related methods. What emerges from this analysis is the role of the #ausvotes hashtag as a means of gathering an ad hoc âissue publicââ a finding which is likely to be replicated for other hashtag communities
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