Usage of Twitter in UP 2017 State Legislative Election by Three National Political Parties

Neha Pandey

Abstract

Political communication is as old as politics; it is often an arena where varied groups of individuals engage in political discourse. Previously, political conversation among the upper class was regarded as a privilege (Schattschneider 1997) and was undertaken via traditional, print, or electronic media. However, the advent of new media has fundamentally transformed the nature of political communication.


Since the last decade, political communication, formerly dominated by the ruling elite, has created a larger space for everyday citizens to participate in political discourse. It has evolved into such a powerful instrument that it has upended the top-down communication method typical in politics and created a forum for citizens to communicate and voice their concerns. It has gained prominence in politics and election campaign strategy. Citizens and political parties can now debate politics no matter where they are because of the massive growth in new media.


As a result, this research study explores the three national political parties in India's adoption and use of Twitter during the 2017 Uttar Pradesh legislative election. This article conducts a content analysis of all tweets sent from the official accounts of political parties throughout the period. To gather these statistics, the advanced search feature on Twitter was employed. Individual tweets are used as the unit of analysis. Tweets were analyzed by categorizing them. This article examines the frequency with which parties' official accounts tweet. What are the political parties tweeting about?


Keywords: Political Communication, Twitter, Social Media, Elections, 2017 UP State Assembly Election

