Chicago Politicians on Twitter
Slides as presented at MPSA 2012. Paper abstract: This paper uses data from 1,042 tweets posted by or mentioning Chicago Aldermen or Mayor Rahm Emanuel to examine how Chicago politicians use social media. Twitter provides a public communication medium in which constituents and their representatives can have two-way conversations that others can witness and record, and we used qualitative and social network methods to examine conversations between Chicagoans and representatives in city government. We coded the contents of each tweet over the two-week time period (e.g., official business, fundraising) and created representations of the social networks created by the users’ following behaviors. These networks indicate who receives politicians’ tweets and help identify the audiences for political messaging in social media. Our analysis indicates that Chicago’s Aldermen and Mayor use Twitter for social conversations more often than political ones, and that only a small number of Aldermen dominate the resulting conversation networks.
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Chicago Politicians on Twitter
- 1. CHICAGO POLITICIANS ON TWITTER Libby Hemphill Matthew A. Shapiro Jahna Otterbacher Charise Angderson Illinois Institute of Technology info@casmlab.org http://www.casmlab.org/projects/publicofficials/
- 2. Project team • Libby Hemphill • Matt Shapiro • Jahna Otterbacher • Charise Angderson • Drexler James • W. David Work Illinois Institute of Technology info@casmlab.org http://www.casmlab.org/projects/publicofficials/ 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 3. Overview • Chicago overview • Twitter overview • Network analysis • Content analysis • Next steps 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 4. CHICAGO 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 5. 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 6. April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher
- 7. TWITTER 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 8. Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher twitter home
- 9. Twitter conventions • @username and .@username • #hashtag • RT and MT April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher
- 10. NETWORKS 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 11. Characteristics of the Aldermen Network Nodes (Everyone) 14,828 Egos (Aldermen) 27 Alters (Everyone else) 14,821 Ratio of Egos to Alters 548.93 Edges (Total) 40,199 Edges (Reciprocal) 14,993 Edges (One-way) 25,206 Density 0.00016 Average Distance 2.87 Average Clustering Coefficient 0.226 (random = 0.00014) Diameter 4 (random = 27) 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 13. Core-periphery?
- 14. CONTENT 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 15. Coding for action Code Definition Personal message non-business oriented messages or notes, such as holiday greetings or other personal sentiments Information a message that provides a fact, opinion, link to an article, position on an issue, or resource Requesting action requests that constituents take some action like signing a petition or voting Fundraising requests donations or contributions Official business official business in City Council, including voting, committee and Council meetings Location or Activity non-official activities including trips, meetings with constituents, lobbyists, or activities in the home ward April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher
- 16. Mechanical Turk 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 17. Inter-coder reliability Code % agreement Fleiss’ κ Information 67 0.34 Location or Activity 77 0.30 Personal message 70 0.26 Requesting action 99 0.22 Fundraising 90 0.14 Official business 90 0.14 Self promotion 94 0.05 Direct communication* 64 0.29 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 18. Frequency of content Code N % of Tweets Information 1568 50% Location or Activity 694 22% Personal message 824 26% Requesting action 201 6% Fundraising 25 1% Official business 197 6% Self promotion 94 3% 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 19. Hashtag Frequencies 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher 0 5 10 15 20 25
- 20. April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher Hashtags x Aldermen
- 21. In and Out Groups Core Periphery 1 2 1 0.589 0.557 2 0.056 0.052 Factions 1 2 1 0.061 0.021 2 0.189 0.568 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 22. Next Steps • Ward and Alderman characteristics* • Redrawn ward map • NATO • Citizen side 4/12/12 Hemphill, Shapiro, and Otterbacher
- 23. Contact us • Libby Hemphill (libby.hemphill@iit.edu) • Matt Shapiro (mshapir2@iit.edu) • Jahna Otterbacher (jotterba@iit.edu) • Illinois Institute of Technology • info@casmlab.org • http://www.casmlab.org/projects/publicofficials/ April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher