Twitter and Traditional Media in Political Campaigns, Research Paper Example

Social media profoundly impacts the landscape of political communication, which remains a popular topic of conversation in media studies of political campaigns. Indeed, media scholars continue to grapple with fully comprehending how social media affects a vast array of political agenda settings. The corpus of literature has probed how political candidates have hitherto incorporated social media into their campaign agendas (Conway et al., 2013). One burgeoning line if inquiry has also investigated the complex relationship between trending topics on social media outlets such as Twitter and topics and issues that the traditional media such as The New York Times and The Economist probes.

During the Digital Age, questions remain over how social media platforms retain the capacity to follow, attract, or bypass the attention that traditional media garners. Conway et al. (2015) examine the evolving dynamics of “intermedia agenda-setting effects” as gleaned from the Twitter feeds of GOP candidates during the 2012 presidential primary candidates, the Twitter feeds of candidates for both Democratic and Republican parties, and articles published in the country’s top periodicals. The 2012 presidential election was the first major political election in which Twitter emerged as an integral forum through which candidates articulated their agenda and stance on pressing national issues. The authors analyze frequencies on a quotidian basis by utilizing time series analysis and ascertained that there indeed was a symbiotic relationship between traditional news and political agendas articulated through various posts on Twitter. They found that these correlations functioned on a continuum with regards to differential time lags according to political issue and the level of intensity of the relationship. While traditional media outlets were found to follow political candidates on particular topics, other topics could forecast the political agenda on Twitter feeds. Conway et al. (2015) discovered that both Twitter and traditional news media have a reciprocal relationship, although Twitter retain the capacity to “bypass media gatekeepers,” thereby becoming the most optimal “source for journalistic content” in the present political landscape.

Because of the onset of evolving channels of political communication, there has arisen a need to reassess the agenda-setting currency of the news media. Conway et al. (2015) consider how political candidates and parties that actively participate on Twitter can be influenced by national newspaper or how they influence traditional media sources. Through time series analysis, it is unequivocal that they have a reciprocal relationship that depends on which issues are being discussed, which mirrors prior studies conducted on agenda-setting studies. However, with the popularity of social media platforms, Twitter feeds of political candidates and parties and traditional media are esconsed in a source cycle. As such, the online arena is a far more expedient source through which candidates can disseminate their viewpoints and political agenda. Social media thus in turn can shape the contours of the media’s agenda and coverage.

The limitations of this study may have impacted the results yielded by this study, and they leave room open for future research in upcoming political elections. Traditional media has not lost its agenda-setting clout because candidates turn to traditional forums for legitimacy, especially on divisive issues such as national health care reform. An affirmed causal relationship between Twitter and traditional media must be asserted, as other campaign influences and certain time lags must be taken into account. Nonetheless, this media research lays a sound foundation for future media studies on the symbiotic relationships between various types of media coverage.

References

Aparaschivei, P. A. (2011). The use of new media in electoral campaigns: Analysis of the use of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in the 2009 Romanian presidential campaign. Journal of Media Research, 2, 39–60.

Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2009). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication. Journal of Communication, 58, 707–731.

Conway, B. A., Kenski, K., & Wang, D. (2013). Twitter use by the presidential primary candidates during the 2012 campaign. American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 1596–1610.

Conway, B. A., Kenski, K. and Wang, D. (2015). The rise of Twitter in the political campaign: Searching for intermedia agenda-setting effects in the presidential primary. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 20, 363-380.