Dual Screening the Political: Media Events, Social Media, and Citizen Engagement

Abstract

Dual screening—the complex bundle of practices that involve integrating, and switching across and between, live broadcast media and social media—is now routine for many citizens during important political media events. But do these practices shape political engagement, and if so, why? We devised a unique research design combining a large‐scale Twitter dataset and a custom‐built panel survey focusing on the broadcast party leaders' debates held during the 2014 European Parliament elections in the United Kingdom. We find that relatively active, “lean‐forward” practices, such as commenting live on social media as the debate unfolded, and engaging with conversations via Twitter hashtags, have the strongest and most consistent positive associations with political engagement.

Coproduction or cooptation? Real-time spin and social media response during the 2012 French and US presidential debates

“…But as the broadcast media with which the modern debate format emergedindeed, co-evolved -is now accompanied by the panoply of media forms enabled by the Internet, the features and roles identified by Dayan and Katz are taking on new forms (Anstead and O'Loughlin, 2011;Jungherr, 2014;Vaccari et al, 2015). We now witness hybrid media events, which we define as events in which there is convergence and real-time interaction of: (i) the coverage of broadcast and journalistic media; (ii) the strategic messaging and spin of interested actors (that is, campaigns and parties); and (iii) the commentary and debate of citizens using various social platforms.…”

“…In 1984, when the 'spin room', the post-debate gathering in which each campaign tried to sell reporters on their candidates' performance, was first identified, campaigns could work through a defined set of news entities during a day-long news cycle to convey messages to the public (Calderone, 2012). Today, that news cycle has given way to a real-time 'political information cycle', as myriad campaign operatives, journalists, pundits, bloggers, celebrities and citizens weigh in immediately on events (Chadwick, 2013;Vaccari et al, 2015). This is not a wholesale displacement of broadcast media in favor of digital: individuals continue to respond strongly to images that reach them via television .…”

Conversaciones políticas en Facebook. Explorando el papel de la homofilia en la argumentación y la interacción comunicativa

“…El desarrollo de las tecnologías digitales también ha despertado el interés sobre cómo éstas podrían influir en la participación política de los ciudadanos y en su conocimiento político, y cómo esto podría traducirse en compromiso cívico y eficacia política (Prior, 2005;Vaccari et al, 2015). Existe abundante literatura científica que ha analizado las características de las interacciones comunicativas espontáneas en Internet (ver, por ejemplo, Wilhelm, 1998;Jensen, 2003;Graham, 2009;Ellison et al, 2010;Warren et al, 2014).…”

Social media mixed with news in political candidate judgment: Order effects on knowledge and affect

“…Papacharisi and de Fatima Oliveira [55] have claimed that news, opinion, and emotion are so intermingled in contemporary networked environments that they are essentially indistinguishable and should be understood as a new kind of "affective news" [52], that is to say news which is contextualized within a dialog rich in emotional content. The advent of hybrid news environments with significant affective content suggests a need to understand how affect and information intermingle and influence each other [6,52,85].…”