Natiello 2013 - The Political Tweet: Examining The Relationship Between American and German Leaders Online Communication Styles and User Engagement

[THE POLITICAL TWEET] A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF AMERICAN AND GERMAN POLITICAL LEADERS ONLINE COMMUNICATION STYLES AND USER
ENGAGEMENT ON TWITTER Natiello 2013
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Steven Natiello Graduate Student Political Science Department East Stroudsburg University
The Political Tweet Examining the Relationship Between American and German Leaders Online Communication Styles and User Engagement on Twitter
DRAFT --1-Please visit www.natiellothesis.wordpress.com to view the latest updates
[THE POLITICAL TWEET] A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF AMERICAN AND GERMAN POLITICAL LEADERS ONLINE COMMUNICATION STYLES AND USER ENGAGEMENT ON TWITTER Natiello 2013
DRAFT Contents Brief Abstract Introduction Research Question(s) Hypotheses Background Germany Twitter Theories Uses and Gratifications Theory The Global Village The Critical Theory of Communication Grunigs Four Public Relations Models Orthopraxy and Reinforcement Theory Literature Review Political Public Relations 2.0 and the Use of Twitter of Political Leaders in Turkey The Effect of Twitter On College Student Engagement And Grades Relationships Among Twitter Conversation Networks, Language Use, And Congressional Voting. Political Public Relations 2.0 and the Use of Twitter of Political Leaders in Turkey Relationships Among Twitter Conversation Networks, Language Use, And Congressional Voting. Method Data Collection Twimemachine and JS Coding Twitter Advanced Search Tweets Collection USA: 9/20 - 10/25 (36 days) DE : 8/15 - 10/06 (52 days) Variables Scoring Formality Interactivity Dependent Variables Independent Variables Message Subject Affective Norms of Language Interactivity Score Formality Score DRAFT --2-Please visit www.natiellothesis.wordpress.com to view the latest updates
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Abstract
Twitter disproportionately represents youth and minorities and has become the medium of choice for many politicians to communicate directly with constituents (Beaujon 2013, Brenner & Duggan 2013, Smith & Brenner 2013). Yet despite widespread international adoption, communicative effectiveness between users, groups, and even entire geographic regions varies drastically (Lipman 2013, Koetsier 2013). This study seeks to identify factors that impact success on Twitter by examining targeted cultural and behavioral characteristics of select American and German verified political accounts. The analysis aims to discern both culturally-independent and cultural-specific qualities that may ultimately allow less inherently influential politicians, movements, and organizations to reach youth and minorities online.
Introduction
This research paper describes a qualitative cross-cultural study designed to examine the relationship between Twitter use among political leaders and user engagement among those users that respond. The ultimate purpose of this research is to identify successful user styles so that lesser-known individuals, groups, and grassroots movements can better understand how to reach politically marginalized groups and demographics (Bekafigo, McBride 2013). Numerous sources indicate positive correlations between certain styles and user response rates, and the strong presence of congressional politicians on the popular microblogging platform reinforces the value of Twitter as a medium for political communication. Though there is a growing amount of studies examining Twitters political influence during major election cycles, there are remarkably few that consider the wider ramifications and even fewer that apply a cross-cultural perspective, despite Twitters strong multilingual user base. As in many similar studies, definitive causality is beyond the reach of this research project. However; this design is tailored to address two notable aspects of the social media relevancy debate. First, the proposed study will fill a particular niche by pursuing a cross-cultural perspective. Applying this cross-cultural perspective allows for the identification of specific traits that would be difficult if not impossible to identify from an ethnocentric perspective; the introduction of a wider cultural contrast drastically reduces the fish-bowl effect. Second, the successful completion of this project will establish a more comprehensive foundational approach than those few which currently exist to measure engagement on Twitter. This study is designed such that it can be easily expanded to include a wider range of accounts on Twitter. This twofold purpose will be achieved by collecting a series of tweets from successful or prominent Twitter accounts and coding them for targeted characteristics. This coding structure is designed to target form, function, and interactivity by isolating key components of each quality. Once each message is coded, an analysis with the understanding of existing research will attempt to identify relevant trends. Though the dynamic and rapidly changing nature of Twitter and social media poses a challenge to the study, the structure is designed to measure trends with no dependency on specific events. The fulfillment of this studys goals will be of particular relevance to emerging politicians, movements, and organizations.
Objective
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One of the reasons Twitter has become such an invaluable tool for many politicians is that it has become a perfect platform by which a single, well-crafted message can reach any number of people. As internet users continue to become more mobile (Bennett 2013), communication becomes more immediate and more easily accessible. This dynamic has opened up a new realm of potential research that has only barely begun to be explored. From the perspective of political communications research, there are any number of avenues to pursue. This particular study seeks to contribute to the rush of research that has been undertaken recently to address that concern. The objective of this research is to identify cross-cultural characteristics of various message styles exhibited by select American and German political Twitter accounts in order to reveal successful qualities. The successful completion of this research will highlight specific attributes that contribute to the success of popular Twitter accounts, and incorporation of such attributes should allow lesser-known or emerging accounts to see more success in stimulating a strong user response.
Research Question(s)
RQ1 What differences exist between American and German accounts? RQ2 What differences exist between engaging and non-engaging accounts? RQ3 What relationship exists between formality and engagement? RQ4 What relationship exists between message subject and engagement? RQ5 How does affective norm choice impact user engagement? RQ6 Based on the data collected, what content adjustment might enable lesser-known politicians, groups, organizations, or platforms to reach a wider audience? There are a number of other questions to which this study alludes. These alternate questions (AQ) will not be fully addressed and therefore are not research questions in the truest sense, but they nevertheless merit consideration. AQ1 If social media is such a powerful tool in other countries, especially the United States, why is it less embraced among German politicians? AQ2 What differences exist between message styles of German and American political accounts? AQ3 What factors contribute to this discrepancy and can German accounts remedy any lack of interest by a modification of their message styles? [SN3] The unique combination of a big-name-oriented political atmosphere and the degree of personification that our commercial culture has enabled play a significant role Twitter prominence in the United States. Conversely, the absence of such factors in the German political system has thus far precluded the possibility of Twitters dissemination at such a prolific rate. The study utilizes the inherent structural differences between the United States and German governments to highlight tweet characteristics. The German system by nature deemphasizes candidates (with certain exceptions), whereas the United States tends to personify even political platforms. This likely plays a role in implementation (and success) of such platforms when they try to establish a social media presence.
Hypotheses
H1 If a given Twitter account has a high amount of interactivity, it will experience high amounts of user engagement. H2 Hypotheses will be updated soon.
