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Journal of Political Marketing

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Politics in 140 Characters or Less: Campaign

Communication, Network Interaction, and Political
Participation on Twitter
a b
Leticia Bode & Kajsa E. Dalrymple
a
Department of Communication, Culture, and Technology, Georgetown University,
Washington, DC
b
School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Accepted author version posted online: 14 Oct 2014.
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To cite this article: Leticia Bode & Kajsa E. Dalrymple (2014): Politics in 140 Characters or Less: Campaign
Communication, Network Interaction, and Political Participation on Twitter, Journal of Political Marketing, DOI:
10.1080/15377857.2014.959686
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Politics in 140 Characters or Less: Campaign Communication, Network Interaction,
and Political Participation on Twitter
Leticia Bode1 , Kajsa E. Dalrymple2

1
Department of Communication, Culture, and Technology, Georgetown University,
Washington, DC, 2School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa,
Iowa City, IA
Department of Communication, Culture, and Technology, Georgetown University, 3520

Prospect St NW, Suite 311, Washington, DC 20057. E-mail: lb871@georgetown.edu
Downloaded by [North Dakota State University] at 23:54 28 February 2015
Abstract
The methods by which politicians and policy makers communicate with the public are
constantly adapting to the ever-changing media environment. As part of this changing
landscape, this study considers the case of Twitter. Specifically, the authors conduct a
survey of political Twitter users, in order to understand their use of the medium and their
political behaviors within it. Results indicate that political Twitter users are more
interested in and engaged in politics in general, and less trusting of the mainstream
media. Moreover, the study investigates the extent to which followers of a campaign may
affect its overall influence in the Twitterverse.
KEYWORDS: Social Media, Elections, New Media, Campaigns
As new media technologies continue to boost our ability to communicate with
each other, the methods through which politicians and policy makers engage with the
public must also adapt. Historically, this process has entailed strategic communication
campaign tactics such as creating candidate websites, facilitating and engaging in online
1
fundraising, and employing email lists to reach potential supporters. More recently, the
emergence of social media has prompted further adaptation on the part of political
candidates. For example, in 2008, then-candidate Obama was praised for his campaign’s
ability to embrace social media in order to reach parts of the electorate that might
otherwise have been missed: “By bolting together social networking applications under
the banner of a movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize
locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton
machine and then John McCain and the Republicans” (Carr, 2008).
This devotion to social media in the campaign context is a trend that promises only to
increase in upcoming elections. In the 2010 midterm elections, for instance, nearly every
candidate running for office at the national level had a Twitter account focused on
reaching out to current supporters and recruiting new followers. This trend is not only
perceived as a way of gathering supporters’ opinions, but also as a new method for
reaching out to swing voters. In fact, the Congressional Management Foundation recently
reported that 72 percent of congressional staffers “believe that social media allows their
Members to reach people that they had previously not communicated with” (2011).
Although some would dispute this interpretation (Morozov 2013), adoption of social
media has the potential to change the playing field for candidates who were previously
restricted to target audiences and voting demographics, and assist in swaying formerly
hard-to-reach demographics, such as young voters.
2
Citizens are also taking notice of the role that social media can play in political
campaigns, and are engaging with the new media available to them. This is highlighted
by research indicating that during the 2010 campaign, 22% of adult Internet users
reported using Twitter or social networking sites for political purposes (Pew Internet &
American Life, 2011). This number – comprising roughly 70 million Americans –
promises to grow with increased access to the Internet and to social media, as well as
with generational replacement. As a recent article puts it, “in purely quantitative terms,
Twitter contributes to a broadening of public debate: it constitutes a novel arena for
mediated public communication, and the sheer number of tweets…testifies to its use”
(Larsson & Moe, 2012). Although some research suggests interactivity and content
production is beyond the scope of most media consumers (Larsson 2013), trends point to
the importance of social media platforms, like Twitter, in mobilizing public groups and
encouraging greater voter turnout of traditionally hard-to-reach audiences. Moreover, the
importance of Twitter is not only in its saturation rate in the American citizenry, but also
in the attention paid to it by elites, which is extensive and growing (Marwick & Boyd,
2011; Case & King, 2011).
Although an increasingly larger percentage of the electorate is turning to social media
explicitly for political purposes, and politicians are flocking to these media to interact
with such social groups, we know very little about the political dynamics of this new
media genre. In order to address this lack of understanding, this study focuses on
increasing our knowledge of political social media users and the politicians they choose
to follow. Using a novel sampling technique, we consider only those Twitter users who
3
have chosen to follow a candidate for national political office on Twitter, and employ
survey data to examine how they compare to the electorate at large and other highly
politically interested subpopulations on a number of dimensions. We further consider
how they use Twitter for political purposes, how those social media behaviors vary
within the population of users, and how our methodology can help identify influential
subpopulations within American politics and savvy new media users amongst political
candidates.
UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICAL TWITTERVERSE
Current literature has limited its consideration of Twitter to a broad, aggregate view of
the network itself. The majority of extant research has two major concerns: first, which
users have the most influence, and second, how information spreads throughout the
network. Specifically, much work has focused on the way political information is
disseminated via Twitter, both independently and compared to other media (Yang and
Counts, 2010a). Research has demonstrated that network structure can affect the spread
of information (Lerman and Ghosh, 2010), and that speed, scale, and range, are important
factors to consider when examining the spread of information within a Twitter network
(Yang and Counts, 2010b). Moreover, initial work has demonstrated that information on
Twitter may serve as a proxy for general public opinion (O’Connor, Balasubramanyan,
Routledge, and Smith, 2010). However, current studies concerning influence on Twitter
