Tweeting the campaign: Evaluation of the Strategies performed by Spanish Political Parties on...

Tweeting the campaign: Evaluation of the Strategies performed by Spanish Political Parties

on Twitter for the 2011 National Elections

Internet, Politics, Policy 2012

Oxford, September 20, 2012

Pablo Aragón, Karolin Kappler, Andreas Kaltenbrunner, Jessica G. Neff, David Laniado, and Yana Volkovich

Barcelona Media Foundation, Barcelona, Spain

OutlineBackground on the Spanish election

Historical overview

Spanish election system

Goals and research questions

Data collection

Results

Evolution of the number of tweets

Evolution of the affective content

Diffusion dynamics

Communication dynamics

Conclusions and further research

2

Historical overview

Spanish Government

1977-1982 UCD1982-1996 PSOE1996-2004 PP2004-2011 PSOE2011-now PP

3

http://www.publico.es/especial/elecciones-generales/2011/resultados/historico.php

Since 1982, PSOE and PP are the two major national parties alternating the Spanish Government.





4

Election process

Although the Spanish legislative system is bicameral:

Congress of Deputies (effective power)

Senate

The Spanish Constitution states that “the law distributes the total number of deputies, assigning a minimum initial representation to each district and the remainder is distributed in proportion to the population”.

Small national and new parties complain that the system favors:

two major parties

regional nationalist parties


5

Economical budget and access to traditional media

The electoral law regulates:

thresholds to private donations,

prohibitions of donations from outside Spain,

According to the results in the previous elections:

grants for the campaign of each party,

media coverage during the campaign.

Some minor parties claimed lack of coverage during the campaign.

Goals and research questions

6

Identify activity peaks in social media and examine the reaction of political party members to offline events.

Analyze variations in the affective content expressed by political party members during the campaign.

Are parties with low parliamentary representation forced into alternative digital strategies?

“the process of formation and exercise of power relationships is decisively transformed in the new organizational and technological context derived from the rise of global digital networks of communication as the fundamental symbol-processing system of our time” (Castells, 2009).

Is there a real and active debate among parties on Twitter?

“a significant share of this form of mass self-communication is closer to electronic autism than to actual communication”? (Castells, 2009).

Data collection

7

3M political tweets published by 380K users in Nov 4-24, 2011.

Tweets selected if:

containing a hashtag linked to the campaign (#20n, #elecciones20n, #votapsoe, #votapp, #15m, #nolesvotes, …)

written by a user previously identified as a member of a political party.

written by a user previously identified as an activist, journalist, radio/television program, mass media channel focused on the campaign.

mentioning the political party/candidate profile of PSOE, PP, IU, UPyD, EQUO, CiU or ERC.

National major parties: PSOE, PP (winner)National minor parties: IU, UPyD, EQUONationalist parties: CiU, ERC

Results: Evolution of the number of tweets

8

Activity on Twitter is strongly influenced by events in the offline world:

the election debate (>500k tweets)

the closing day of campaign (>200k tweets)

the election day (>400k tweets)

Users actually showed less active during the election silence. Even in the unregulated space of Twitter, the reflection day was followed and generally accepted.


Results: Evolution of the number of tweets

9

The peaks are consistent in the tweets posted by members of political parties.

The parties participating in the debates and the ones with favorable electoral results acquire higher levels of activity in these peaks.


Results: Evolution of the affective content

10

Comparison of tweets by PSOE and PP with the Spanish ANEW lexicon (Redondo et al., 2007)

Highest values of valence/dominance of the winning party on the days prior to the Election Day.


Results: Diffusion dynamics

11

Parties with traditional mass media coverage (PSOE,PP,CiU,ERC vs. UPyD,IU,EQUO) generate more content from the account of the candidate than from the party's official account.

Most of these parties (PSOE,PP,CiU) opt for co-managing the account of the candidate with a professional team of communication.


Results: Diffusion dynamics (retweets)

12

Members of political parties

propagate, almost exclusively,

contents coming from members

of their own party.



13

Social Network Analysis reveals:

Parties with limited mass media coverage (EQUO and UPyD) generate more clustered networks with a bigger giant component => stronger community cohesion.

Fragmentation occurs more intensively in coalition of parties (IU).

The most cohesive parties generate network structures with the highest levels of nested k-cores.



14

Parties and/or candidates are central elements in the diffusion dynamics

over the election campaign (except for IU).


Results: Communication dynamics (replies)

15

Considerable levels of communication among members of different parties:

PP - PSOE

IU - UPyD - EQUO

ERC - CiU

The most intensive communication flows occur between members of the same party.



16

Again, EQUO, UPyD, and IU show the highest clustering coefficient



17

In most party replies networks, the candidate is the most central user.

Important presence of politicians in the top-users rather than corporate party accounts


Conclusions

18

The winning party already anticipated its victory in the affective content of its tweets in the days prior to the election day.

Almost no retweets between members of different political parties. Also conversations (replies) take place mostly among members of the same party.

Minor and new parties, with limited access to traditional media, tend to be more clustered and better connected, which implies a more cohesive community.

The candidate and/or party accounts are central elements in the diffusion dynamics. However, in communication dynamics only the candidates remain as central elements.

Users prefers to interact with accounts that correspond to politicians rather than political corporate accounts

Further research

19

Explore topological patterns of the party networks and characterize the different party apparatus as centralized, decentralized or distributed networks (De Ugarte, 2007).

http://lasindias.org/el-poder-de-las-redes/










Further research

20

Explore topological patterns of the party networks and characterize the different party apparatus as centralized, decentralized or distributed networks (De Ugarte, 2007).

Contrast the topological patterns of the party networks with the networks produced by recent citizens' movements.

Questions?

21

Thank you for your attention!

References

22

Castells M, (2009). “Communication power”. Oxford University Press.

De Ugarte D. (2007). “El poder de las redes”.Colección Biblioteca de las Indias.

Redondo J., Fraga I., Padrón I., and Comesaña M. (2007). “The Spanish adaptation of ANEW (affective norms for English words)”. Behavior Research Methods, 39(3), 600-605. Psychonomic Society Publications.

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