"Would you like to set the agenda?": Investigating the motivations of Danish Twitter users during the European Parliament election 2014

TY - ABST

T1 - "Would you like to set the agenda?"

T2 - Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies:

AU - Ørmen, Jacob

PY - 2015/2/6

Y1 - 2015/2/6

N2 - Even though the amount of media outlets that produce and distribute political news is greater and more varied than ever before the share of the population who consume political news is declining (Prior, 2007). This has led some to suggest that the population in Western countries (especially the US) is increasingly split between so- called "news seekers", who digest as much news as possible through the various media, and "news avoiders", who utilize the increasing freedom of choice to steer clear of news altogether (Ksiazek, Malthouse, & Webster, 2010). At the same time, the popular adoption of social network sites offers users unprecedented opportunities to be exposed to and to participate in the distribution of news. It remains an empirical question – with relevance to the agenda-setting theory – how the polarization of news users and non-users is tied to the popularity of social network sites. In this presentation I suggest that one way to deal with this challenge is to focus on the motivations of various types of users to consume and distribute political news. Here I present a framework to study a small sample of Danish Twitter users consisting of "news seekers" and "news avoiders" during the European Parliament election 2014. The framework builds on new methods to log social media usage combined with qualitative interviewing. Inspired by the Experience Sampling Method (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983) the purpose is to use log data in the interviews to prompt thoughts about respondents' willingness to engage with political news on Twitter.

AB - Even though the amount of media outlets that produce and distribute political news is greater and more varied than ever before the share of the population who consume political news is declining (Prior, 2007). This has led some to suggest that the population in Western countries (especially the US) is increasingly split between so- called "news seekers", who digest as much news as possible through the various media, and "news avoiders", who utilize the increasing freedom of choice to steer clear of news altogether (Ksiazek, Malthouse, & Webster, 2010). At the same time, the popular adoption of social network sites offers users unprecedented opportunities to be exposed to and to participate in the distribution of news. It remains an empirical question – with relevance to the agenda-setting theory – how the polarization of news users and non-users is tied to the popularity of social network sites. In this presentation I suggest that one way to deal with this challenge is to focus on the motivations of various types of users to consume and distribute political news. Here I present a framework to study a small sample of Danish Twitter users consisting of "news seekers" and "news avoiders" during the European Parliament election 2014. The framework builds on new methods to log social media usage combined with qualitative interviewing. Inspired by the Experience Sampling Method (Larson & Csikszentmihalyi, 1983) the purpose is to use log data in the interviews to prompt thoughts about respondents' willingness to engage with political news on Twitter.

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

Y2 - 5 February 2014 through 7 February 2014

ER -