What tweets say about their authors? Triangulation of methods to analyze Twitter use by candidats in the run up to the EP elections. The case of UK candidates in the Yorkshire and the Humber constituency

Roginsky, Sandrine
(2015) “Twitter at the European election 2014” One-day symposium — Location: Université de Lorraine, Metz (5.February.2015)

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This article focuses on the use of Twitter by outgoing Members of the European Parliament as well as new candidates running for the 2014 European election in the Yorshire and the Humber Constituency in the United Kingdom. The aim is to investigate politicians’ practices as a way to inform our understanding on their use of Twitter. To do so, triangulation is a powerful technique that facilitates validation of data through cross verification from two or more sources. Therefore the analysis of the use of Twitter by UK candidates running for election does not limit itself to published messages but includes an ethnography of situational usages. Furthermore, the article relies on a socio-technical theoretical approach to better understand use patterns. Thus, the article combines a quantitative and qualitative content and semeiological analysis of messages published on Twitter by nine candidates between September 2013 to June 2014, as well as interviews with candidates and online observation. It questions what tweets say about their authors : do we know who tweets, do we know who are the target publics, can we tell what messages say about their authors solely by analyzing published messages ? The articles emphasizes a form of homogeneisation when it comes to Twitter use : there is no clear cut distinction between « amateur » and « professional » politicians as Twitter is mainly used as a political tool for similar purposes and objectives. It also shows that the roles the candidates play on Twitter are stagged on the platform but determined elsewhere, i.e. offline. In the realm of new media, populated as it is by rhetoric about technical possibilities and potentials, the article takes a comprehensive approach to account of how politicians perceive social media. It is important to examine carefully the experiences politicians make in specific environments to understand how practices are shaped. In other words, « one should analyze in order to measure and not measure in order to analyze » (Bachelard, 1970).
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Roginsky, S. (2015). What tweets say about their authors? Triangulation of methods to analyze Twitter use by candidats in the run up to the EP elections. The case of UK candidates in the Yorkshire and the Humber constituency. “Twitter at the European election 2014” One-day symposium, Université de Lorraine, Metz. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/177690