Reframing Audience

Abstract

Analysis of the audiences for the state of the union addresses on Twitter from 2010-2012 provides analytical leverage in unpacking the concept of audience, which has largely inhabited an analytical “black box,” seen as of critical importance but little understood. The authors frame audience as “co-motion” as it evolves from a broadcast medium to a medium of interaction in three moves: hashtags that establish a space for gathering, retweets that share reading, and sharing of urls that serve to communicate importance, evaluative judgment, and justification. They contrast the response of the congressional audience and the Twitter audience and find, while there was substantial overlap in their applause, members of Congress were less responsive than the Twitter audience to the president's calls for them to meet their responsibilities and less responsive to criticisms of major corporations. The authors find a vibrant political discourse on Twitter reaching a potential audience that rivals in size that of television, as audience becomes the public domain.

Co-Motion—Twitter Enters the Public Domain

“…This, #sotu, is where we communicate about the address before it starts, during the address, and after as well. If you are interested in communicating about the address this is the Twitter version of where to be (Boynton & Richardson, 2012). The same was true in 2009 and 2010 when people wanted to communicate about health care reform.…”

“…And there are huge spikes. The messaging about the State of the Union was extraordinary for a single day (Boynton & Richardson, 2012). As was the messaging the day the Supreme Court released their decision on the health care legislation (Boynton, 2012a).…”