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Background
The study utilizes the inherent structural differences between the United States and German governments to highlight tweet characteristics. The German structure by nature deemphasizes candidates (with certain exceptions), whereas the United States heavy media emphasis tends to personify even political platforms. This likely plays a role in implementation (and success) of such platforms when they try to establish a social media presence. The study therefore aims to bridge the divide between social media and political trend studies by identifying the correlation(s), if any, that mark the existence of a potentially causative relationship. Though many argue that social network sites and social media play a significant role, much of existing research is dedicated toward qualifying the what; that is, measuring and analyzing social trends and determining the implicated cultural and societal ramifications (Stuchbery 2013, Burford 2012). Specifically, the microblogging platform, Twitter, is sorely underrepresented in academia, despite its widespread worldwide use. In May 2012, there were 135,000 new Twitter accounts created daily, and on average 9100 tweets per second, despite that 40% of Twitter users report using Twitter primarily to watch other users, rather than tweet themselves (StatisticsBrain, Twitter Statistics). Of the 15% of the entire American population that reported using Twitter regularly in 2012, more than half used Twitter on a daily basis, which is according to Pew more than twice as many as 2011 (Beaujon 2013, Sonderman, Smith, Brenner 2013). By October 2013, that number had increased to nearly 30% (Bennett 2013) According to another Pew study, the distribution of users is greatly skewed toward younger Americans and minorities: 28% of African-Americans use Twitter, and 26% of all Americans aged 18-29 use Twitter. Narrow that demographic by a few years to 18-24 and that number increases to a full 31%. Nearly one-third of voteeligible youth are on Twitter. Twitter usage also skews more educated; penetration is 19% among Americans with some college, and 20% who marked College+ (Beaujon 2013, Brenner & Duggan 2013, Smith & Brenner 2013). There is also a high correlation with smartphone ownership and Twitter use; nearly 20% of smartphone owners report regular, if not daily Twitter use (Smith & Brenner 2013). Though Twitters early years were strongly US-oriented in terms of userbase and content, that trend has recently shifted dramatically. According to an official report files by Twitter in early October 2013, 77% of the Twitter.com userbase is outside of the United States. Despite this, roughly 83% of members of Congress are on Twitter and use the platform in wildly varying amounts (Mak 2013).With this figure, penetration among members of Congress actually surpasses that of 18-29 year olds, Twitters primary demographic, who have adopted Twitter at a 75% rate (Mak 2013). Despite that Americans comprise such a surprisingly low overall percentage of the Twitters userbase, American politicians have taken to Twitter by storm, and more than three quarters of the worlds political leaders have followed suit (Kannalley 2013, Taylor 2013, Fitzpatrick 2013). German political leaders, however, have remained notably indifferent toward the rising platform. Of the seven political leaders of the leading five political parties in the 2013 Bundestagswahl, only five have their own Twitter accounts (Twitter.com). Notably, one of the two leaders who does not have an official or sanctioned account is Chancellor Angela Merkel , who was overwhelmingly elected for a historic third term in 2013. This is a stark contrast to President Obama, whose administration works with an official White House liaison to facilitate effective political communication on Twitter (Huffington Post 2010).
Germany
Political structure is an important factor to consider when studying mode of political communication.
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The name-centric / commercial nature of American culture also plays a significant role in determining consumption of political news. In the United States, corporations are considered citizens in the eyes of the law. This trait inevitably extends beyond the lawbooks into the actual psyche of the American people. Indeed, American renditions of organizations, groups, and other inorganic but dynamic social structures tend to lean toward personification, which is strongly reflected in the presence of such communities online. The difference in language is also an influential factor. Most countries represented in Appendix A, Figures 1 and 2 with high Twitter adoption rates feature English either as the dominant language, or a English as a prominent language (CIA 2013). This is logical given that Twitter is natively an Englishlanguage platform. Despite this, other languages nevertheless maintain a strong presence on Twitter, suggesting a universal quality that could very likely prove insightful. Including a cross-cultural and multilingual element in this research design eliminates most linguistic or societal biases, ideally reducing relationships to their democratic cores.
Twitter
Twitter is one of an immeasurable number of social media, social network, and blogging or microblogging platforms available on the internet . As far as social network sites user count rank, it is surpassed by a number of other networks, most notably by Facebook which has more users than many small countries. Yet Twitter nevertheless remains the ideal candidate for a political science study for a several reasons, including brevity, geolocational data, and international use. There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on, wrote the lauded poet-philosopher, Horace. Enforced brevity makes Twitter an ideal platform not only for ideological progress, but for politicians across the aisle. The tweet character count limited to 140 letters and symbols very strongly resembles the sound bite so favored by news broadcasts, so communication formatting is relatively familiar to media consultants and makes for easy message migration. This is ideal for politicians to communicate the basis of their stance or respond to constituents, benefitting from quick propagation and widespread consumption. Indeed, according to a recent study by the Digital Policy Council as reported by the Washington Posts Caitlin Dewey, 75% of the heads of state worldwide tweeted via official Twitter accounts, a whopping 78% more than the year prior (Dewey, 2013). For more specific information regarding the Twitter status of world political leaders, see Figure [#] in Appendix A. This strong political lure combined with Twitters widespread use internationally, distinguishes Twitter from most other social networks. The public nature of Twitter makes it an ideal choice for study. Tweets are by default geotagged so measurement by locale is possible. The statistics offered by most sources takes such geotags into consideration, so location accuracy is as close to assured as possible. Any influence by potentially artificially manipulated geotags (typically by users with a strong emphasis on privacy) is likely minimal. Similarly, the international spread of Twitter has allowed for a stronger cross-cultural comparison than most other networks. While Facebook again dwarfs Twitter in terms of international penetration, Twitters inherent open-privacy settings and widespread trend tracking utilities enables user-end, individual-scale statistical analyses. Given recent widespread concerns over online privacy, many comparable social media networks and social networks sites are have become leery of open public
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disclosure with regard to user information, so Twitters inherently public marketplace designation makes it ideal for study.
Theories
This research design draws heavily from a number of academic theories. Those notable are Marshall McLuhans concept of a global village, the Critical Theory of Communication, Grunigs models of public relations, and Reinforcement Theory. The research, though grounded in nature and approached from the perspective of political science, borrows heavily from the field of Communications. Not only is this unavoidable, given that the topic of the study is the identification of a communicative relationship, but it is actually preferable. The cross discipline nature will allow for a unique approach that might not be possible from a purist perspective.
Uses and Gratifications Theory

