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The End of News? Twitter and Local
Election Information in a Canadian Context
Jaigris Hodson, Ph.D, Royal Roads University
Outline
Social Media and News
The Canadian Election #ELXN 42
Methods
Trending Topics
Local vs. National Discourse
Conclusions/Questions
Twitter’s Promise
Social Media:
An
Increasingly
Popular
Source of
News...
...But What Kind of News?
The Canadian Election: #Elxn42
Methods
Scrape all tweets with the hashtag #ELXN42 one month prior to the 2015 Federal
Election
Examine key words, influencers, and other trends in the large data set
Look at smaller local communities (8); examining key words, influencers and other
trends
Compare
Trends: Key Topics
Trends: Key Influencers
Trends: Smaller Communities
Prolific Tweeters
By CommunityPERSON NUMBER OF TWEETS
K Fox 769
Lesley Sprague 528
Doug 520
Tynan Phillips 314
Ontarible 291
Dan 211
Cheryl Howes 190
ausername 176
If not us? Who? 171
Karen 160
Jess Childs 87
Top @-Mentions
@pmharper, @ElizabethMay and
@ThomasMulcair in top 20
Most are well known - journalists,
media, or politicos
Not seeing local candidates
Left vs. Right on Twitter?
National news RT’d more than local
news
NO. OF RTS NAME
116 @Raffi_RC
115 @PatOndabak
104 @Chevymo
104 @JustinTrudeau
104 @stephenlautens
79 @rabble.ca
74 @CTVNews
60 @MuskokaMoneybag
58 @gmbutts
57 @ABCVeterans2015
Preliminary Conclusions
Twitter in practice - not multi point to multi point
Role of news media, and particularly local news
media
New influencers and gatekeepers
Algorithmic filtering
Content curation and quality control
Twitter as a leading indicator of public opinion?
Thank you!Jaigris Hodson
@SocMedDr
Research Sponsored by SSHRC, Royal Roads University and Ryerson University
