Election Days
and
Social Media
Practices:
Tweeting as
Australia decides
Tim High!eld
QUT and Curtin
t.high!eld@qut.edu.au | @timhigh!eld | timhigh!eld.net

Politics and social media
• Integration of social media platforms, such as
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, into
politics:
– Election campaigns
– Politician accounts
– Citizens
– Journalists and media organisations
• Mediation of politics takes place over multiple
platforms, involving diverse actors (who
participate on more than one platform
themselves)

Social media practices
• Within political discussions and topics, social
media have a variety of functions:
– Campaigning and promotional channels
– Activism organisation and information-sharing
– Backchannel for broadcasts
– "ird Space, where political talk arises from and
within other topics
– Platform for debate with political actors,
journalists, and citizens all present (if not
necessarily interacting)

"e Australian context
• Australia has seen a dedicated audience for
political discussion develop on social media, such
as around hashtags such as #auspol and #qanda
• While these speci!c markers may attract a
particular group of Twitter users, political topics
are still concerns for the wider population
• Voting is compulsory for eligible citizens 18 and
over in federal and state elections.
– At elections, some engagement with politics is
necessary, even if to criticise this necessity.

#ausvotes, et al.
• Analysis built out of previous studies of
national and state-level elections in Australia:
– Federal (2010, 2013)
– Queensland (2012)
– Western Australia (2013)
• Standardisation of election coverage: use of
common hashtags for campaigns (#xvotes),
although not universally employed

Election day tweeting
• Australian election campaigns, as with other
international votes, have seen peak activity on
the election day itself
• "is spike in tweeting is a result of several
di#erent approaches which coincide with
election day; they are all related to the vote, but
also re$ect personal experiences as well as
engaging with the results at large

3000"
2500"
2000"
1500"
1000"
500"
0"
Phases of election day tweeting
#wavotes, tweets per hour: 9 March, 2013

Phases of election day tweeting
18000"
16000"
14000"
12000"
10000"
8000"
6000"
4000"
2000"
0"
#ausvotes, tweets per hour: 7 September, 2013

3000"
2500"
2000"
1500"
1000"
500"
0"
Phases of election day tweeting
#wavotes, tweets per hour: 5 April, 2014

Phases of election day tweeting
18000"
16000"
14000"
12000"
10000"
8000"
6000"
4000"
2000"
0"
#ausvotes, tweets per hour: 7 September, 2013 3. Speeches
1. Voting period
2. Analysis,
predictions,
results

A model of election day tweeting
1. "e individual, the personal – the micro-level of
the election
2. "e analytical – move away from personal to mix
home electorates with wider results and predictions
3. "e reactionary – the live responses to media
coverage, in particular the victory and concession
speeches by the respective major party leaders

1. "e personal, the participatory
• Tweets about personal voting experiences
• Partisan comments and mentions
• Local candidates, leaders
• Political rituals
• Independent projects encouraging voter feedback and
crowd-sourced information about polling places – the
experience, the facilities
– Booth Reviews, Democracy Sausage, SnagVotes, !e Hungry Voter
– Promote further participation to improve the accuracy of
information available, hook in to the standard election day
experience

2. "e analytical, the informative
• As polling places close and votes are counted, the
focus moves from the individual experience to the
wider coverage
• Local results still important, but become more
linked to the overall narrative
• Information $ows centred on established media
and political actors – enhanced by broadcasters
using common hashtags rather than their own,
retweeting across their many accounts

3. "e reactionary, the mass context
• "e focus becomes narrower still, with
responses to both the results and the speci!c
media coverage
• Live-tweeting of quotes and interpretations of
the victory and concession speeches from the
respective party leaders
• "e shared focus of a mass audience on a few
actors, rather than the distributed coverage of
the voting experience phase

Personal to ‘popular’?
• While the election commentary mixed political and
personal views throughout – responses to the results
include personal opinions as well as partisanship – the
early tweets are more uniquely individual in their
content: one person’s voting experience will not be
exactly the same as another’s
• By the time of the speeches, though, the individual
context is subsumed by the shared response to the
common topic (as featured in other media)
– A further participatory aspect, as with other media events,
where social media users comment on broadcasts as they
happen, o#ering analysis, invective, and pithy one-liners

Trends
• Because of the common context – the overall
result, the coverage of the speeches, as well as the
captive audience following the results rather than
being out voting – more likely to receive retweets
during phases 2 and 3?
• During phase 1, popular accounts and common
sentiments responsible for most RTed comments
(e.g. “RT if you voted below the line”)
• Memes and macros, humour (especially dry
observations of the results) among the most RTed
comments a%er polling closed

Casual contributors?
• #ausvotes, 7 September 2013:
– 34585 users contributing 111987 tweets
• Phase one (to 6pm):
– 17549 users contributing 43089 tweets (2.45 per user)
• Phases two and three (post-6pm):
– 23939 users contributing 68898 tweets (2.87 per user)
– 6903 users contributing 60967 tweets to both periods
(25871, 35096)
– 20% users, 54.4% tweets overall
• 39.3% users, 60% tweets pre-6pm
• 28.8% users, 50.9% tweets post-6pm

Political gatekeepers old and new
• "e model also demonstrates that some aspects of the
traditional politics-media dynamic are reinforced on
social media
– "e role of traditional media sources for both providing and
amplifying information is central – even if other users do
not mention media accounts, they are responding to
elections as media events
– "e use of Twitter handles rather than proper names also
accounts for high numbers of @mentions for politicians and
commentators even if not tweeting themselves
– Newer/alternative voices can achieve prominence, and this
is a mixed space of old and new, but the old and established
bodies remain central here.

Political gatekeepers old and new
• Inconsistent use by politicians and parties
– Mentioned by other users, but not contributing (to
hashtagged comments) during election day
• Last minute social media campaigning not necessarily a
common strategy
• Resisting comments during count until results
con!rmed?

Factors and limits
• Compulsory and ritualised nature of elections in
Australia invites certain kinds of participation on
social media, which secondary hashtags hook into
(barbecues, cake stalls)
• Even with increased activity on election day,
though, this is still not a representative sample of
the Australian population at large.
• Although #ausvotes an established marker, it is not
the only election hashtag, nor are any required in
related tweets

Further directions
• "is paper outlines a preliminary model of how election
day unfolds on social media; the political and social
contexts of other nations will determine its adaptability
beyond Australia
• "e transition from personal voting experience to
analysis to reactions and commentary demonstrates a
number of Twitter’s uses across the same context
• Further research would look beyond the single platform
and hashtag to examine further election day practices
and the mix of the personal and the political.