[To Be Updated]
The Global Village

Marshall McLuhans notion of a global village is a fundamental component of most modern Communications theories. The theory essentially maintains that the internet would serve as a mechanism for the unification of various diverse cultures. This unification wouldnt necessarily translate to assimilation, but instead award an exponentially greater degree of exposure to alternative modes of thought (McLuhan 1962). The ramifications for a study on Twitter are clear. The global nature of the online microblogging platform ensures constant access to users anywhere on the planet. Interpersonal political interaction, though limited in scope due to Twitters enforced brevity policy , is no longer restricted to a politicians constituents, or even a national audience. Every user has equal grounds for public discourse, which completely reshapes the scope of any interpersonal interaction.
The Critical Theory of Communication

The Critical Theory of Communication also plays a strong role in shaping the framework of this research design. Designed by Stanley Deetz to balance corporate and human interests, it is primarily a study with which researchers and analysts might observe the behavior or Coca Cola or another such multinational corporation. Nevertheless; it applies well to this particular research design in that it assumes that public decisions can be formed through strategy, consent, involvement, and participation (Howard 2012). This assumption, paramount in even the most rudimentary marketing and propagandic schemes, is notably absent from much political science-based literature. Due to the very real need for persuasion and indeed personal marketing in politics, especially at a congressional or national level, it would be prudent to account for such a concept. This research design aims to address that issue.
Grunigs Four Public Relations Models

