Twitter conversation dynamics of political controversies : The case of Sweden's December Agreement

• Introduction. Following the news of an extraordinary agreement between six political parties, intense discussions on Twitter took place, suitable for investigation of political controversies on the platform. The purpose is to analyse threaded conversations on Twitter in relation to this political event.Method. By using the streaming API with a set of hashtags and the most active participants in the conversations, tweets related to the event and tweets belonging to the follow-on conversation were captured. From this set, the replies were used to build conversational threads.Analysis. The dataset was analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The overall lifecycle of the conversations was outlined using statistical methods. Ten conversational threads were studied using qualitative content analysis.Results. Immediately after the agreement, activity was focused on information diffusion, but following this, discussions emerged. Politicians were frequently talked to but rarely replied to tweets directed to them. Citizens from the general public dominated the activity.Conclusions. Conversations do exist beyond the hashtag but few examples of democratic debate were found. Conversations are more likely to develop within tightly knit groups followership-wise. Echo chambers as well as discussions where non like-minded argued were identified. Consensus formation was not common.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Twitter

conversations

politics

information behaviour

content analysis

Library and information science

Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap

Library and Information Science

Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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