When Politicians Talk: Assessing Online Conversational Practices of Political Parties on Twitter

TL;DR

This paper introduces a computational method to analyze online conversational styles of political parties on Twitter, revealing shared patterns and unique behaviors during the 2013 German federal election.

Contribution

It develops quantitative measures based on sociological theory to assess online political conversations, enabling analysis of complex cultural phenomena.

Findings

Political parties exhibit shared conversational patterns.

Distinct idiosyncrasies are observed among parties.

Social media usage varies across parties.

Abstract

Assessing political conversations in social media requires a deeper understanding of the underlying practices and styles that drive these conversations. In this paper, we present a computational approach for assessing online conversational practices of political parties. Following a deductive approach, we devise a number of quantitative measures from a discussion of theoretical constructs in sociological theory. The resulting measures make different - mostly qualitative - aspects of online conversational practices amenable to computation. We evaluate our computational approach by applying it in a case study. In particular, we study online conversational practices of German politicians on Twitter during the German federal election 2013. We find that political parties share some interesting patterns of behavior, but also exhibit some unique and interesting idiosyncrasies. Our work sheds light on (i) how complex cultural phenomena such as online conversational practices are amenable to quantification and (ii) the way social media such as Twitter are utilized by political parties.