have focused only on simple measures of indegree, retweets, and mentions (Cha,
Haddadi, Benevenuto, and Gummadi, 2010), and have failed to examine the unique
community of political tweeters participating on Twitter.
4
Much of the research on the political use of Twitter has also been limited to a focus on
elected officials, and particularly on members of Congress. Scholars have considered
most notably both what encourages members of Congress to adopt use of Twitter, and
what helps them to be “successful” in such use. For instance, Lassen and Brown (2011)
found that members are more likely to adopt Twitter if their party leaders urge them to, if
they are young, or if they serve in the Senate. Gulati and Williams determined that party
and campaign resources were the most important predictors, and later work demonstrated
that competition and the education level of a district also played a role in early adoption
(Gulati & Williams 2010; Williams & Gulati 2012). And, Chi and Yang (2010b) suggest
that adoption is driven by a desire for constituency outreach, rather than a transparency
motivation, and adoption may be accelerated by evidence of past users’ success with the
medium (Chi and Yang, 2010a). Considering these findings, factors including vote share,
funding, usage and influence may help to explain why some congressional users have
more followers than their colleagues.
Members of Congress have been shown to use Twitter and other new media principally to
share information and to report on daily activities – primarily as a means of self-
promotion (Golbeck, Grimes, & Rogers, 2010, Williams & Gulati, 2012). Additional
lines of research have challenged the idea that Web 2.0 techniques are of much use,
suggesting that “mundane internet tools (like email) are much more deeply integrated
into mobilizing practices today than emerging tools (like social networking sites)”
(Nielsen 2011). However, little research has focused on the specific role that Twitter may
play in motivating the general public to participate in online political activities.
5
A single study to date of which the authors are aware has examined Twitter use within
the electoral context, in an attempt to predict election outcomes. This study was limited to
a general search for mentions of political candidates and political parties in tweets
(Tumasjan, Sprenger, Sandner, and Welpe, 2010). Word count analysis of this sample of
explicitly political tweets revealed that the more frequently a candidate or party was
mentioned, the more likely electoral victory for that entity. Although this is an important
contribution to the political Twitter literature, it fails to consider the specific dynamics by
which such information is shared. Moreover, the idea of what constitutes a “political”
tweet is operationalized and restricted by the author, rather than the users themselves.
Moreover, with the exception of the recent report from Pew, asking a single question
regarding political use of Twitter combined with other social networks, no study has
considered how political Twitter use is occurring outside the realm of political elites
(Pew Internet & American Life, 2011). This is problematic for two reasons. First, the
majority of Twitter users certainly are not political elites themselves (Twitter had about
200 million users worldwide as of January 2013, with roughly 30%, or 60 million,
residing in the United States (Twitter 2013)). As a result, considering the use of Twitter
by such elites neglects a large part of the population using Twitter for political purposes.
Additionally, we must have some understanding of how non-elites use Twitter to
understand the relationship between political elites and their constituents, supporters, or
opponents within the realm of Twitter. We cannot fully comprehend how elites use
Twitter if we have no information as to who is interacting with them in this medium, as
well as how and why they are doing so.
6
CONSIDERING OTHER HIGHLY POLITICALLY INTERESTED
SUBPOPULATIONS
As Twitter is such a new medium, it is useful from a theoretical perspective to consider
other new media outlets adopted by politicians in recent memory. As a comparative case
study, we think political blogs are particularly relevant. Like Twitter, most blog creators
and blog readers are not creating or reading for political purposes. Even so, political
topics found their way into blogs, eventually resulting in a robust universe of widely-read
political blogs. i Similarly, we can imagine politics finding its way into the Twitterverse
and eventually becoming more established in concrete ways.
The population of political blog users, not surprisingly, is extremely high in terms of
political interest and engagement (Gil de Zuniga, Veenstra, Vraga, and Shah, 2010).
Based on this previous research, we question whether the political Twitterverse might
also be tapping into the same subpopulation of people who originally flocked to political
blogs:
RQ1: Will Twitter users who follow political candidates be higher in terms of (a)
political interest and (b) political knowledge than the general population?
The question of whether political participation correlates with blog exposure is also
relevant to our study. Research suggests that political blog readers are highly
participatory, and that this participation occurs in both new online expressive styles of
participation, as well as more traditional offline formats (Gil de Zuniga, Veenstra, Vraga,
7
and Shah, 2010). Although we might expect that exposure to political blogs is merely a
proxy for political interest in general, in fact, political blog use predicts political
participation above and beyond the usual suspects, including political interest. Because
we expect Twitter to function in a similar way, we predict:
H1: Active political use of Twitter will positively predict online and offline political
participation.
OPINION LEADERSHIP AND TWO-STEP FLOW
We might further expect Twitter to serve as a conduit for the flow of information,
and specific to the interests of our study, for political information.
A wealth of literature suggests opinions, ideas, attitudes, and behaviors may be
influenced by an individual’s perceptions of others’ attitudes (Asch, 1956; Cialdini, 2001;
Crutchfield, 1955; Lakin & Chartrand, 2003; Mackie, 1987; Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955;
Keller & Berry, 2003). The role of opinion leaders in the transmission of information and
encouragement of behavior adoption is highlighted in both the two-step flow theory and
in the theory of planned behavior (see, Ajzen, 1988, 1991, 2002; Katz & Lazarsfeld,
1955). Some scholars go so far as to argue that interpersonal communication through
social networks may serve as a better way of informing the public than more formal
communication networks (Rogers, 1976; Coleman, Katz, & Menzel, 1966).
8
This literature suggests that Twitter users are likely to influence and be influenced by
their respective networks. As a result, it is likely that political candidates have a great
amount of influence over the constituents that follow them, and those users may
subsequently influence their own followers. While we do not have clear directional
expectations for the way in which this might occur, we propose a research question based
on these theoretical frameworks in order to begin to address the important potential for
opinion leadership within candidate-centered communities on Twitter.

