practicalresearchshenanigans

[practicalresearchshenanigans]

MANDELA EFFECT!!!

Now that I got all the nerds’ attention, let’s talk politics. 

Twitter and Politics… Who would have thought?

Mr Aragon, Ms Kappler, Mr Kaltenbrunner, Mr Laniado and Ms Volkovich wanted to see the relationship between the communication of people on Twitter and political campaigns. In their paper “Communication dynamics in twitter during political campaigns: The case of the 2011 Spanish national election” (2013), they discuss possible influencers on the Spanish electoral campaigns such as the balkanization of online political interaction, the strategic use of social media by politicians and the regulation of mass-media coverage. As an example Aragon et al. looked at Twitter and how it contributed to political events, focusing mainly on the Spanish National Elections in 2011.

The authors formulated several hypotheses to find out what influences the success of the elections depending on number of tweets and when they were posted, retweets, interactions between political parties and the public’s response to those tweets.  Aragon et al. showed that there is a relationship between the amount of tweets and the day they have been posted. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that political parties tweet the most during electoral debates and on the Election Day itself. The content of those tweets was also shown to be of importance as emotions were used more in tweets after the debates and a day before the elections. Moreover, the authors found that certain political parties only tweet and retweet other politicians within their parties, whereas politically cohesive parities have a closer network structure.

In addition, they observed that the candidates don’t reply or receive replies, illustrating that they use Twitter as a one-way communication tool. Finally, Aragon et al. found that new and minor political parties exploit the use of Twitter and see it as a potential to spread and promote their messages as opposed to the use of traditional media.

Possible research questions:

“How does the use of Twitter, number of tweets and their content influence the success and increase of media coverage of certain political parties during debates and on the Election Day?”

example of hypotheses:

-          Political parties that use Twitter consistently and on a regular basis have more media coverage than those who are not as active on Twitter.

-          Political parties that tweet more on important days such as electoral debates and Election Day will have more media coverage than those who neglect Twitter on these significant days.

-          Political parties that use emotions in the content of their tweets will attract more people and consequently be covered on various media platforms.

“How does the interaction between different political parties on social media like Twitter influence the impression that the Twitter community will have of these parties during political campaigns?”

example of hypotheses:

-          Political parties that interact only with members of their party show independence and create a strong front to the Twitter community.

-          Political parties that interact with other political parties on Twitter show their acknowledgment of these parties and in turn the community is aware of who they are supporting and/or against.

-          The Twitter community may see flaws of political parties when they are interacting with each other which may influence their view on these parties and change their voting behaviour.

- Practical Research Assignment 1- Fatima Elkawafi Class 2.D