Researching the virtual constituency: methods for analysing politicians’ use of social media

1. @JoanneKnowlesUK
@RussGlennon
Liverpool John Moores University

2.  Rooted in research on social media and public relations theory &
practice, and in teaching practices on 2 modules, Public
Communication (L5) & Mass Communications: Policy & Practice
(L6) on the Media, Culture, Communication degree programme
 Social media have been posited as having the capacity to address
accelerating public disengagement from politics, by enabling
models of two-way symmetrical communication (Grunig & Hunt,
1984)
 However, does e-campaigning actually replicate the patterns of
offline campaigning (Vergeer, Hermans & Sams, 2011) and thus
reinforce existing patterns of political and institutional
dominance?
 How can a tool feted for its global reach be effectively used for
dialogue with local publics?
 Likewise, how can they be used effectively at a local level with
students?

3.  Research training for students in both quantitative &
qualitative approaches
 Given pedagogical emphasis on developing the
student as researcher (HEA; Healey & Jenkins, 2009)
seeking to build an understanding of, and experience
of, the research process into teaching sessions
wherever possible
 Content analysis forms part of Level 4 study and
enables students to see how quantitative & qualitative
approaches can be used in combination
 Students can also test out the stages of conducting an
analysis: selecting material, identifying categories for
coding, carrying out coding and analysing the
outcomes

4.  ‘A research technique based upon measuring
(counting) the amount of something (violence, [...]
women, professional types, or whatever) in a
random sampling of some forms of
communication(such as comics, sitcoms, soap
operas, news shows)’ (Berger, 1991, p.92)
 A research technique for making replicable and
valid inferences from data to their context’
(Krippendorff, 1980, p.21)
 ‘The systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of
message characteristics’ (Neuendorf, 2002, p.1)

5.  Content analysis as offering ability to conduct
qualitative & quantitative analysis and to scope
out areas of interest for project in future
 Opportunity sample of MPs – 10/15 selected
 Research questions turned into draft coding
structure, developed out of that used in Graham
et al’s 2013 analysis of 2010 General Election
 Coded against six main headings: type of tweet;
content of tweet; primary topic; level at which
the issue resides; level that the tweet focuses
upon; hashtag use
 Initial collection period January 2014: N=961

6.  Most focuses on the USA (Bimber and Copeland, 2013) with
some also on EU elections (Lodge and Sarikakis, 2013;
(Vergeer, Hermans and Sams, 2011) & national elections
within Europe (Plotkowiak and Stanoevska-Slabeva, 2013;
Graham et al. 2013) with some transnational work (Hyun,
2013)
 Often either quantitative surveys of frequency (Lamarre
&Suzuki-Lambrecht, 2013) or studies of public response
within very specific period (Anstead and O’Loughlin, 2011)
 Has either a national or local focus, but rarely addresses
tensions between the two
 We chose to examine a period not occupied by an active
election campaign, examining how the PR objective of
creating, maintaining and enhancing relationships over the
long term was addressed (L’Etang, 2004) and how local and
national publics were being addressed

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National issue, national focus
Local issue, local focus
National issue, local focus
International issue, Int focus
International issue, nat focus
International issue, local focus
National issue, regional focus
Regional issue, regional focus
International issue, regional focus
Regional issue, local focus

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12. OPPORTUNITIES
 Allows students to practice
research techniques, and
critical evaluation, on
material with which they are
familiar and engaged
 Consequently students are
more likely to integrate this
into their independent and
self-directed learning
 Relevance to a wide range of
humanities, education and
social science fields of study
CHALLENGES
 Difficulties of accessing
and storing ephemeral
material
 Referencing!
 The medium is not the
message
 Questions of scope:
managing a potentially
large amount of data