RQ2: How is influence manifested in networks of candidates and their followers?
METHODS AND DATA
Methods
In order to understand the population of users who employ Twitter for political
purposes, we first must identify them. For studies dealing with past communication
technologies, such as blogs or the Internet in general, the standard protocol for
determining users of such media has been the self-report (see, Pew Internet & American
Life, 2011). This is generally an effective strategy, but suffers from the problem of self-
identification. That is, we have no objective way of distinguishing between someone who
claims to read political blogs but does not, and someone who actually reads political
blogs. We rely on the respondents to honestly and accurately describe the extent to which
they engage in the activity of interest.
9
In order to combat this problem, we constructed our sample from within the
context of Twitter, rather than using an externally conducted survey. We first created a
universe of nearly all political candidates for national office in the 2010 midterm
elections (all those running for Senate (75 candidates) or Governor (76 candidates) and a
sample of candidates for the House of Representatives(404 candidates)), generating a list
of over 500 candidatesii. We then restricted this sample to only those who had active
Twitter accountsiii that we could identify from some objective source (usually the
candidate’s own website; we also considered publicly available lists such as
http://govtwit.com/list/all/tags/the-hill). This resulted in a final candidate sample of 73
candidates for Senate, 74 candidates for governor, and 249 candidates for the House of
Representatives.
After generating this sample of candidates for public office using Twitter, we then
randomly sampled from their followers on Twitter. Over 10,000 followers of political
candidates were contacted within Twitter and invited to complete an online survey with
the following prompt: “@username: U Wisconsin study on political tweets. You've been
randomly selected. Complete brief survey. Thanks! http://linktosurvey.”
Participation was entirely voluntary, but the response rate was surprisingly high, with
1076 respondents completing the survey in its entirety (1654 respondents began but did
not complete the survey, representing a 16.5% response rate and a 10.8% overall
completion rate). Among those surveyed, 837 volunteered their Twitter user name,
allowing us to pair their survey responses with certain behavioral and network measures,
10
which were obtained the week before the election (October 30, 2010) unless otherwise
noted.
Measures
Demographics
As control variables, we included a number of measures of demographic
characteristics, including age (mean = 36.8 years), race (sample is 88.1% white), gender
(36.3% female), education (70.5% have at least a bachelor’s degree), income
(mean=$62,000), and party identification (63.9% identify as Democrats, 30.5% identify
as Republicans). We also measured political knowledge of respondents by asking 7
questions, and scoring them as correct or incorrect. The measure is the percent answered
correctly.iv
Media Variables
To understand what type of media environment and political information the
respondents might be exposed to outside the context of Twitter, and to understand their
orientation toward that media, we include a large battery of 12 media use variables, v
scaled into a mean index of use (1 to 7, mean = 4.8, chronbach’s α = 78). Trust in the
media was also measured, to determine to what extent feelings about the mainstream
media affect behavior on Twitter. Two items: “I trust the information I find in the news”
and “Most news are biased against my views” were averaged to create an index of media
trust (1 to 7, mean = 3.86, chronbach’s α = .56).
11
Twitter Variables
Four main variables of interest relate to how respondents report using Twitter.
First, we simply asked them, along the lines of the media use questions above, how often
in a week they read political tweets (1 to 7, mean = 6.07, SD = 1.30). We further asked
them questions about trust in Twitter, asking to what extent they agreed with the
statement, “The political accounts I follow are reliable sources of information” (1 to 7,
mean = 4.75, SD = 1.30).

In order to assess what types of political behaviors Tweeters may engage in, we asked
respondents a series of questions as to how they use Twitter politically. Performing an
exploratory factor analysis suggested two main dimensions of political Twitter use. First
is what we call active political tweeting, which consists of three measures reflecting how
often the respondent had retweeted a tweet from a politician, tweeted about politics, or
followed a link from a tweet to a story at a news site (scaled 1 to 7, mean = 5.73,
chronbach’s α = .69). This high mean suggests political Twitter users are actively
engaging in Twitter, rather than merely following politicians but doing little else.
The second dimension of political Twitter activities reflects the decision to expose
oneself to political disagreement via Twitter. It consists of two measures indicating how
often a respondent reports reading or following tweets from someone whose political
views he or she disagrees with (scaled 1 to 7, mean = 5.12). Again, the mean is quite
high, suggesting that concerns of a Twitter echo chamber may be overstated. Generally,
12
it seems political Twitter users choose to expose themselves to a variety of political views
within the Twitterverse. vi
Outcome Variables
Finally, we were interested in how political outcomes relate to activities on
Twitter, and thus needed to measure traditional political participation. Past research has
demonstrated the importance of considering online and offline participation as separate

