Political microblogging

The rise of Twitter led to formation of Twitterverse, similar to the term blogosphere, where blogs are interconnected (Small, p.113). Some argued Twitter helps to foster democracy, but that over-estimated its influence.

(image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/5364620846/)

Twitter is a microblogging tool, ‘miniature version of the regular blog’ (Larsson & Moe 2011, p.730), which allows people to write short comments within 140 characters and follow others. Some noted Twitter helps to increase political participation. Twitter is used as political blogging. Many political parties and leaders have their Twitter account, spreading information to the public. The retweet function further disseminates information (Larsson & Moe 2011, p.739), raising people’s political awareness. Twitter is praised as ‘a tool for connecting with people on individual level’ (Parmelee 2013, p.8). Leaders engage with public, like President Obama answered public questions in live Twitter chat (Schulman 2012). But that interaction is actually limited. Larsson and Moe’s (2011, p.733) research indicated that Twitter is mainly used for broadcasting information but not for conversation. It is a ‘one-way, top-down communication’ (Larsson & Moe 2011, p.739), which leaders provide updates but rarely have dialogue with public.

Some argued the power of Twitter was seen in Arab Spring Revolution, which led to spread of revolutionary movements in Tunisia, Egypt and overthrown the totalitarian government. It is true that Twitter has potential in calling people to participate in uprising, however, as Larsson and Moe (2011, p.733) noted, ‘it is difficult to say with any certainty what the role of Twitter was’. It was just hyperbole by media.

Another point raised by people is Twitter provide a platform where people can openly exchange ideas. People debate issues where different voices can be heard, especially marginalized and criticize views (Larsson & Moe 2011, p.741). However, that is dominated by a small number of active users like journalists and politicians, who already enjoyed prominent positions (Larsson & Moe 2011, p.740). There is just small amount of citizens who are interested in politics. And many people just receive but rarely sending message (Larsson and Moe 2011, p.741).

So the use of Twitter in achieving democracy is overestimated.


References
Olorf Larsson, A, & Moe, H 2011, ‘Studying political microblogging: Twitter users in the 2010 Swedish election campaign’, New Media and Society, vol. 14, no.5, pp.729-747
Small, TA 2012, ‘What the hashtag? A content analysis of Canadian politics on Twitter’, in Loader, BD, & Mercea, D (ed.), Social media and democracy, Routledge, USA and Canada
Parmelee, JH, & Bichard, SL 2013, Politics and the Twitter Revolution: How Tweets Influence the Relationship between Political Leaders and the Public, Lexington books, Lanham
Schulman, K 2012, ‘President Obama Answers #My2k Questions on Twitter’, The White House blog, accessed 10 September 2013, <http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/12/03/president-obama-answers-my2k-questions-twitter>