Tweet for Democracy: Examining the Monitorial Citizen

Tweet for Democracy: Examining the Monitorial Citizen

Leung, S. Y., Corral, R., Smith, G., Pink, R., & Roper, G. (2014). Tweet for Democracy: Examining the Monitorial Citizen. In iConference 2014 Proceedings (p. 1149 – 1156). doi:10.9776/14407

Research Advisor: Marisa Ramirez, Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University

In the 2012 US presidential election, there was concern about voter turnout. Since Obama for America’s use of social media during 2008 Presidential elections, there has been growing speculation of social media becoming a medium for re-engaging citizens in politics. Hence, social media’s role in political engagement and the nature of political engagement were examined via three analyses of Twitter data (i.e. network posting frequency, sentiment analysis, and social network analysis) and one survey study. The results showed that Twitter’s impact on political engagement is simply about spreading awareness — it still depends on whether open-minded, and politically and civically interested users see the politically relevant tweets.

Presented at iConference 2014