constructs, so we conduct separate analyses of each (Gil de Zuniga, Veenstra, Vraga, and
Shah, 2010).
Building on previous research (see, Gil de Zuniga, Puig-i-Abril, and Rojas, 2009;
Mossberger, Tolbert, and McNeal, 2008; Tolbert and McNeal, 2003), online political
participation consists of twelve items mean indexed into a single measure vii (1 to 7, mean
= 4.17, chronbach’s α = .90), and offline political participation consists of five items
mean indexed into a single measure viii (1 to 7, mean = 4.78, chronbach’s α = .85).ix
Although recent research has supported the disaggregation of political participation
indices (Dylko, 2010), we relied on more traditional indices in order to compare
participation across the blogosphere and Twitterverse (Gil de Zuniga, Veenstra, Vraga,
and Shah, 2010). We recognize that items within our online and offline participation
indices may be differentiated into distinct clusters of activities (Gibson and Cantijoch,
2013), however, due to the novelty of our sample we chose to examine the effects of
Twitter usage on broad conceptualizations of participation. This study can, therefore,
13
provide a baseline understanding of whether people replace behaviors with political
tweets, or whether political tweets lead to engagement in additional political behaviors.
ANALYSIS
The analysis of our data consists of four main parts. First we consider the simple make-up
of this unique population of Twitter users. Then we proceed to question how Twitter
behaviors relate to traditional measures of online and offline political participation. After
identifying important Twitter trends, we then examine what encourages individuals to
engage in those Twitter behaviors, using a combination of survey and behavioral
measures. Finally, we consider the nature of candidate-centered communities and
influence generated by Twitter users.
What Do Political Twitter Users Look Like?
When considering the impact of a new medium it is essential to first consider the
demographic and political makeup of those users. In regards to Twitter, it is important to
examine two questions: first, what does this audience look like? And second, in what
ways does the average member of the political Twitterverse compare to the general U.S.
population? As displayed in Table 1, differences between political Twitter users and the
general population of the United States vary, sometimes dramatically.
Demographically, the story is mixed. Although the mean age is almost identical among
political Twitter users and the general population, political Twitter users are not reflective
of the United States when it comes to race or gender. Rather political users tend to be a
14
predominantly white population (88.1% versus 79.6%), and heavily male (36.3% female
versus 50.8% in the general population). This is a reversal from previous studies of
Twitter use in general, which have found that men and women are roughly equally likely
to use the medium (or that women are even more likely to use it – see Kimbrough,
Guadagno, Muscanell, and Dill 2013), and that black users are overrepresented on
Twitter as compared to their overall numbers in the population (Pew 2012, Hargittai &
Walejko 2008). Moreover, political users tend to be higher in both education (70.5% with
a bachelor’s degree versus 24.4% in the broader population) and income ($62,000 annual
household income versus $49,777 in the general population). This result is unsurprising
given the requirement to have Internet access in order to use Twitter, and the desire to
engage in a new medium like Twitter. That is, such demographics are very much
characteristic of Twitter users in general.
Politically, it is clear that our sample is on the extreme end of the spectrum in terms of
political interest, knowledge x, and voting behavior (as indicated in Table 1). Whereas the
average American tends away from such attitudes and behaviors, our sample is off the
charts on all three measures. xi
How Do Political Twitter Behaviors Relate To Traditional Political Participation?
The key to understanding political use of Twitter is by making connections
between that use and other behaviors of interest. In a democratic society, these are
generally the behaviors that contribute to democracy in some way, such as voting,
protesting, or writing a letter to the editor.
15
In accordance with our hypothesis, the results shown in Table 2 indicate that
active engagement on Twitter is positively associated with online political participation.
Exposure to disagreement on Twitter, on the other hand, is negatively related to online
political participation. This finding contributes to an ongoing debate regarding the
influence of exposure to opposing viewpoints on political participation. While some
scholars have argued that conversational diversity is a key factor in the development of
an informed and active democracy (McKuen, 1990, Huckfeldt, Mendez, and Osborn,
2004, Scheufele, Nisbet, Brossard, and Nisbet, 2004), our findings support research that
suggests that exposure to opposing viewpoints may in fact have a demobilizing effect on
individuals (Hwang et al., 2007; Mutz, 2006). Considering this finding, it is important to
examine how the infrastructural aspects of Twitter may influence both conversational
diversity and participation. In this case, due to the grand social networking capabilities of
the Twitter interface, users may be more likely to encounter opposing viewpoints online
vs. offline. It is clear from our findings, however, that this diversity may drive users away
from online participation activities rather than encourage them to seek them out. This has
important implications for political marketers who are interested in incorporating social
media technologies, like Twitter, into campaign and fundraising strategies.
In regards to demographic predictors, we found that income, media use, and
political interest are positively associated with online political participation, whereas race
(where higher numbers indicate non-white) and media trust are negatively associated
with such participation.
16
Offline participation (Table 3) shows similar relationships. As predicted, actively
engaging in political tweeting is positively related to participation, whereas again
exposure to disagreement is negatively related. As with online political participation,
income and media use are positively related to participating offline, and race and media
trust are negatively related. Two interesting relationships are worth noting for this
particular model estimation. First, political affiliation is positively related to participation,
suggesting Republicans participate more than Democrats. 1 Additionally, reading political

tweets is negatively related to political participation. This is an unexpected relationship,
considering past findings which indicate knowledge and awareness as positive predictors
of participation (Galston, 2001), and will be discussed further in the discussion section.
Finally, our findings indicate that age is negatively associated with participation,
suggesting older users in our sample are less likely to participate than their younger
counterparts. xii
What Predicts Engaging In Political Twitter Behaviors?
Because we have determined that active political tweeting is an important predictor for
participating in politics outside of Twitter xiii, we further sought to distinguish
determinants of active political tweeting. In order to do so, we employ a combination of
more detailed survey measures reflecting perceptions about Twitter and politics, as well
as some behavioral measures taken from Twitter use itself.
Additional Measures
1
It is possible this finding is a function of Twitter’s makeup in general, of the generally more affluent,
educated, and white.
17
We first thought political tweeting might be a function of the effects an individual feels
she is having on the Twitter community at large, and thus sought to measure perceptions
of self-Twitter influence. Twitter influence is a 7 point scale created from three measures
reflecting agreement with the following statements: “I think my Tweets would have a
significant influence on general public opinion,” “I think my Tweets would have a
significant influence on Twitter users,” and “I think my Tweets would have a significant
influence on general public opinion” (mean=3.36, SD=1.29, chronbach’s α=.86). xiv

