Role of Twitter in formation of political agenda in various socio-political contexts: the cases of...

Role of Twitter in formation of political agendain various socio-political contexts:

the cases of discussions on migrants in Russia and Germany

Saint PetersburgState University

Svetlana Bodrunova, PhD, Anna Litvinenko, PhD

School of Journalism and Mass Communications St. Petersburg State University

Theoretical premises1. Hybridization of media systems (Chadwick 2011, 2013):

- Tech-based growth of the web segment of media systems brings in new societal and political cleavages

- Difference in hybridization patterns depends most upon national socio-political conditions (Adam&Pfetsch 2011)

2. Media-constructed public sphere:

- Media as ‘junctions’ of the public sphere => mediatization?

3. Network(ed) communication theory:

- Formation of closed-up communicative milieus (‘echo chambers’)

- The idea of ‘spill-overs’ (online to offline, traditional/new media)

Saint PetersburgState University

Twitter as a communicative milieu: optimism vs. pessimism

• Twitter as the milieu of platform-limited horizontal communication with a big news alerts potential (Mancini&Mazzoni 2013, Vaccari et al. 2013)

• Twitter as a de-politicized space for gaming, dating, and chats (Fuchs 2014: Chapter 8)

• Can Twitter be a ‘crossroads of opinion’ in the online public sphere?

Saint PetersburgState University

Russia in 21st century is a fundamentally fragmented society (Zubarevich 2011, 2013): «Four Russias» Bodrunova, Litvinenko 2013: formation of the public counter-sphere in Russia of 2008-2012 Germany, in these terms, has developed a more solid society, with the differences between Eastern and Western part gradually

diminishing in many terms; the only striking similarity is huge urban migrant population from the southern direction still under-represented in the media content. Germany has a large number of citizens with migrant background and big diasporas, e.g. Turkish- and Russian-speaking communities which, in terms of media use, often differ from national average indicators (Sauer 2010)

Saint PetersburgState University

Public Sphere in Russia and in Germany

Project «Political agendasin hybrid media systems»

• Research team: Svetlana Bodrunova, Dmitry Gavra, Anna Litvinenko, Alena Savizkaya, Anna Smolyarova, Alexandr Yakunin

• Research upon structural and framing features of Twitter discussions in Russia and Germany

• Roles of media accounts in discussions upon polarizing issues- overall mediatization- linkages between media and non-media accounts (the ‘crossroads’

issue)• A case of social polarization: anti-migrant bashings in Biryulyovo

district of Moscow in October 2013

• A ‘calm’ period in Russia and in Germany (March 2014)

Saint PetersburgState University

Mixed methodology

1.Web crawling based on pre-selected hashtags2.Frame analysis based on coding of tweets3.Descriptive statistics 4.Discourse analysis (including semantic groups

of lexicon and their interpretation)

Saint PetersburgState University

Time-series graphs

Saint PetersburgState University

Saint PetersburgState University

STRUCTURE OF THE DISCUSSION:results of web crawling

Saint PetersburgState University

Web graph:Russia,

BiryulyovoBiryulyovo

- political actors- media- ordinary users- fake/spam

Web-graph:

Germany- Political actors- Media- Ordinary users- NGOs

Web-graph: Russia

- Political actors- Media- Ordinary users- Nationalist users- Official accounts- NGOs- Spin-doctoring(!)

Saint PetersburgState University

FEATURES OF THE DISCOURSE

15% of tweeets put blame on someone

Just ONE tweet of 673 tells ‘it is the whole society to be blamed’

10% contain nationalist speech

11% contain hate speech

Saint PetersburgState University

Features of the discourse: discussion topics

Saint PetersburgState University

Features of the discourse: Tweeters’ mood

Saint PetersburgState University

Features of the discourse: Tweeters’ mood

Polarization of the public sphere on Twitter

Saint PetersburgState University

Saint PetersburgState University

Features of the discourse: origins of discussants

Saint PetersburgState University

Features of the discourse: who is to be blamed?

15% = 100 tweets

Semantic analysis:First 600 stems from the word dataset

Saint PetersburgState University

Saint PetersburgState University

MEDIATIZATION OF THE DISCUSSION

Saint PetersburgState University

Mediatization of the discussion: media dominate in N of tweets

- mediatization really high: «breaking news», «news», «novosti», «they say that…», «RIA», «media», «Lifenews», «RT»- national-level political actors: Putin, ‘United Russia’ party, Navalny, Public Chamber - scarce aspect thinking: introduction of visas, football- other issues: LGBT; corruption.

Some results in hashtagging

Saint PetersburgState University

‘Discussion triggers’

• mediatization: both real and fake! • media of various Russian public spheres

• nationalists outperform migrants • the role of Public Chamber

Saint PetersburgState University

Positions of media in the discussion

Saint PetersburgState University

Tweeted media content vs. involved media content

N = 677 tweets

Saint PetersburgState University

Twitter in Russia shows a bigger potential for becoming a real "crossroads of opinions", in contrast to the Russian Facebook where anti-governmental discourse predominates, as well as to Vkontakte where political debate is much less noticeable and is encapsulated in closed-up communities. BUT under-representation of migrant community in Twitter obstacles this.

In Russian Twitter, hybrid pro-elite media dominate represented by lifenews_ru, izvestia_ru, pravda.ru, RT_russia, onlinekpru etc., although the anti-mainstreem media are also among influencers (GraniTweet, SvobodaRadio, MaloverjanBBC, ru_rbc).

In general, the case study supported hypothesis about the different role of Twitter in different socio-political contexts.

Conclusion

Saint PetersburgState University

Thank you for your attention!