How to analyze political tweets

By Michiel Rovers on 11 April 2011

The politics are totally into social media. Nothing new about that. That politicians are trying to close the gap between politics and the people by using social media, is also nothing new. But is this really the reason why they are using social media, or are they only saying this. What kind of messages is sent by politicians? How do people react to these messages?  To what extent do politicians respond to the reactions of citizens? In the past two years Chris Aalberts and Maurits Kreijveld have done research to find answers to these questions. These answers are described in their book ‘veel gekwetter, weinig wol’. To my humble opinion, the most interesting contribution from this research is the number of new questions that come out of their results. I would like to describe some answers from Aalberts and Kreijveld given to the three questions above. With these answers I’d like to ask some new questions and introduce you to the new database that gives opportunities to answer these new questions. 

What kind of messages is sent by politicians?

The research shows that politicians use social media mainly to send information.  They hope that this information is collected by citizens or journalists. Not only politicians send information, but also citizens who have a political or social purpose. This conclusion isn’t new. In an earlier blogpost (June 7, 2010: politicians and Twitter: are they aware of the possibilities?) was desciribed that politicians used Twitter mainly to send opinions.  The content of these messages however, may vary. They partly consist of policy statements, but also messages to express the ‘human’ side of the politician. Interesting new questions to examine are a) around what occasions do politicians send most tweets; b) are policy tweets or ‘human’ tweets sent around different occasions; c) can you see a difference between politicians from the left and the right wing in the nature of the tweets?

How do people react to these messages?  To what extent do politicians respond to the reactions of citizens?

Another conclusion from the study of Aalberts and Kreijveld concerns the way citizens and politicians react to each other’s messages.  The purpose of the message isn’t to provoke a discussion, but particularly one way messages or confirmation of opinions. Politicians are using social media to promote their views. But isn’t it better to use social media for discussion? Aren’t views stronger when you can refute the views of others? Are the politicians deliberately avoiding the possibilities of discussion? Which examples show that discussions can contribute to the popularity of views/statements? And again the question: can you see a difference between politicians from the left and the right wing?

Of course every politician has to select to what message they react. The NOS (Dutch Broadcast Association) examined which politician gave most replies on twitter. The results showed that Marianne Thieme of the Animal Party replied to 75% of the tweets. What can be concluded from this result. Is this an example of discussion? Are there as many responses outside campaignperiod as during? To whom does she reply?

These new and old questions can be answered by analyzing the content of messages. It will soon be easier to analyze tweets of politicians. A database, created together with my fellow colleagues Rogier Brussee and Erik Hekman, easily collects all tweets from politicians. This database gives a range of possibilities to analyze a range of questions. Soon the first content analysis can be done, and possible interesting conclusions can be drawn.  For now I would like to ask you to think about questions that can be analyzed by using our database. We are open for all your questions.

tagged with: database, politics, social media

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