Post on 03-Jul-2015
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Election Days and Social Media Practices: Tweeting as Australia decides
Tim High!eld QUT and Curtin
t.high!eld@qut.edu.au | @timhigh!eld | timhigh!eld.net
Politics and social media • Integration of social media platforms, such as
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, into politics: – Election campaigns – Politician accounts – Citizens – Journalists and media organisations
• Mediation of politics takes place over multiple platforms, involving diverse actors (who participate on more than one platform themselves)
Social media practices • Within political discussions and topics, social
media have a variety of functions: – Campaigning and promotional channels – Activism organisation and information-sharing – Backchannel for broadcasts – "ird Space, where political talk arises from and
within other topics – Platform for debate with political actors,
journalists, and citizens all present (if not necessarily interacting)
"e Australian context • Australia has seen a dedicated audience for
political discussion develop on social media, such as around hashtags such as #auspol and #qanda
• While these speci!c markers may attract a particular group of Twitter users, political topics are still concerns for the wider population
• Voting is compulsory for eligible citizens 18 and over in federal and state elections. – At elections, some engagement with politics is
necessary, even if to criticise this necessity.
#ausvotes, et al. • Analysis built out of previous studies of
national and state-level elections in Australia: – Federal (2010, 2013) – Queensland (2012) – Western Australia (2013)
• Standardisation of election coverage: use of common hashtags for campaigns (#xvotes), although not universally employed
Election day tweeting • Australian election campaigns, as with other
international votes, have seen peak activity on the election day itself
• "is spike in tweeting is a result of several di#erent approaches which coincide with election day; they are all related to the vote, but also re$ect personal experiences as well as engaging with the results at large
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Phases of election day tweeting #wavotes, tweets per hour: 9 March, 2013
Phases of election day tweeting
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18000"#ausvotes, tweets per hour: 7 September, 2013
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Phases of election day tweeting #wavotes, tweets per hour: 5 April, 2014
Phases of election day tweeting
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1. Voting period
2. Analysis, predictions, results
3. Speeches #ausvotes, tweets per hour: 7 September, 2013
A model of election day tweeting 1. "e individual, the personal – the micro-level of the election
2. "e analytical – move away from personal to mix home electorates with wider results and predictions 3. "e reactionary – the live responses to media coverage, in particular the victory and concession speeches by the respective major party leaders
1. "e personal, the participatory • Tweets about personal voting experiences • Partisan comments and mentions • Local candidates, leaders
• Political rituals • Independent projects encouraging voter feedback and
crowd-sourced information about polling places – the experience, the facilities – Booth Reviews, Democracy Sausage, SnagVotes, !e Hungry Voter – Promote further participation to improve the accuracy of
information available, hook in to the standard election day experience
2. "e analytical, the informative • As polling places close and votes are counted, the
focus moves from the individual experience to the wider coverage
• Local results still important, but become more linked to the overall narrative
• Information $ows centred on established media and political actors – enhanced by broadcasters using common hashtags rather than their own, retweeting across their many accounts
3. "e reactionary, the mass context • "e focus becomes narrower still, with
responses to both the results and the speci!c media coverage
• Live-tweeting of quotes and interpretations of the victory and concession speeches from the respective party leaders
• "e shared focus of a mass audience on a few actors, rather than the distributed coverage of the voting experience phase
Personal to ‘popular’? • While the election commentary mixed political and
personal views throughout – responses to the results include personal opinions as well as partisanship – the early tweets are more uniquely individual in their content: one person’s voting experience will not be exactly the same as another’s
• By the time of the speeches, though, the individual context is subsumed by the shared response to the common topic (as featured in other media) – A further participatory aspect, as with other media events,
where social media users comment on broadcasts as they happen, o#ering analysis, invective, and pithy one-liners
Trends • Because of the common context – the overall
result, the coverage of the speeches, as well as the captive audience following the results rather than being out voting – more likely to receive retweets during phases 2 and 3?
• During phase 1, popular accounts and common sentiments responsible for most RTed comments (e.g. “RT if you voted below the line”)
• Memes and macros, humour (especially dry observations of the results) among the most RTed comments a%er polling closed
Casual contributors? • #ausvotes, 7 September 2013: – 34585 users contributing 111987 tweets
• Phase one (to 6pm): – 17549 users contributing 43089 tweets (2.45 per user)
• Phases two and three (post-6pm): – 23939 users contributing 68898 tweets (2.87 per user) – 6903 users contributing 60967 tweets to both periods
(25871, 35096) – 20% users, 54.4% tweets overall
• 39.3% users, 60% tweets pre-6pm • 28.8% users, 50.9% tweets post-6pm
Political gatekeepers old and new • "e model also demonstrates that some aspects of the
traditional politics-media dynamic are reinforced on social media – "e role of traditional media sources for both providing and
amplifying information is central – even if other users do not mention media accounts, they are responding to elections as media events
– "e use of Twitter handles rather than proper names also accounts for high numbers of @mentions for politicians and commentators even if not tweeting themselves
– Newer/alternative voices can achieve prominence, and this is a mixed space of old and new, but the old and established bodies remain central here.
Political gatekeepers old and new • Inconsistent use by politicians and parties – Mentioned by other users, but not contributing (to
hashtagged comments) during election day • Last minute social media campaigning not necessarily a
common strategy • Resisting comments during count until results
con!rmed?
Factors and limits • Compulsory and ritualised nature of elections in
Australia invites certain kinds of participation on social media, which secondary hashtags hook into (barbecues, cake stalls)
• Even with increased activity on election day, though, this is still not a representative sample of the Australian population at large.
• Although #ausvotes an established marker, it is not the only election hashtag, nor are any required in related tweets
Further directions • "is paper outlines a preliminary model of how election
day unfolds on social media; the political and social contexts of other nations will determine its adaptability beyond Australia
• "e transition from personal voting experience to analysis to reactions and commentary demonstrates a number of Twitter’s uses across the same context
• Further research would look beyond the single platform and hashtag to examine further election day practices and the mix of the personal and the political.