This research design, along with other contemporary research (Sancar 2013) draws heavily from James Grunigs theory of public relations regarding four public relations models. The
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models encompass the primary means by which public figures or corporations interact with the public (Botan & Hazleton, 2006). Though not all four models are particularly relevant , the study does consider the nature of such communications. The scope limits the usefulness of this theory except to ideally exclude confounding variables.
Orthopraxy and Reinforcement Theory

Orthopraxy is a concept devised by French propagandist Jacques Ellul in his 1965 publication Propaganda and made popular by subsequent propaganda theorists. Though there are a number of components to the concept, the core element promotes participation as a vehicle by which active propaganda is enforced and ultimately crystallized in the mind of the individual. Orthopraxy in itself is immediately applicable to the study of political participation and can serve as a unique lens through which the application of Reinforcement Theory is viable. Derivative of the behaviorist theories made famous by biologist B. F. Skinner, Reinforcement Theory states that behavior increases in probability when its outcomes are reinforced (Banaji 2011). Though generally applied to biological studies, the theory is relevant to the study of politics when one considers applicable modes of reinforcement. When Elluls concept of orthopraxy is applied, social media forums become an immediately noteworthy source of reinforcement. McLuhans global village suggests that the Twitters public forum would inherently have committal qualities, and either by way of active or passive induction (Ellul 1965) has the potential to bestow significant influential effects on user participants. Given that as much as 40% of registered Twitter users login for consumption (Statisticsbrain 2013) passive induction is far more likely. Nevertheless, the applications and implications of such a dynamic lend credence to the Twitter as a potential catalyst for participation.
Literature Review
Political Public Relations 2.0 and the Use of Twitter of Political Leaders in Turkey
Gaye Sancars study aims to identify the role of social media (Twitter) in political PR, presumably to discover the extent to which social media facilitates dialogue between political figures and constituents. Sancar differentiates between effective use (amount of two-way Twitter dialogue) and penetration (measured by number of followers). Cutlip, Center, and Broom also pointed that successful government maintains responsive, mutual understanding based on two-way communication with citizens (Sancar 1994). According to Sancar, good government in the modern era demands two-way communication. Sancars study is merely a content analysis of the types of communication by major Turkish political figures via Twitter. Sancar compares the number of followers, following, and total tweets for each of the major Turkish politicians chosen, as well as the specific content and format of each tweet. Four local newspapers were compared to identify political agendas, though Sancar did not mention his criteria for deciding what constituted an agenda. This is a logical step, given that he seeks to measure dialogue. He makes the argument that number following is an
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important indicator of the users purpose: fewer following means asymmetrical communication and less relationship building, whereas more following allows for symmetrical communication. Sancar finds that though the leaders chosen each have a Twitter presence, the degree to which that presence is felt varies greatly. Each candidate had a respectable number of monthly tweets (range 401-680), the two-way nature of these tweets was dismal at best. The highest percentage of tweets that directly mentioned another Twitter user (a default for dialogue) was less than 1% for every candidate, and the number of retweets (sharing someone elses message; a common form of typically positive interaction) was about 5% or less for each respective candidate (KemalKldarolu retweeted 29 times, or just 5.5% of his 640 total tweets, whilst the other politicians retweeted less or not at all).
The Effect of Twitter On College Student Engagement And Grades

