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This paper develops a way for analyzing the structure of campaign communications within Twitter. The structure of communication affordances creates opportunities for a horizontal organization power within Twitter interactions. However, one cannot infer the structure of interactions as they materialize from the formal properties of the technical environment in which the communications occur. Consequently, the paper identifies three categories of empowering communication operations that can occur on Twitter: Campaigns can respond to others, campaigns can retweet others, and campaigns can call for others to become involved in the campaign on their own terms. The paper operationalizes these categories in the context of the 2015 U.K. general election. To determine whether Twitter is used to empower laypersons, the profiles of each account retweeted and replied to were retrieved and analyzed using natural language processing to identify whether an account is from a political figure, member of the media, or some other public figure. In addition, tweets and retweets are compared with respect to the manner key election issues are discussed. The findings indicate that empowering uses of Twitter are fairly marginal, and retweets use almost identical policy language as the original campaign tweets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances the study of microblogging and political events by investigating how one high-profile broadcast acted as a stimulus to real-time commentary from viewers using Twitter. Our case study is a controversial, high-ratings episode of BBC Question Time, the weekly British political debate show, in October 2009, in which Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, appeared as a panelist. The “viewertariat” emerging around such a political event affords the opportunity to explore interaction across media formats. We examine both the structural elements of engagement online and the expressions of collective identity expressed in tweets. Although many concerns noted in previous studies of online political engagement remain (inequality in the propensity to comment, coarseness of tone), we find certain notable characteristics in the sample, especially a direct link between the quantity of tweets and events on the screen, an ability to preempt the arguments offered by panelists, and ways in which viewertariat members add new content to the discussion. Furthermore, Twitter users commenting online express a range of overlapping identities. These complexities challenge broadcasting and political institutions seeking to integrate new, more organic models of engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Academic analysis of the growth and nature of political campaigning online has concentrated largely on textual interactions between politicians, parties, their members, and supporters, as well as voters more widely. In evaluating the shift from traditional to online campaigning techniques, the use of social media’s increasingly visual capabilities has been comparatively neglected in research. This article considers one type of online visual political communication, the online political poster, in terms of its strategic campaign functions relating to persuasive and organizational roles. The article uses a case study of an extensive data set of online political posters collected from political parties in the United Kingdom, on Facebook, between September 2013 through to and including the general election in May 2015, to try to understand how parties used online political posters and how audiences responded to them. The findings show that despite a clear emphasis on sharing images, very few received widespread attention, arguably limiting their persuasive role. However, their prevalence suggests a role relating to parties trying to maintain relationships with existing online supporters as a form of displaying virtual presence, credibility, and belonging, paralleling the function of traditional window posters and yard signs but in a social media setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]