"Communicating, campaigning and curating: 
Interrogating councillors’ use of Twitter in the City of Bristol" presentation by Dr Thomas Oliver (Oxford Brookes University) for the Political Studies Association (PSA) 'Different with Digital' panel on 31st March 2015 in Sheffield. More info about the event at: https://notinwestminster.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/how-will-digital-change-local-politics/

1. Communicating, campaigning and curating:
Interrogating councillors’ use of Twitter in the City of Bristol.
Dr Thomas Oliver @thomoli
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
t.oliver@brookes.ac.uk

2. Introduction
Social Media
 Network society (Castells, 2000)
 Increased capacity to interact online in many different ways and platforms (incl. mobile
technologies)
 Permanently connected
 Diversity of audiences
Twitter
 15m Twitter users in UK (Wang (Twitter CEO, 2015).
 50% of users prefer to read rather than send out tweets, 40% of worldwide users use twitter
as a ‘curated news feed of updates to reflect their passions’ (Twitter, 2014).
 Question over question of engagement, although even if not engaging they are maybe
absorbing content.

3. Research Approach (Context and
Method)
Context
 Bristol (SW, England), Why Bristol?
 Directly elected mayor system of governance (councillors
seeking new roles and voices).
Method
 Time windows capturing ‘critical events’ (data presented in
paper relates to Full Council meeting (17th
March)
 Snapshot/Supply side analysis (limitation)
 Extract of all tweets during 24hr period, coding in NVivo.
 Count and content analysis.

4. Outline Research Questions
Preliminary (Snapshot)
 Who engages on twitter
 How is twitter being used?
 How can the content be classified
 Reporting vs. consulting
 Reach vs. dialogue
 Early observations
Secondary
 Content analysis, use of language.
 How does content vary across action points/fallow periods. Exploring in
particular the distorting features of campaigning/vote seeking.
 Any mediating factors (boundaries and behaviours)

5. Bristol Councillors on Twitter

6. Twitter use by party

7. Tweets (17/3 -18/3/2015)

8. Coarse content coding

9. Coarse content coding

10. Coarse content coding

11. Coarse content coding

12. Local or National content?

13. Use of hashtags

14. Preliminary thoughts
 Diversity of usage (heterogeneous not homogenous)
 ‘Social’ media
 Democracy side of engagement low
 Local voice, tone and authenticity (personal communicators versus
automata)
 Campaigns coherent and structured through twitter.
 Chatting amongst themselves / tweeting to the converted.
 National content prevalent unsurprising)
 Small examples of crowd-sourcing (ideas, campaigns and increasingly
finance). As well as link to and promote local businesses and services
(situating themselves in the geography).
 Low use of jargon, complex language, messages simple and clear.
 Images (high propensity)