This study is designed to establish Twitter as an educational tool to help engage students and faculty participation both inside and outside of the classroom. The research design was an experiment that lasted the duration of one full academic semester and involved a total of 125 students, who used Twitter for various purposes. The experimental group used Twitter as a part of the class itself, while the control group did not. Post and pre-treatment surveys were distributed, and the study found that use of Twitter does indeed benefit the classroom learning experience and increase motivation to more fully engage in a participatory role. The major strength of this study lay in that none of the students involved had used Twitter before. This unique scenario, which is growing rarer as Twitter adoption rates continue to grow exponentially, has the merit of encompassing the inevitable learning curve that accompanies the adoption of new technology. The study does not eliminate the risk of confounding variables, but given that the study found such definitively positive results, it is likely that Twitter aided in some fashion in increasing the active engagement of users. Though this study is from the perspective of an educator with no regard to political participation, the same principles apply to research in the field of political science. The positive association of Twitter activity with educational engagement and grades can translate very easily to political participation in that politicians who effectively engage their constituents via Twitter have a significantly improved chance to transmit customizable text-bytes with a higher chance of retention. The obvious value in this should not be overlooked.
Relationships Among Twitter Conversation Networks, Language Use, And Congressional Voting.
The study by Hemphill, Otterbacher, and Shapiro probes exactly how congressional politicians utilize Twitter. Designed as a content analysis, the study began by identifying and including only verifiable Twitter congressional accounts. A total of 29,684 tweets were collected using a third party, independent firm called Mturk. This same firm then coded each text for specific content, including mentions, replies, content, and other related characteristics. Several subsets of the original 29,684 collected tweets was also coded. Subsets were chosen based on several specific criteria: highest and lowest number of followers, friends, and tweets during the data
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collection period. Interestingly, the authors removed retweets. The data was then compiled and inserted into a Web chart to examine both the density and the interconnectivity of online relationships among congressional twitter accounts. The resulting data is then contrasted with the varied collected subgroups (ie: republican versus Democrat, high followers vs low followers, and so on), as well as against a random sample of similar characteristics and size. This data revealed surprising network relationships among congress politicians. While Republicans and Democrats both generally refrained from cross-party interaction , the sheer volume of tweets demonstrates the frequent Twitter activity. Despite this, the extremely degree of interconnectivity between congressional members via mentions or tags is revealing of the asymmetrical nature of current political tweet communication, which could be indicative of consultants hesitance to fully explore the relatively new platform. The removal of retweets was an choice that certainly influenced the outcome of the analysis. Retweets are essentially a simple copy and paste, or re-post action (Twitter.com) that Twitter users may perform when they want to spread a message. While not necessarily an endorsement, a retweet will reference the original sender and sometimes include a comment by the user that opts to retweet. By this method, a single message can reach well beyond its initial audience. The true reach of retweets is still under research, which may have been a factor influencing the authors decision of omission, but commercial tools have already emerged (Palladino 2013) to help Twitter users measure how far their tweets are retweeted. This factor suggests potential for further research, as market trends often predict shifts in social attitude. Ultimately the content analysis proves a unique insight into the ways politicians use Twitter, but where it excels in depth, it certainly lacks in depth. The study achieves its goals by addressing how and to what extent congressional politicians utilize Twitter, but it makes no attempt to address the impact on audiences, instead leaving that topic to future studies. The content analysis therefore provides a stable foundation for future research and a strong justification for this research design.
Method
Data Collection
Twimemachine and JS Coding
Due to limitations inherent in Twitters API, active retrieval of tweets is limited to the most recent 3200 tweets. In most cases this is not problematic; for study this can prove a significant limitation. There are third party services that have their own archives of tweets dating back much further called historic data, but Twitters API update in July left many services out of the loop. Smaller scale third party services were in many cases unable to support the shift, and commercial-oriented services remained the only viable method by which to access historical Twitter archives. Fortunately, Twimemachine exists as a service to automate the retrieval of tweets of a given user within that 3200 message limitation. In the cases of both @TheDemocrats (>260,000
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followers and >10,000 tweets as of late October) and @GOP (>240,000 followers, >16,000 tweets as of late October), the first two American accounts searched, this included messages dated April 2013 to October 2013. In the cases of @cdu_news (>42,000 followers, >3000 tweets as of late October), and @spdde (>46,000 followers, >7000 tweets as of late October), which as the first German accounts researched, 3200 tweets actually extends back into 2011. As of this writing, account age is not accessible by any utility within the budget range of this study. Once Twimemachine has calculated the full list of 3200 or all tweets, the full list is dumped into text format with each tweet separated by a line break. The message is followed by a time stamp. This uniform format proved ideal for mass formatting as it allowed for the creation of Javascript code that dissected the outputted text file for mass input into a spreadsheet. Javascript coding was outsourced to Morgan Natiello, a self-taught Javascript programmer. For details about the coding process, please contact the authors for a referral.
Twitter Advanced Search