We further believed that motivations for using Twitter might also affect whether and how
users employ it politically. We employed a battery of nine statements, which reliability
analysis indicated separated into three main components. First, users may be motivated to
seek information on Twitter. This is a concept composed of agreement with five
statements: “I use Twitter to give me more facts to back up my opinions,” “I use Twitter
to help me stay informed about what is happening in the world,” “I use Twitter to learn
new ideas,” “I use Twitter to find others who think like me,” and “I use Twitter to find
opinions that might be different than my own” (mean=4.83, SD=1.10, chronbach’s
α=.74). Users might also be motivated specifically by politics when engaging on Twitter.
A second component was revealed to include three concepts: “I use Twitter to learn how
politicians stand on issues,” “I use Twitter to find ways to participate in the political
process,” and “I use Twitter to organize or engage in collective action for a political or
social movement” (mean=4.28, SD=1.42, chronbach’s α=.71). Finally users might be
motivated to seek out entertainment on Twitter. This was captured by a single measure:
“I use Twitter for entertainment” (mean=5.12, SD=1.56).
18
For a subsample of our total survey population (those respondents who offered their
Twitter handle during the course of the survey), we were further able to pair Twitter
behavioral measures with our survey data. The Twitter API provided us access to one
important variable to include in predicting active political tweeting, consisting of the
number of followers a user has. xv Related to the concept of perceptions of influence, we
would expect that greater numbers of followers would encourage additional tweeting by
users. That is, the greater number of followers a tweeter has, the more likely she is to
endeavor to provide them content. xvi This subsample was fairly well-connected, with a
median number of followers of 305 (mean=1636, SD=9745).xvii This is close to the
average number of follows as reported in 2010 (300 follows, Hubspot 2010).
Analysis
Because it is a roughly continuous measure, we employ an ordinary least squares
regression in order to determine what predicts active tweeting. Results may be found in
Table 2.
In terms of basic results, we find that education and political interest predict active
political tweeting, as we might well expect them to. Political tweeting is not related to
political knowledge, suggesting it is not objective knowledge alone that prompts sharing
political thoughts and information with the Twitterverse. Media use is also positively
related to tweeting about politics, although trust in the media is negatively related,
suggesting that the less trusting one is of the mainstream media, the more likely she is to
tweet about politics. This might be a corrective measure – if the media cannot get the job
19
done, I will take its place and become a sort of citizen journalist. Interestingly, it is
distrust of the mainstream media but not trust in Twitter that drives tweeting about
politics. This suggests motivations for using Twitter are driven by its appeal as an
alternative media outlet, rather than as a particularly appealing platform in its own right.
We also expected exposure to political information of different sorts might motivate
political tweeting, and this is generally born out. Frequency of reading political tweets,
the number of political accounts followed, and exposure to disagreement within Twitter
all predict active political tweeting.
Motivations for using Twitter also seem to play a role in motivating political tweeting.
Predictably, users motivated to use Twitter for political reasons are more likely to tweet
about politics. Less obvious is the negative relationship between information seeking
motivations on Twitter and political tweeting. Perhaps this measure captures the desire to
seek more general information, rather than the relatively narrow realm of political
information. Entertainment motivations seem not to play a role in motivating political
tweeting, suggesting that users may or may not use Twitter recreationally, with no
bearing on their political engagement on Twitter.
Finally, we were interested in both presumed and measured influence on Twitter, in
whether perceptions of influence and potential influence (measured by number of
followers) play a role in predicting active tweeting. Interestingly it is the perception of
having influence, and not the potential to actually influence a large number of others,
20
which seems to play a role in motivating political tweeting, suggesting perhaps that
perceptions of influence are overestimated by some users. This finds support in other
studies which have suggested that actual influence on Twitter does not only come from
users with the highest number of followers (Cha, Haddadi, Benevenuto, and Gummadi
2010).
How Does This Affect Candidate-Centered Influence On Twitter?