References

• Aharony, N. (2012). Twitter use by three political leaders: an exploratory analysis. Online Information Review, 36 (4), 587-603. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521211254086
• Ahmed, S., Jaidka, K., & Cho, J. (2016). The 2014 Indian elections on Twitter: A comparison of campaign strategies of political parties. Telematics And Informatics, 33(4), 1071-1087. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2016.03.002
• Ahmed, S., & Skoric, M. M. (2014). My name is Khan: The use of Twitter in the campaign for 2013 Pakistan general election. In R. H. Sprague Jr. (Ed.), HICSS 2014: Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Science, 2242–2251. Washington, DC:IEEE Computer Society. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2014.282
• Ammann S. L (2010) A political campaign message in 140 characters or less: the use of Twitter by U.S. Senate Candidates in 2010. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1725477
• Baranowski, P. (2015). Online Political Campaigning during the 2014 Regional Elections in Poland. Media and Communication, 3(4), 35. http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v3i4.368
• Bharadwaj, A. (2017). How BJP’s IT Cell Waged War and Won in UP. Newslaundary.com. Retrieved 7 September 2017, from (https://www.newslaundry.com/2017/03/17/how-bjps-it-cell-waged-war-and-won-in-up.)
• Bruns, A., & Highfield, T. (2013). POLITICAL NETWORKS ON TWITTER. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved 16 July 2017, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.782328
• Caplan, J. (2013) Social Media and Politics: Twitter Use in the Second Congressional District of Virginia.The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications,4 (1), 5-7.
• Coleman, S. (2005) Direct Representation: Towards a Conversational Democracy, Retrieved http://www.ippr.org/ecomm/files/Stephen_Coleman_Pamphlet.pdf> (accessed 24 August 2017)
• Conway, B.A, Kenski, K. & Wang, D. (2013). Twitter use by presidential primary candidates during the 2012 Campaign. American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 1596- 1610. doi: 10.1177/0002764213489014
• Enli, G. S., & Skogerbø, E. (2013). Personalized campaigns inparty-centered politics: Twitter and Facebook as arenas forpolitical communication. Information, Communication &Society, 16(5), 757–774. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2013.782330
• Evans, H. K., Cordova, V., & Sipole, S. (2014). Twitter style: An analysis of how house candidates used Twitter in their2012 campaigns. PS: Political Science & Politics, 47(2),454–462. doi:10.1017/S1049096514000389
• Graham, T., Broersma, M., Hazelhoff, K. & Haar, G. (2013). Between broadcasting political messages and interacting with voters: The use of Twitter during the 2010 UK General Election campaign. Information, Communication & Society, 16(5), 692-716. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2013.785581
• Graham, T., Jackson, D., & Broersma, M. (2014). New platform, old habits? Candidates’ use of Twitter during the 2010 British and Dutch general election campaigns. New Media & Society. doi:10.1177/1461444814546728
• Grant, W. J., Moon, B., & Grant, J. B. (2010). Digital dialogue? Australian politicians’ use of the social network tool Twitter. Australian Journal of Political Science, 45(4), 579–604. doi:10.1080/10361146.2010.517176
• Golbeck, J., Grimes, J. M., & Rogers, A. (2010). Twitter use by the U.S. Congress. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(8), 1612–1621.doi:10.1002/asi.21344
• Haber, S. (2011). The 2010 US Senate Elections in 140 Characters or Less An Analysis of How Candidates Use Twitter as a Campaign Tool. Retrieved from http://auislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/1011capstones%3A154/datastream/PDF/view
• Harvey, K. (Ed.). (2014). Encyclopedia of social media and politics (Vols. 1−3). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. doi:10.4135/9781452244723
• Hemphill, L., Otterbacher, J., & Shapiro, M. A. (2013). What’s Congress doing on Twitter? In A. Bruckman, S. Counts, C.Lampe, & L. Terveen (Eds.), CSCW 2013: Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work Companion, 877–886. New York, NY: ACM.doi:10.1145/2441776.2441876
• Jacksona, N., & Lillekerb, D. (2011). Microblogging, Constituency Service and Impression Management: UK MPs and the Use of Twitter. Journal Of Legislative Studies. http://dx.doi.org/DOI: 10.1080/13572334.2011.545181
• Kreiss, D. (2016). Seizing the moment: The presidential campaigns’ use of Twitter during the 2012 electoral cycle. New Media & Society, 18(8). http://dx.doi.org/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444814562445
• Larsson, A., & Moe, H. (2011). Studying political microblogging: Twitter users in the 2010 Swedish election campaign. New Media & Society, 14(5), 729-747. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444811422894
• Lassen, D. S., & Brown, A. R. (2011). Twitter. Social Science Computer Review,29(4), 419-436. doi:10.1177/0894439310382749
• Livne, A., Simmons, M. P., Gong, W. A., Adar, E., & Adamic, L. A. (2011). Networks and Language in the 2010 Election. In Open SIUC. Retrieved from http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/pnconfs_2011/15
• Medina, Z & Muñoz, Z. (2014). Campaigning on Twitter: Towards the “Personal Style” Campaign to Activate the Political Engagement During the 2011 Spanish General Elections. Communication & Society,s 27(1), 83-106. Retrieved from https://www.unav.es/fcom/communication-society/es/articulo.php?art_id=481
• Miller, N., & Ko, R. (2015). Studying Political Microblogging: Parliamentary Candidates on Twitter During The February 2012 Election in Kuwait. International Journal Of Communication, 9. Retrieved from http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1910
• Rega, F. G. (2017). Twitter use by two political leaders: Barack Obama and Matteo Renzi. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/8515956/Twitter_use_by_two_political_leaders_B._Obama_and_M._Renzi
• Sæbø Ø (2011) Understanding Twitter™ use among parliament representatives: A genre
analysis. In: Tambouris E, Macintosh A and de Bruijn H (eds) Electronic Participation:
Third IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference, ePart 2011. Berlin: Springer, pp. 1–12.

• Schattschneider, E.E. (1997) The Semisoverign People, New York: Holt, Rinehard and Winston
• Stieglitz, S., & Dang-Xuan, L. (2012). Political Communication and Influence through Microblogging - An Empirical Analysis of Sentiment in Twitter Messages and Retweet Behavior. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. . 3500-3509. 10.1109/HICSS.2012.476.
• Vergeer, M., & Hermans, L. (2013). Campaigning on Twitter: Microblogging and online social networking as campaign tools in the 2010 general elections in the Netherlands. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(4), 399–419. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12023
• Williams, C., & Gulati, G. (2012). Social networks in political campaigns: Facebook and the congressional elections of 2006 and 2008. New Media & Society, 15(1), 52-71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444812457332
• Wimmer, R., & Dominick, J. (2015). Mass media research (10th ed.). Wadsworth, Cengage Learnin

Authors

Neha Pandey
[1]
“Usage of Twitter in UP 2017 State Legislative Election by Three National Political Parties ”, Soc. sci. humanities j., vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 2702–2719, May 2022, Accessed: May 19, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://sshjournal.com/index.php/sshj/article/view/797
Copyright and license info is not available