Limitations with Twimemachine and unrealistic costs of commercial services meant that certain attributes required manual collection. Tweets were therefore individually verified by hand using Twitters advanced search protocols. For convenience the search was limited to only the timeframe in question. Once a tweet was located, the number of replies was then counted by hand. Retweets and favorites are automatically counted by Twitter and were also included. Variables that could be considered but were beyond the capacity of this study include reach, or the cumulative retweets, favorites, and replies for each individual interaction or reiteration of the origin tweet. For example, on October 31, 2013, @cdu_news tweeted the message Rekord! 42 Millionen Erwerbsttige! Nie dagewesen seit Wiedervereinigung! #CDU+ [URL] /ap. The message was retweeted by 9 people, favorited by 1, and received 8 replies. Each of those interacting users has followers and the potential to receive replies, retweets, and favorites from their own pages. This process extends the potential viewership of each message exponentially and is directly dependent on the influence of the origin accounts followership. This study manually identifies the immediate reach of each tweet and instead relies on accountwide reach to represent the overall reach of that account. Account-wide reach is calculated by online utilities such as Topsy.com. Please refer to the Twitter subsection Reach for details on Topsy.com and similar utilities. Retweets, replies, and favorites are calculated as dependent variables.
Tweet Collection
The main research question that this study aims to address is What differences exist (if any) between engaging and non-engaging accounts? With this question in mind, this study was shaped to answer the question while accounting for the Tweets of multiple accounts. The end model is a framework by which messages from international accounts can be compared sideby-side. The resulting data highlights major differences in composition and interactivity of political accounts.
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To obtain this data, tweets were collected from major political party accounts (Democrats, Republicans, German Christian Democrats, and German Social Democrats), as well as from major politician Twitter accounts from both countries. A less influential German party, the Piratenpartei, was included because it has a Twitter presence disproportionate to its representation in German parliament (which is zero, as of this writing), as well as a very unique tweet style for a German political account. The Piratenpartei failed to earn enough votes for representation in the German parliament this year (at least 5% of the party vote), but its strong Twitter presence and potential for growth among youth (Kinder- und Jugendwahlprojekt U18 2009, Infratest dimap 2013) merit inclusion. Tweets from these five accounts were collected from a time period centered around two major political events; the government shutdown in the US and the 2013 election cycle in Germany. As mentioned above, availability was a major determination in selecting a viable comparable time period. The framework is therefore designed to not be date-oriented, but instead eventoriented, assuming that invested politicians and parties will be most active during these periods. most major political events should prove comparable by this method. The time frame selected therefore reflects the most significant political event in each country to occur within the past six months. In the United States, the government shutdown was the major political event, whereas Germanys Bundestagswahl, the national election was chosen on the German side. In the USA, tweets were collected from 9/20 to 10/25 (36 days). This time span marks the period in which the hashtag #governmentshutdown was most used. Similarly, the chosen German period, between 8/15 and 10/6 (52 days) marks the period in which the phrase bundestagswahl was most frequently mentioned. Though a major political crisis and national election are hardly similar in the traditional sense, they are appropriate for comparison because their shared trait is the measured trait. That is, both events should have generated a significant amount of online communication, as well as the most rigid attempt for persuasion, as the politicians and parties tried to reach and persuade constituents.
USA: 9/20 - 10/25 (36 days) DE : 8/15 - 10/06 (52 days)
Variables
In all cases of grammar-related coding, special consideration is given to potentially unintentional notation. A situation in which an exclamation is placed to the left of a usertag and is unrelated in any way to the message content, for example, would likely be discarded as accidental. All such examples are decided on a case-by-case basis are are denoted in the corresponding Notes cell of the appropriate tweet coding sheet. All manually collected values contained in the coding sheet (average tweets per day, etc.) reflect the users only during the measurement period. Account data from external utilities, such as Reach and Audience Sentiment include the entire
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age of the account, meaning that some variation will exist if account behaviour has changed significantly1.
Scoring
Once the tweet data is calculated, two scores, namely Formality and Interactivity will be determined for each tweet based on specific criteria coded above. These two categories are meant as a measure by which the respective effects of grammar and direct interactivity on can be observed. For example, the @GOP tends to have a much less formal message style than @TheDemocrats, often using internet slang (u instead of you, wkd instead of weekday, etc). What impact, if any, does this have on interactions? Once Formality and Interactivity scores are calculated, measures of association and Somers D tests will be performed using IBMs SPSS to identify potential relationships between variables.
Formality
Formality uses a scale of 0-15 to measure each tweets adherence to grammar rules in the accounts primary or native language. For tweets that are written in a language other than the accounts primary language, the grammar rules of the written language apply. However; in such cases, special consideration is taken to address potential unintentional grammatical mistakes. Any such instances are carefully documented in the appropriate Notes field.
Interactivity
Interactivity uses a scale of 0-6 to measure the degree to which each each tweet employs methods of directly engaging the audience or another user. These variables utilize the methods by which users publicly engage each other on Twitter: retweeting, replying, and favoriting. These three communication methods are what distinguish Twitter as a social media platform, rather than a micro publishing platform. These methods are always the cornerstone of any interface to Twitter and provide an ideal measure for online interactivity.
Dependent Variables
The dependent variables all include basic features of Twitter and are designed to measure the extent to which each political accounts target constituency (the Twitter userbase) actually responds. This is a standard measure of online engagement (Naveed et al 2011, Greer 2011, Williamson 2013, Lindner 2013, Jungherr 2013, Bekafigo 2013, Digrazia et all 2013) and will provide the bulk of analysis Number of retweets Number of favorites Number of replies
Independent Variables
Message Subject
1
This discrepancy is unavoidable without corporate sponsorship and access to corporate-level resources.
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1. Policy: will include all figures, quotes, statistics, etc relating to specific named policies. A tweet will only fall under the policy category when facts are supported by a third party that is not immediately recognizable as belonging to the user. It is essential to note that this is in no way validation of the citation. Sources may be blatantly illegitimate or untrustworthy may be linked and there absolutely no discernment between such tweets and honest, accurate, and reputable sources. Future studies may wish to address this shortcoming. 2. Political: Messages are considered political when they describe the behavior of a politician in a way that is directly related to the politicians job. Tweets mentioning polling behavior, describing events such as rallies and meetings, and relating political discussions with constituents are all considered political activity. Generic ideological statements, such as Children should not go hungry! are also included within this category due to an unavoidable potential for politically charged ideological statements. 3. Election/Campaign: Only overt messages about campaigns are considered. When messages contain My opponent, they belong in this category. When messages refer to the candidate by name or merely allude to idealistic differences, the message is NOT considered campaign related. The reason for this is that bias can influence the coder to infer campaign related messages in a positive or negative manner. Taking each comment at face value leaves little room for false interpretation. 4. News: This category includes messages in which URLs to third party news articles are posted without comment, or with only the headline of the targeted article shared. 5. Personal: All activity that is not social interaction (dialogue) that is personal. Examples include walking the dog, shoveling the driveway, and enjoying a dog at Franks Franks. Non-political jokes, comments about food, and other similar content are also considered social. 6. Sentiment: Messages are considered sentimental when they are used to interact with another user for no other overt reason than to communicate messages of sentiment, such as birthday wishes, condolences, and similar content. If it can be written on a greeting card, it is likely sentiment. 7. Meta: Messages that acknowledge existing on Twitter specifically. Messages discussing number of followers, for example would qualify. Messages discussing regulation of Twitter do not; instead, these messages would fit under policy opinion or policy information. 8. Quotes (Motivational): Short quotes are ideal for a platform like Twitter and so require a separate category. Category 8-Quotes does not inherently include retweets, though retweets may certainly be coded into this category. Only messages that include a direct quote from an individual or individual representative may be included. For example, the message RT @aTwitterUser: So true. Corruptio optimi pessima would be considered a quote because the quote comes after the retweet and the personal statement. The next message, RT @aTwitterUser Winter is coming indeed! is not a Quote-category message because it is merely a rebroadcast of the non-quote containing message. Had
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the original message itself contained a quote, then the retweet would have also merited inclusion in the quote category. 9. (Other): Messages that dont fall into other categories but occur infrequently enough to justify a separate category. Used primarily as a gauge for inclusiveness of the other categories; this category should at most contain more no more than 1% of total coded messages.
Affective Norms of Language

