What makes a persuasive tweet on immigration policy?

1. Immigration, Framing and Twitter:
What Makes a Persuasive Tweet?
Jeff Shaw
Thesis Defense
Nov. 25, 2013

8. Action Scores
* Based on the TAS scores, participants that read the
thematic tweets were approximately 130 percent more
likely to say they would take action than their
counterparts in the other groups.
* Scores were higher in all four categories used to
measure action for the groups that viewed the thematic
tweets. Both of the thematic groups were markedly
more likely to re-tweet or favorite the tweets,
considerably more likely to seek more information on
the issue, and more likely to sign a petition than the
episodic groups were.

13. Action Scores

15. Action Scores

16. Persuasion

17. Credibility

18. Gender

19. Gender
* Groups reading the thematic tweets had a majority
female composition – 23 out of 40 – while the episodic
tweet groups were majority male by a 24-16 margin.
This is significant because women tended to rate the
tweets higher than men did.
* Members of the GT and IE groups produced results
that showed clear gender lines. However, in the GE and
IT groups, virtually no identifiable gender differences
came though. Men's scores were even slightly higher in
terms of Total Action Scores, and for some of the other
aggregate metrics as well.

20. Major Conclusions
* The data show a fairly strong across-the-board
preference for tweets with thematic frames. This
supports Iyengar's findings on issues other than
immigration in media other than Twitter.
* Gender may play a role: women tended to rate all of
the tweets higher than men did. But while gender seems
to have an effect, it is inconsistent, while preference for
thematic frames seems consistent.
* Episodic messages did not generally turn people off:
they were just rated less strongly.

21. Future Research
1. Repeat these results with more data and a much
larger sample size
2. Group vs. Individual on Twitter: do readers always
have trouble making distinctions? If so, what are the
implications?
3. Gender as a primary research topic: are women more
generally predisposed to pro-immigrant messages?
Is this true across race and age lines?

22. Thank You. Questions?