Finally, we sought to consider how communities emerge around candidates on
Twitter, and what those communities look like in terms of realized influence. In order to
assess this, we rely on the behavioral measures gleaned from Twitter itself. We first
collected every instance of a “retweet” (when a tweet is reposted by another user on
Twitter) by each of our respondents. We then aggregated these by respondent, and nested
each respondent in one or more candidate communities, depending upon whether or not
they were a follower of that politician at the time of our collection. xviii This results in both
a number of followers within our sample for each candidate, as well as the total number
of retweets by any of those followers, aggregated by candidate. These totals may be seen
in Table 3.
Influence could potentially manifest in two ways – either the number of followers
a candidate has, or the proclivity of the candidate or his followers to tweet useful or
interesting information, prompting it to spread to others. That is, a candidate may exert
influence directly – by simply reaching out to a large number of people with her tweets –
or indirectly – by reaching further into the Twitter network by virtue of the influence of
21
her followers. In comparing the number of followers and the number of retweets accrued
by those followers, we can obtain a rough understanding of how candidates tended to
exert influence in 2010. Table 3 is sorted by the total number of retweets nested within
each candidate, and it can be seen that this is not directly parallel to the number of
followers. While followers and retweets are relatively highly correlated (.55), some of the
candidates with the largest following in our sample do not break the top ranks of
retweets. Rubio from Florida, for instance, is number one in terms of raw numbers of
followers, but falls to number twenty-five in terms of retweets by followers. In terms of
campaign strategy, this suggests that candidates should target not only a large following,
but also an active and interested following, in order to maximize their influence on
Twitter.
CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of this study was to extend our understanding of the political use of Twitter,
the implications of this social medium for political participation, and how communities of
political influence may emerge within the political Twitterverse. Overall, our hypotheses
find strong support from our data. Specifically, our findings suggest that Twitter contains
a unique audience for political elites to target. Political Twitter users are in many ways
the ideal subpopulation with which elites might choose to communicate. They are
extremely interested in politics, very likely to turn out at the polls, and wealthy enough to
contribute to campaigns. Moreover, political Twitter use makes it even more likely for
these super-interested political junkies to participate in politics in other ways.
22
Our novel sample gives us the advantage of clearly identifying political users of Twitter
in an objective manner. Rather than relying on self-reports, we can be assured that our
sample uses Twitter in political ways at least occasionally. However, this restricts our
sample to people who choose to follow politicians. There are certainly Twitter users who
tweet about politics and yet do not follow any politicians or candidates for public office
on Twitter, and these people would not be included in our sample. Moreover, our sample
was recruited only by voluntary participation. Accordingly, we are most likely capturing
the most politically interested possible sample, and excluding less intense political users
of Twitter. This might explain the strength of the relationships we find, but we believe
they would persist in other samples of political Twitter users. Future research should
consider other conceptualizations of “political Twitter users” in order to verify our
findings.
While we have learned a great deal in this preliminary study, we implore future research
to examine these limitations in order to better assess the behaviors and demographics of
political tweeters, the influence they may exert, and the communities they embody.
Incorporating further behavioral measures with survey data is a logical and likely fruitful
approach for these studies to take.
Keeping these limitations in mind, there are still several conclusions that can be
drawn from our findings. For instance, our results point to an unexpected relationship
between political participation and reading political tweets. Specifically, we discovered
that frequency of reading political tweets is a negative predictor of general political
23
participation. Although previous research has indicated that the use of media to inform
oneself about politics is usually a positive predictor of political participation (see Galston,
2001), this finding suggests that using Twitter as a method of gaining information about
politics may not be as effective as more traditional media. This may be explained by the
passive nature of the medium. For instance, due to the 140-character limit of tweets,
browsing through political tweets is comparable to browsing the headlines of a
newspaper. Similar to findings that have highlighted the limited effects of television use
on political knowledge and participation (Dalrymple, 2006; Chaffee and Kanihan, 1997),
Twitter users may not be actively processing the information that they read, but rather
passively digesting tidbits of factual information. As a result, the information to which
Tweeters are exposed may or may not be retained for future use in political discussion or
activities, thereby limiting their ability to participate in democratic processes. Of course
future research should explore this potential causal mechanism.
Perhaps most importantly, our study points to some interesting findings regarding how
influential various follower groups may be on Twitter. Specifically, our results indicate
that an individual’s perception of having influence within Twitter is a greater factor in
motivating active political tweeting than the potential to actually influence a large
number of others, at least directly through one’s own network of followers.
Additionally, the results presented above highlight the importance in considering both a
candidate’s number of followers and the activity of those followers. More specifically,
our findings suggest that candidates with a large following may not be contributing much
24
to the two-step flow of information if their followers are not tweeting and being
retweeted in order to continue the flow of information deeper into the network. Although
having a large following may be reflective of voter support, unless followers of
candidates are engaging on Twitter with others beyond the candidate community, social
media campaigns may not be as successful in reaching less active and interested
populations, like swing voters or “soccer moms”. As a result, it is essential that future
campaigns focus on both recruiting of followers, and encouraging tweeting among those
followers. Such behavior will only contribute to the flow of information and may help
reach communities in the Twitterverse that may otherwise be left uninfluenced.
As politicians, pundits, and politically interested citizens continue to turn to Twitter as a
source of information and a form of political expression, it is crucial that future research
consider the potential effects of this medium as well as the types of citizens that are using
it. Using a novel sampling technique, this study identified the ‘average’ political tweeter
and further analyzed the potential effects of Twitter behaviors on political participation.
As candidate and constituent adoption continue, the political importance of Twitter will
likely increase. While this may change the dynamics of the universe of political tweeters,
it will also make a useful campaign tool even more essential to modern American
candidacies. As Karl Rove, in a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal, suggested,
“campaigns are only starting to understand how to use the Web and social-networking
tools to make video and other data go viral—moving not just to those on a campaign's
email list but to the broader public…. It will have huge implications on how campaigns
are run, who we elect, and what kind of country we become” (Rove, 2011).
25
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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for Sampled Political Twitter Users
Measure Minimum Maximum Mean/Percentage Standard US
Age 14 78 36.8 Deviation

14.1 Population
36.9 a
Race (%white) * * 88.1% * 79.6% b
Gender * * 36.3% * 50.8% a
(%female) (%
Education * * 70.5% * 24.4% b
college degree)
Income <$20,000 >$200,000 $62,000 $20,780 $49,777 b
Political 1 7 6.5 .91 3.5 c
Interest
Voting 2010 * * 94.2% * 34.2% c
Political 0 1 .95 .11 .30 c

a
Knowledge
CIA Factbook 2010.
b
US Census 2009.
c
American National Election Survey 2008.
33
Table 2. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Models
Model 1: Online Model 2: Offline Model 3: Active
Political Participation Participation (beta Political Tweeting
(beta coefficient) coefficient) N=842 (beta coefficient)
N=848 N=600
Age .008* -.013* .001
Education -.034 -.003 -.054*

