A Typology of Political Participation Online: How Citizens Used Twitter to Mobilize during the 2015 British General Elections

TY - JOUR

T1 - A Typology of Political Participation Online

T2 - How Citizens Used Twitter to Mobilize during the 2015 British General Elections

AU - Dutceac Segesten, Anamaria

AU - Bossetta, Michael

PY - 2017/11/2

Y1 - 2017/11/2

N2 - This study investigates how, and to what extent, citizens use Twitter as a platform for political mobilization in an electoral context. Conceptualizing political participation as a process, we develop a typology of political participation designed to isolate mobilizing calls for action from the rest of the political discussion online. Based on Twitter data collected one week prior to the 2015 British general election, we then identify the top 100 most retweeted accounts using the hashtag #GE2015, classify them by actor type, and perform a content analysis of their Twitter posts according to our typology. Our results show that citizens–not political parties–are the primary initiators and sharers of political calls for action leading up to the election. However, this finding is largely due to an uneven distribution of citizen-driven mobilizing activity. A small number of highly active users, typically supporters of nationalist parties, are by far the most active users in our dataset. We also identify four primary strategies used by citizens to enact mobilization through Twitter: in-text calls for action, hashtag commands, sharing mobilizing content, and frequent postings. Citizens predominantly expressed political calls for action through Twitter’s hashtag feature, a finding that supports the notion that traditional conceptions of political participation require nuance to accommodate the new ways citizens are participating in the politics of the digital age.

AB - This study investigates how, and to what extent, citizens use Twitter as a platform for political mobilization in an electoral context. Conceptualizing political participation as a process, we develop a typology of political participation designed to isolate mobilizing calls for action from the rest of the political discussion online. Based on Twitter data collected one week prior to the 2015 British general election, we then identify the top 100 most retweeted accounts using the hashtag #GE2015, classify them by actor type, and perform a content analysis of their Twitter posts according to our typology. Our results show that citizens–not political parties–are the primary initiators and sharers of political calls for action leading up to the election. However, this finding is largely due to an uneven distribution of citizen-driven mobilizing activity. A small number of highly active users, typically supporters of nationalist parties, are by far the most active users in our dataset. We also identify four primary strategies used by citizens to enact mobilization through Twitter: in-text calls for action, hashtag commands, sharing mobilizing content, and frequent postings. Citizens predominantly expressed political calls for action through Twitter’s hashtag feature, a finding that supports the notion that traditional conceptions of political participation require nuance to accommodate the new ways citizens are participating in the politics of the digital age.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Social Media

KW - mobilization

KW - political participation

KW - political communication

U2 - 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1252413

DO - 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1252413

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1369-118X

SP - 1625

EP - 1643

JO - Information Communication and Society

JF - Information Communication and Society

ER -