Twitter use in election campaigns: A systematic literature review

ABSTRACT

Twitter has become a pervasive tool in election campaigns. Candidates, parties, journalists, and a steadily increasing share of the public are using Twitter to comment on, interact around, and research public reactions to politics. These uses have met with growing scholarly attention. As of now, this research is fragmented, lacks a common body of evidence, and shared approaches to data collection and selection. This article presents the results of a systematic literature review of 127 studies addressing the use of Twitter in election campaigns. In this systematic review, I will discuss the available research with regard to findings on the use of Twitter by parties, candidates, and publics during election campaigns and during mediated campaign events. Also, I will address prominent research designs and approaches to data collection and selection.

KEYWORDS:

• Election campaigns
• Internet
• literature review
• political communication
• social media
• Twitter

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Pascal Jürgens, Oliver Posegga, and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

^1. For a detailed discussion and documentation of the search and selection process, please see the technical appendix of this paper available online at http://andreasjungherr.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Jungherr-Twitter-Use-in-Election-Campaigns-Technical-Appendix.pdf.

^2. These counts do not add up to 127 because some studies used a mix of the methods listed here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andreas Jungherr

Andreas Jungherr is a research associate at the Chair for Political Psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany. His research focuses on the use of digital trace data in the social sciences and the use of digital tools in political campaigns.