Gender .024 -.054 -.074
Income .068* -.054* -.011
Race -.403 -.404* .014
PID .004 .041* .012
Media Use .431* .370* .103*
Media Trust -.233* -.112* -.040
Political Twitter -.092* -.097* .231*
Reading
Twitter Trust .054 -.003 .013
Active Tweet .546* .521* -
Twitter -.065* -.080* .136*
Disagreement
Political Interest .165 .319* .310*
Political - - .241
Knowledge
Twitter - - .105*
34
Influence
Twitter - - -.100*
Information
Motivations
Twitter Political - - .229*
Motivations
Twitter - - -.028
Entertainment
Motivations
Followers - - .001
R2 0.40 0.33 0.51
Note: Two-tailed test where * p .05
35
Table 3. Candidates sorted by number of followers in our sample and number of retweets
of followers
Candidate Followers Retweets
NC/Burr_Richard 40 39079
DE/Coons_Christopher A 49 33056
IA/Conlin_Roxanne 32 31406
LA/Melancon_Charlie 19 29857
WI/Feingold_Russell 70 28977
DE/O'Donnell_Christine 86 28754
FL/Meek _Kendrick 43 28123
NY/Gillibrand_Kirsten 57 28037
AK/McAdams_Scott 28 27767
FL/Crist_Charlie 35 27692
WA/Murray_Patty 26 27480
NV/Angle_Sharron 92 26685
CA/Boxer_Barbara 74 22949
KY/Conway_Jack 32 21148
UT/Granato_Samuel Frank 11 21015
NV/Reid_Harry 46 20762
MO/Carnahan_Robin 26 20512
LA/Vitter_David 45 19862
OH/Fisher_Lee 28 19524
PA/Sestak_Joseph A Jr 66 19031
36
NH/Hodes_Paul 21 18791
MO/Blunt_Roy 56 17880
OK/Coburn_Tom 93 17871
FL/Rubio_Marco 117 17631
AK/Miller_Joe 68 16705
PA/Toomey_Patrick Joseph 68 15848
CT/Blumenthal_Richard 17 15492
IL/Giannoulias_Alexander 22 15361
CA/Fiorina_Carly 68 15235
NC/Marshall_Elaine 27 15075
IN/Ellsworth_Brad 12 14756
OR/Wyden _Ron 14 14483
CO/Bennet _Michael 22 14351
WV/Manchin_Joe 8 14143
CT/McMahon_Linda 28 12452
CO/Buck_Ken 22 12104
NH/Ayotte_Kelly 29 11796
IN/Coats_Dan 18 11039
WA/Rossi_Dino 32 9128
WI/Johnson_Ron 30 7927
IL/Kirk_Mark 50 6511
AR/Lincoln_Blanche 16 4740
KY/Paul_Rand 50 3172
37
OH/Portman_Rob 43 1535
AZ/McCain_John 26 1509
WV/Raese_John 16 1497
UT/Lee_Mike 16 1046
NY/Dioguardi_Joseph 15 991
AR/Boozman_John 13 972
NY/Schumer_Charles 15 870
HI/Inouye_Dan 14 831
OR/Huffman_Jim 8 368
MD/Mikulski_Barbara 9 310
KA/Moran_Jerry 9 241
AK/Murkowski_Lisa 8 178
MD/Wargotz_Eric 1 62
IA/Grassley_Chuck 6 52
ID/Crapo_Mike 1 36
GA/Isakson_John 7 34
ND/Hoeven_John 6 20
VT/Britton_Leonard 1 15
GA/Thurmond_Mike 1 0
KA/Johnston_Lisa 2 0
38
i
The growth of political blogs in the last decade has been enormous, as noted by Bode, Edgerly, Vraga,
Sayre, and Shah (2011): “from a relatively unknown medium in 2004, when Howard Dean’s blog ‘changed
politics’ to their heavy use in 2008, when over a quarter of American voters used blogs for political
information”.
ii
This list was generated primarily through publicly available lists of major party candidates, from the New
York Times and Roll Call.
iii
Active Twitter accounts, for our purposes, simply have to have tweeted at some point during the
campaign season.
iv
The questions were as follows: Which political party has control of the Senate after the 2010 elections?
Which political party has control of the House of Representatives? Which political party largely favors
repealing the recent health care bill? Do you happen to know…how many times can one be elected US
president? For how many years is a US senator elected? How many US senators are there from each state?
The percentage of votes needed to override a veto in the House of Representatives?
v
Respondents were asked, “How many days in the past week have you…” read a print copy of a local daily newspaper, read
a print copy of a national daily newspaper, read a news magazine (e.g., Time, Newsweek), visited a news Web site (e.g.,
CNN.com; NYTimes.com), visited a political blog (e.g., DailyKos.com; Instapundit.com), watched national evening news,
watched local evening news, watched cable news (CNN, MSNBC, FOX News), listened to news/talk radio (e.g., Rush
Limbaugh, Air America, watched a comedic news show, received political information from your Facebook network, visited
a political campaign website.
vi
The focus of this study was on political aspects of Twitter use. For reference, we asked respondents about
a number of motivations for their Twitter use, which fell into three rough categories – political motivations,
informational motivations, and entertainment motivations (nine questions in total). Means for political
motivations were generally the lowest (3 questions, mean=4.3), suggesting that although our sample is
highly engaged in politics, they still use Twitter primarily for other reasons such as finding information (5
questions, mean=4.8) or entertainment (1 question, mean=5.1).
vii
Sent an email to an editor of a newspaper/magazine, used email to contact a politician, contributed money
online to a political campaign that I follow on Twitter, contributed money online to a political campaign
that I do not follow on Twitter, forwarded a political email to friends, organized political activity via the
Internet, recruited friends via email to support a cause or campaign, subscribed to a political email list, met
in person with a political group I joined online.
viii
Did volunteer work, attended a political meeting, rally, or speech, displayed a campaign button, sticker,
or sign, worked for a political party or candidate, and contacted a politician.
ix
We combine measures of political participation as is standard in the field. See Nie, Powell, and Prewitt,
1969; Krueger 2002; Mossberger, Tolbert, and McNeal, 2008 for examples.
x
Although some might be concerned that respondents to an online survey might “cheat” on knowledge
measures such as these, evidence suggests they do not actually do so (Strabac & Aalberg 2011).
xi
It should be noted that we use different measures than ANES for each of these variables, so comparisons
are not precise. In particular, our knowledge measure is composed of more items, and our items tend to be
procedural (what percentage of legislatures to override a veto) rather than ANES’s questions which deal
more with current events (what is the current unemployment rate). Additionally, as a large number of
respondents began but did not complete the survey, we were forced to eliminate missing data, so our
measure likely inflates the knowledge of our sample slightly.
xii
While this may be surprising on its face, we feel it is related to our sampling strategy. In order for
respondents to be sampled, they must be following a candidate on Twitter. Implicitly, this means they must
be (a) on Twitter, and (b) relatively interested in politics. Both of those factors tend to skew to the older
population. Thus for an individual to to end up in our sample and NOT be older, the threshold of political
activity is likely higher. That is, we believe the finding that younger users are more likely to participate
offline is simply due to the fact that it’s less likely younger users end up in our sample to begin with.
xiii
We mean this statement in terms of how we have modeled the relationship. Given that our data are
cross-sectional, we cannot say definitively whether those who participate offline in politics are moved to
participate on Twitter, or whether participating on Twitter encourages participation in offline political
activities.
39
xiv
We also included a measure of perceptions of the influence of the tweets of others, including politicians.
The two measures were extremely collinear (corr=.97) so the additional measure was not included in
models.
xv
We collected data on followers the week before the election. However, such numbers are unlikely to
change much between data collection and survey data collection, just after the election.
xvi
Again, the causal direction here is unclear. The relationship is correlational (based only on cross-
sectional data), and thus it may also be true that those who tweet the most garner more followers.
xvii
Not surprisingly, this distribution roughly follows a power law and is thus quite skewed, as indicated by
the radical difference between mean and median. For perspective, almost 4/5 of our sample (657
respondents) had fewer than 1,000 followers, while only 20 users had 10,000 followers or more (about 2%
of our sample).
xviii
We restrict this analysis to candidates for Senate in 2010, mainly for ease of display.
40