Psycholinguistic studies often utilize affective norms of language when analysing the content of human communication (Warriner 2013). The benefit of using such norms is the utilization of an established normative measure such that the overall impact of a given message can be compared against another while minimizing influence of researcher bias (Kanske, Kotz 2010). From the perspective of online message analysis, an additional benefit is the benefit of intermedium comparison; such normative measures allow an objective perspective of textbased communication that will allow for far more accurate measurements. A number of studies on Twitter have utilized such norms (Naveed, Gottron, Kunegis, Alhadi 2011), but to the knowledge of this author no research exists to examine the data from a crosscultural perspective. Given the vast difference in Twitters penetration between the United States and Germany - 30% in the United States (Pew 2013) versus 8% in Germany (Koetsier 2013) - the results should prove enlightening. To measure such norms, each tweet will be given a valence (pleasantness) score and an arousal (intensity) score based on the employment of certain charged words. There is a plethora of research awarding certain weights to certain words, as well as any number of studies in many languages that have been validated by several large-scale research projects (Warriner et al 2013; Kanske and Kotz 2010). This study utilizes the Leipzig Affective Norms for German database, designed by Philipp Kanske and Sonja Kotz, as well as Amy Beth Warriner, Victor Kuperman, and Marc Brysbaerts Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas which calculates norms of English words and is freely available for review online2. Though the two sources differ in scale, both are accepted as reputable and ultimately invaluable resources in any study of communication. The score will be calculated by using a variable AVERAGEIF3 formula in Microsoft Excel. This formula has been written to calculate an average score by identifying all included words from the respective language affective norms lists, retrieving the associated means scores for valence and arousal, and calculating an average based on that number. The formula works in both English and German, and the method proves ideal because both language affective norms methodologies utilize the same scales and measures, thereby allowing comparison (Kanske and Kotz 2010; Warriner et al 2013).
2
Warren, Kuperman, and Brysbaerts Norms study is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license and available at: http://crr.ugent.be/archives/1003 3 The AVERAGEIF formula has since proven to not include values after the first calculation, thereby rendering it unusable for this purpose. A custom Javascript code will likely replace the Excel formula as the primary method of calculation. This section will be updated accordingly.
DRAFT Interactivity Score

