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Twitter in the 2013 Australian Election
1. Twitter in the 2013
Australian Election
Prof. Axel Bruns
ARC Future Fellow
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
a.bruns@qut.edu.au – @snurb_dot_info – http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
2. BACKGROUND
• Research projects:
– ARC Discovery: New Media and Public Communication (QUT)
– NRC FRISAM: Impact of Social Media on Agenda-Setting in Election
Campaigns (QUT, UiO, UiB, Uppsala, CSU LB)
– ATN-DAAD: Mapping Networked Politics (QUT, LMU)
• Study design:
– Comparative study of Twitter usage during Australian, Norwegian,
German (and US) election
– Tracking tweets from and at Twitter accounts of MPs and candidates
before, during, and after election campaigns
– Additional analysis of follower networks, national Twitterspheres, social
media / mainstream media intersections, etc.
18. SOME FIRST CONCLUSIONS
• Campaigning styles:
– Liberal Party:
• ‘small target’ strategy (better to remain silent than to make mistakes)
• focus on leadership team to avoid negative perceptions of Abbott and gaffes by local
candidates
– Labor Party:
• strong campaigns by many local candidates
• lack of coordination across leadership team
• Rudd surprising quiet on social media
– Greens:
• high levels of activity, especially from Milne – too much?
• Public resonance:
– discussion mainly about leaders, rather than engaging with / retweeting them
– no partisan choices in @mentions of political candidates
– strongly partisan selectivity in retweets of political candidates, few retweets overall
– more @mentions of Labor candidates, especially on election night: encouraging?
23. THE HYPOMETERTM
• iOS app developed as functional prototype
to act as a ‘modern TV Guide’ for Australian
television
• Calculates social media ‘hype’ via a
proprietary algorithm which accounts for
national and industry context
• Ongoing evaluation of both hype figures and
predictions vs. post-show TV ratings and
social media engagement.
Application to measuring electorate
engagement with political accounts?