Political candidates' discussions on Twitter during election season: A network approach

Abstract

This chapter investigates how political candidates utilize Twitter to communicate with each other to better understand the role Twitter plays in facilitating public debate. Taking a communication network approach, Vergeer uses the 2012 Dutch national election to provide insight into how political candidates interact on Twitter and describe the structure of the candidates' online communication network. Results regarding candidate interaction on Twitter are mixed: most candidates only tweet occasionally, and while reciprocity was observed it often only occurred between party members, especially incumbents. While Twitter thus provides political candidates with the opportunity to conduct interparty discussions, it appears that few do and that Twitter is mainly used as a broadcasting platform. As such, candidates do not use the full democratic potential of the platform.