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On: 28 February 2015, At: 23:54

Journal of Political Marketing

Politics in 140 Characters or Less: Campaign

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To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2014.959686

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Leticia Bode1 , Kajsa E. Dalrymple2

Department of Communication, Culture, and Technology, Georgetown University, 3520

constantly adapting to the ever-changing media environment. As part of this changing

affect its overall influence in the Twitterverse.

KEYWORDS: Social Media, Elections, New Media, Campaigns

As new media technologies continue to boost our ability to communicate with

hard-to-reach demographics, such as young voters.

American Life, 2011). This number – comprising roughly 70 million Americans –

Twitter contributes to a broadening of public debate: it constitutes a novel arena for

encouraging greater voter turnout of traditionally hard-to-reach audiences. Moreover, the

2011; Case & King, 2011).

Although an increasingly larger percentage of the electorate is turning to social media

politically interested subpopulations on a number of dimensions. We further consider

UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICAL TWITTERVERSE

community of political tweeters participating on Twitter.

elected officials, and particularly on members of Congress. Scholars have considered

more followers than their colleagues.

share information and to report on daily activities – primarily as a means of self-

play in motivating the general public to participate in online political activities.

Additionally, we must have some understanding of how non-elites use Twitter to

Twitter if we have no information as to who is interacting with them in this medium, as

well as how and why they are doing so.

As Twitter is such a new medium, it is useful from a theoretical perspective to consider

and eventually becoming more established in concrete ways.

we expect Twitter to function in a similar way, we predict:

OPINION LEADERSHIP AND TWO-STEP FLOW

and specific to the interests of our study, for political information.

A wealth of literature suggests opinions, ideas, attitudes, and behaviors may be

influenced by an individual’s perceptions of others’ attitudes (Asch, 1956; Cialdini, 2001;

1955). Some scholars go so far as to argue that interpersonal communication through

communication networks (Rogers, 1976; Coleman, Katz, & Menzel, 1966).

opinion leadership within candidate-centered communities on Twitter.

RQ2: How is influence manifested in networks of candidates and their followers?

METHODS AND DATA

they engage in the activity of interest.

sample of candidates for the House of Representatives(404 candidates)), generating a list

candidate’s own website; we also considered publicly available lists such as

http://govtwit.com/list/all/tags/the-hill). This resulted in a final candidate sample of 73

randomly selected. Complete brief survey. Thanks! http://linktosurvey.”

As control variables, we included a number of measures of demographic

(36.3% female), education (70.5% have at least a bachelor’s degree), income

(mean=$62,000), and party identification (63.9% identify as Democrats, 30.5% identify

as Republicans). We also measured political knowledge of respondents by asking 7

To understand what type of media environment and political information the

trust (1 to 7, mean = 3.86, chronbach’s α = .56).

statement, “The political accounts I follow are reliable sources of information” (1 to 7,

mean = 4.75, SD = 1.30).

respondents a series of questions as to how they use Twitter politically. Performing an

within the Twitterverse. vi

Finally, we were interested in how political outcomes relate to activities on

demonstrated the importance of considering online and offline participation as separate

Although recent research has supported the disaggregation of political participation

indices (Dylko, 2010), we relied on more traditional indices in order to compare

Twitter usage on broad conceptualizations of participation. This study can, therefore,

tweets, or whether political tweets lead to engagement in additional political behaviors.

identifying important Twitter trends, we then examine what encourages individuals to

engage in those Twitter behaviors, using a combination of survey and behavioral