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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Karen RossORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Routledge, 2019.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Politicians’ use of Twitter has been well documented over the past decade but few studies have incorporated an explicitly comparative dimension. To explore how political and social context impacts upon tweet content, we analysed the substance and tone of 400 tweets from women MPs during the United Kingdom 2015 and New Zealand 2014 general election campaigns. Across our study, web links, visuals, and references to own campaign were common, though with some notable inter-party differences. A neutral tone prevailed, with positivity more present than negativity. NZ women MPs, particularly from the centre-right, demonstrated a broadcast and highly managed approach to Twitter. UK MPs were more interactive with both citizens and other MPs, shared more personal content, and largely ignored the media agenda. These comparative findings at least partly map onto the concentrated and diffuse personalisation approaches within the equalisation versus normalisation framework of social media. We conclude that region, party, and culture all play a role in the Twitter story, and are deserving of further scrutiny from political communication scholars.
Author(s): Fountaine S, Ross K, Comrie M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Communication Research and Practice
Year: 2019
Volume: 5
Issue: 3
Pages: 226-240
Online publication date: 15/01/2019
Acceptance date: 12/12/2018
Date deposited: 12/12/2018
ISSN (print): 2204-1451
ISSN (electronic): 2206-3374
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2018.1558774
DOI: 10.1080/22041451.2018.1558774
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