The Political Domain Goes to Twitter: Hashtags, Retweets and URLs

Abstract

The argument is twofold. One, the character of political communication on Twitter is sufficiently different from the general character of the Twitter stream, from the “ firehose ” , as it is known that political communication should be considered as a separable domain of communication. Specifically, retweets, urls, and hashtags are used far more frequently in political communication than is true for the full stream of messages and that reflects communication which is more interactive than is generally the case. Two, context is needed for characterizing twitter streams. In the case of political communication there are parameters on the use of these tools, which facilitate interactive communication that sets such a context. If most political tweets have retweets or urls between some low bound and a high bound, then one has a way to characterize any specific stream that is being investigated. The analyses will begin the investigation of these parameters.