presentation held the Wapor conference 21-23/9/2011 in Amsterdam.

1. New public deliberationsTwitter as a new campaign tool for public discussions Maurice Vergeer Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, South Korea LiesbethHermans Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands WAPOR 64th Annual Conference in Amsterdam September 21-23, 2011 Amsterdam, The Netherlands This research was supported by WCU (World Class University) program through theNational Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science andTechnology (No. 515-82-06574)

2. Introduction Dividebetween politics and citizens Distrust Decreasingvoterturnout What to do?

3. The Netherlands Earlyadopter Europeanparliamentelections 2009 Low adoptionrate Butsomeveryactivecandidates (Vergeer , Hermans & Sams, 2011; in press)

4. Social media Informing Connecting Communicating

5. The Dutch parliamentelections of 2010 Significantlylargerimplementation of Twitter as a campaign instrument

6. Campaign models

7. Norris, 2001; Gibson & Römmele, 2001; Vergeer, Hermans & Sams, in press

8. Norris, 2001; Gibson & Römmele, 2001; Vergeer, Hermans & Sams, in press

9. Norris, 2001; Gibson & Römmele, 2001; Vergeer, Hermans & Sams, in press

10. Norris, 2001; Gibson & Römmele, 2001; Vergeer, Hermans & Sams, in press

11. But … Does is level the politicalplaying field?

12. Most dominant mode of analyses Content analysis Politicalmessages Personalcampaigning Trivialcommunication Socialnetworkanalysis Communicationnetworks Dynamics

13. Networkanalysis Hyperlink analysis (Park ) Blog analysis Socialnetworkanalysis

14. Research questions To what degree do candidates and the public engage in public discussions on the Web? To what extent is do parties engage in online communications? Do discussions take place within the boundaries of the party (i.e. many small ideological public spheres consisting of homogeneous networks) or are they crossing party boundaries?

15. Data API Profiles All tweetsbycandidatesusingTwitter Tweeting to followers and non-followers All tweetsbyfollowers of candidates Tweeting to candidates, followers of candidates and others

16. Candidates All tweets in 40 days prior to ElectionDay Inner circle All tweets of Twitterusersthatfollowcandidates Outercircle Twitterusers , notfollowingcandidatesbutwho are (re)tweeted to

17. Findings All messages: n=4,451,128 sent out by the candidates and the inner circle of the candidates nearly half of all messages is undirected, i.e. sent to no one in particular. About a third is sent to people on Twitter not following any candidates (i.e. outer circle). Little over a sixth of the messages are sent to people following at least one candidate,

19. Messages sent to and from party candidates (%)

39. Conclusion Socialmedia’ssuccesskills the social part Successfullpeople turn social media intomass media Only few replies Littlereciprocity in general Social relations Communication relations Reciprocitydecreaseswhenactivitiesincrease Level playing field?

40. So . . .Back where we started?