Australian Political Parties and social media: uses and attitudes

Authentic title: Credible, yet human

sounding subtitleAuthoritative Rank with an everyperson touch

Engagement | Additional Engagement

Australian Political Parties and social media:

uses and attitudes

Dr Stephen Dann, ANU@stephendann | @drstephendann

Perhaps the only moment of silence the hashtag gets today…

Context

• Social media use in Australia by political parties• Suddenly, Senate Re-Election

• The second most fun data collection event ever• 77 candidates• 31 Twitter handles• 27 active(ish) Twitter users• 20 weeks of data• 1 very sad state of affairs.

The SpoilerIt’s not authentic communication

The Method

• Content Analysis

• Public Timelines• Secondary Data

• 20 week capture period• 10 weeks prior to the election• 10 weeks post election

• The Plan• benchmark set of behaviours• Divide into 5 week blocks• Code into Content Classification• Find differences

• Elected/Not Elected• Election Period / Reality• Block 1 and Block 4

• Write nifty paper

The Framework

• Content Categorisation

• V.1 Developed in 2009• Dann (2010)

• V.2 Patched in 2011• Dann (2011)

• V.3• Wheels fell off

• V.4 Significant Rebuild• Dann 2014 / Dann 2015

• Principle Idea• All tweets come from one of three

options• Original Content for Twitter• Reactions within Twitter• External Content outside of Twitter

• Grounded Theory approach• Lit.Rev x Content x Coding

• Tweets fit 5 broad categories

Five Categories

Box Single sentenceConversational Uses an @statement to address another userNews Identifiable newsworthy content Pass along Tweets as curation of contentSocial Presence Messages of connected presence Broadcast Tweets which express the account holder's experiences

Oh, and spam

Spam Unsolicited content

Conversation jacking @responses based on an automated response to a keyword, brand or product mention

Trendjacking Spam message containing multiple hashtags and link to a malicious website

“Truthiness” multiple identical tweets from different accounts

WA Twitter Data (20 weeks)

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Pass along 3928 54.6 54.6 54.6

Conversational 2773 38.5 38.5 93.1

News 274 3.8 3.8 96.9

Broadcast 190 2.6 2.6 99.5

Social Presence 34 0.5 0.5 100

Total 7199 100 100

27 Candidates. 20 weeks.

The Pass-along-a-thonPass along Tweets as curation of content

Curation Posting of third party content for followers via the Twitter URL (t.co) or other URL.

#Sydney rally to save #Medicare. #auspol #StopAbbott http://t.co/OWzppqhwIf

Offline source Tweet that contains a reference in APA, Oxford or Harvard format, or a statement in inverted commas to denote a quotation from a third party, speaker or source material

"I drink Coke because I support their multicultural advertising campaign" this is my new excuse for drinking too much soft drink.

Retweets Partial or full reproduction of another tweet (RT retweet or MT modified tweet)

RT @PopulationParty: SPP's @Peter_Strachan is glad to have put WA's record population growth on the political agenda http://t.co/niYRjoK8hJ…WAvotes…auspol

ConversationsConversational Uses an @statement to address another user

Response Classification for tweets which commence with another user’s name and which do not meet the requirements of the referral category

@Mark_Butler_MP @margokingston1 Best bang for your buck by far is to reduce population pressure.

Referral An @response which contains URLs or recommendation of other Twitter users. (Excludes RT @user)

@enviro_al March 1st, Cruelty Free Festival. Subscribe here and I'll email when/if we have

more details. http://t.co/hUHWHAzspPRhetorical Presence Activities involving other Twitter users, or tweets which describe the presence of other Twitter users.

I'm voting for @WikiLeaksParty on Saturday. I just added a badge to my profile picture. Please show your support too!

Presence of Others versus External Content

Pre-election Election Block

Post Election1

Post Election 2 N

Presence of Others Conversational - Response 394 643 367 612 2016Conversational - Rhetorical Presence 60 75 40 56 231Pass along - Retweets 694 1092 465 617 2868 1148 1810 872 1285 5115

External Content Conversational - Referral 161 236 54 75 526Pass along - Curation 189 351 231 282 1053 350 587 285 357 1579

Ratio: Internal to External 3.28: 1 3.08: 1 3.05: 1 3.60: 1 3.24: 1

Election Day Tweeting

Election Day Tweeting

Conversational News Pass along Status

Pirate Party 8 3 9 0

Unnamed Ticket 7 2 60 1

The Greens (WA) 6 4 12 0

#Sustainable Population Party 4 0 8 0

The Nationals 4 2 12 1

Australian Labor Party 3 1 12 0

Liberal 1 0 1 1

Socialist Alliance 1 0 2 0

Voluntary Euthanasia Party 0 0 3 0

Total 34 12 119 3

How could we have used Twitter?

• Three character opportunities• provision of insight into the candidate, • information for the followers • direct engagement with an audience.

• Two message opportunities• Promise management• Embodying the party values

Social Presence Messages of connected presence

Ceremonial Greetings Tweets where the community is addressed indirectly with a greeting

Fourth wall Textual equivalent of comments made directly to camera to an imagined audience

Self-referential “Note to self” “FYI” or “Just for the record” - thought bubble style comments

Unclassifiable Cat-on-keyboard input and pocket tweeting

Broadcast Tweets which express the account holder's experiences

Action The diary of daily life tweets which answer “What are you doing?”

Reflective “What am I thinking?” or “What am I feeling?”

Experience “What am I experiencing?”

Broadcast Statement “What am I wanting the world to know?” and “What are my thoughts on a topic?”

Adapting the Hughes and Dann (2007)Kevin07 Lessons• Importance of a political product• Technically impressive Twitter stream is no substitute for acceptable policy

• Political communications travel• headline delivery – plug Twitter into journalists.

• Social costs of public support are an electoral factor• Twitter is seen and felt to be visible

• Voter loyalty cannot be assumed or presumed• Followers are not votes

• Candidates require offline support

The Winner’s Circle (Election Week)

Candidate Conversational News Pass along Social Presence Broadcast

*lindareynoldswa 0 0 6 0 1 7

*SenatorCash 22 1 31 0 0 54

*SenatorLudlam 128 16 178 0 4 326

This was quite depressing.

Twitter and Elections

• More promise than reality

• Potential is not apparently self evident

• May become the worst possible platform for politics-as-usual

• Social media as the insider platform… sort of.

Livetweeting the conference

You don't hear the phrase "we had a dance in Yackandandah" enough in presentations. #CMPM2014

Key Metrics: Day 1

• 24 Voices • usual power law distributions

Frequency PercentConversational

25 8.8

News 104 36.7Pass along 87 30.7Social Presence

5 1.8

Status Broadcast58 20.5

Spam 4 1.4Total 283 100.0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 240.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

1.20

Ratio

Key Metrics 2

Twitter Frequency

drstephendann 131

stephendann 35

Elias_Hallaj 23

mikesmithqld 22

edwinat 20

JR_Rayner 17

marketingandrew 14

• Livecaster• drstephendann – play by play• stephendann - colour commentary

• Commentary Team• Elias_Hallaj• mikesmithqld• edwinat• JR_Rayner• marketingandrew

Spam Capture“Truthiness”