Is a Retweet: a binary variable which 1 represents retweets and 0 represents original content. Contains Call to Action: Includes any phrase or sentence that is in the imperative (der Imperativ) tense. Calls to action contained in hashtags are also included in this. For example, #GoVote is a common hashtag call to action by @GOP, whereas Deutschlandradio (@DKultur) will use Fragen Sie when encouraging callers to dial in. Contains Hashtag: Binary variable depicting the presence of a hashtag. Contains Usertag: Binary variable depicting the presence of a usertag. Contains URL: Binary variable depicting the presence of a hyperlink. Contains overt URL Description: Binary variable that indicates whether or not the message explicitly describes the contents of the link. This can be subtle in the form of a colon: #Obamacare is rolls out in CO: [url] or more explicit: Click the link to see a graph about #Obamacare in CO!
Formality Score
Contains "!": Binary variable depicting the presence of an exclamation mark. Contains "?": Binary variable depicting the presence of a question mark. Consecutive "!" or "?": Contains All Caps: Binary variable depicting the presence of a word, phrase, or sentence that is not an acronym but is written in all capital letters. In online culture, such composition generally equates to shouting or overly dramatic emphasis. Full Message is All Caps: Occurs when the entire message is written in capital letters. Though this is unlikely to occur from an official account, it is noteworthy enough to merit its own category. Full Message is All lowercase: The breach of basic capitalization rules designates a point toward informality. Contractions without punctuation (cant, wont): Lack of punctuation points toward informality. Contains Ellipses: Ellipses are often used online colloquially to represent an audible pause, rather than omission of content as per the official purpose. Umlaut is omitted without adding "e". German Only: Though it is occasionally necessary to for German speakers to omit umlauts from certain words der grner Hund (the green dog) when typing the language from a non-German layout keyboard, German grammar does allow for a letter e to follow the removal of an umlaut. In the above example, grner becomes gruener. It is often considered lazy but socially acceptable to omit both the umlaut and the added e in informal online settings (Stack Exchange, Fromkin). Hence, the omission of an umlaut without the inclusion of an e adds toward informality. Swearing: Swearing is considered unprofessional in both American and German cultures and is rare among politicians, especially online. Perspective: The written perspective of the message. Options are third, second, first, or multiple, coded 3, 2, 1, and 0 respectively.
DRAFT
M_Perspectives: Multiple Perspectives- Depreciated. This variable will be removed entirely once relics have been eliminated. Sarcasm_Humor: Though extremely subject to interpretation, it is important to consider the overall seriousness of a tweet when determining formality. Though there is a separate subject indicate, the obvious presence of humour could change the meaning of a message drastically. In remotely ambiguous cases, no fewer than five separate individuals were called upon to render judgment. Such cases are denoted in Notes, while exceptional cases are marked accordingly in additional notes. Some cases exist in which one tweet is apparently serious, and a subsequent tweet immediately adds humor to the comment. In such cases, the tweets are coded individually; if the first one contains no apparent humor, then it is marked with a 0, even if the followup tweet is related and humorous. For example, Cory Booker sent the following two tweets, in which the first was marked 0 and the second marked 1: Sadly, Pizza, french fries, ice cream, and Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries are all vegetarian @carrieclyne (@CoryBooker, Thu Oct 24 14:08:35 +0000 2013) I need 2make healthier choices b4 I inspire any1 RT @carrieclyne: Congrats to 1st veg senator! U inspire others 2make healthier food choices (@CoryBooker, Thu Oct 24 14:07:51 +0000 2013) NetSlang: Non-organization acronym- Includes all such instances in which a word is shortened in such a manner that would be inappropriate in formal writing. The general rule of thumb is that if it would not be accepted in an essay, it should be flagged for review. Emoticon: Emoticons include any textually visual representation of a non-word object. Emoticons can range from simplistic :) to the more complex [ (5) ] and all such examples are included. MT: Modified Retweet. Such messages are designated with the inclusion of a capital MT, usually before the original message after an added comment, or at the very start of a tweet. Modifications are often minor, such as the rewording of a headline. This study does not include measurement of the original message of any kind, so there is no way to accurately estimate the impact of such modifications.
Authors Note Results, Analysis, Weaknesses, and Suggestions for Future Research will be updated once the data is compiled. ###

Natiello 2013 - The Political Tweet: Examining The Relationship Between American and German Leaders Online Communication Styles and User Engagement

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Natiello 2013 - The Political Tweet: Examining The Relationship Between American and German Leaders Online Communication Styles and User Engagement

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[THE POLITICAL TWEET] A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF AMERICAN AND GERMAN POLITICAL LEADERS ONLINE COMMUNICATION STYLES AND USER

ENGAGEMENT ON TWITTER Natiello 2013

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Uses and Gratifications Theory

The Global Village

The Critical Theory of Communication

Grunigs Four Public Relations Models

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Orthopraxy and Reinforcement Theory

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The Effect of Twitter On College Student Engagement And Grades

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Twitter Advanced Search

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USA: 9/20 - 10/25 (36 days) DE : 8/15 - 10/06 (52 days)

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Affective Norms of Language

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DRAFT Interactivity Score

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