Twitter publics: how online political communities signaled electoral outcomes in the 2010 US house election

Abstract

Online social networks are an important setting for understanding the intersection of online communities and offline political processes. This paper analyzes the different ways that people discuss elections on Twitter. Using data from a random sample totaling 113,985 tweets and 30,995 users, we examine the differences between users who employ various strategies to talk about US 2010 Congressional candidates. We show that users who simply include the text of a candidate's name in a message exhibit different behaviors than those who use platform-specific mechanisms. Users who employ free-text tend to have younger accounts, are less likely to be ‘verified’, and generate fewer messages about candidates. Furthermore, candidates’ share of the free-text Twitter public has a larger correlation with their vote tallies than @mentions or hashtags. This research has methodological implications for studying the dynamics between online discourse and offline behavior. Overall, our findings support the view that forms of communication that are more accessible are more indicative of broader social trends.

Keywords:

• social media
• politics
• research methodology
• big data

Acknowledgments

We thank Emily Winters and Matt Stephens for help with data collection as well as Clem Brooks, Elizabeth Pisares, and the Politics, Economy, and Culture Workshop at Indiana University for helpful discussions and contributions.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation [grant CCF 1101743].

Notes on contributors

Karissa McKelvey is a doctoral student in complexity theory at Indiana University. She research employs computer science tools to investigate political behavior. [email: [email protected]]

Joseph DiGrazia is a doctoral student in sociology at Indiana University. His dissertation research examines the rise of the Tea Party. Starting in the Fall of 2014, he will be a Neukom Fellow at Dartmouth College. [email: [email protected]]

Fabio Rojas is Associate Professor of sociology at Indiana University. He works on organizational behavior, higher education, and political sociology. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1 https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public.