Two Different Debates? Investigating the Relationship Between a Political Debate on TV and Simultaneous Comments on Twitter

Abstract

While watching television, more and more citizens comment the program live on social media. This is especially interesting in the case of political debates, as viewers' comments might not only allow us to tap into public opinion, but they can also be an influential factor of their own and contribute to public discourse. This article analyzes how the TV debate between the candidates for chancellor during the German election campaign 2013 was discussed on Twitter. To do so, the transcript of the debate is linked to a set of N ¼ 120,557 tweets containing the hashtag #tvduell. The results indicate that the candidates were only to a minor degree successful in getting their topics to the Twitter debate. An optimistic reading of the results suggests that Twitter serves as a complement to draw attention to topics neglected in the official debate. A more pessimistic reading would point to the fact that the discourse on Twitter seems to be dominated by sarcastic or funny rather than by substantial content.

Television experience and political discussion on Twitter: exploring online conversations during the 2014 Brazilian presidential elections

“…The Twitter flow indicated that most people tweeting during the first and second blocks of the debate were not commenting on political issues but exchanging jokes about some extraordinary occurrence between candidates during the debate. Similar results were obtained by Trilling (2015) on what German Twitter users published while watching a televised debate between candidates for chancellor in 2013. As a public space, Twitter served as an arena where Brazilians were more interested in making fun of or commenting on the performances of the candidates and the moderator rather than in posting information or engaging in discussions.…”

“…In this case, Twitter somehow added value to television as a medium, and to its language, in addition to the hard discussion about its functionality. Similar results were found by Trilling (2015) analyzing 120,557 tweets during a televised debate in the German election campaign of 2013, where the candidates barely managed to take the discussion of main topics to Twitter and the discourse on Twitter was sarcastic or humoristic.…”

“…As a public space, Twitter served as an arena where Brazilians were more interested in making fun of or commenting on the performances of the candidates and the moderator rather than in posting information or engaging in discussions. As Trilling (2015) pointed out, an optimistic view suggests that Twitter can serve as a "complement to draw attention to topics neglected in the official debate" (TRILLING, 2015, p. 19) even in a comic fashion. Considering Twitter's potential for bringing people together for debates, our findings show that Brazilian users did not use the interactive features (mentions and retweets) to interact directly with other users in order to discuss political issues (MAIREDER & SCHLÖGL, 2014) but mostly to replicate and endorse someone else's comment rather than to engage in direct dialogical interaction with other users.…”

Campanha eleitoral no Twitter: as estratégias dos candidatos na disputa para a Prefeitura de Curitiba em 2016

“…Conforme foi visto, os debates televisionados podem concentrar a audiência dos eleitores, proporcionar notícias e discussões posteriores (BENOIT, 2015a;JUNGHERR, 2014), enquanto o Twitter pode favorecer o aumento do volume de mensagens políticas e servir como um complemento ao debate televisionado (TRILLING, 2015;LARSSON;MOE, 2012). Ainda, as pesquisas podem influenciar a estratégia e a decisão tanto dos candidatos quanto dos eleitores (COX, 1997;BENOIT, 2015a Na figura abaixo, a linha cinza apresenta a distribuição agregada das postagens ao longo da campanha, ou seja, a somatória das postagens efetuadas pelos candidatos agrupadas por dia.…”

Twitter como segunda pantalla en los debates políticos en televisión

“…El uso de Twitter como segunda pantalla vinculada a los contenidos políticos de televisión ha sido estudiado en el ámbito internacional desde diferentes prismas (Trilling, 2014;Freenlon y Karpf, 2014o Giglietto y Selva, 2014. En nuestro caso, nos planteamos realizar una aproximación a la capacidad de los debates políticos televisivos para generar discusiones en las redes sociales y acercarnos a su diná-mica, identificando si se producen espontáneamente entre los usuarios de la red social a partir de la visualización del programa o es necesario que la cadena o los contertulios generen conversación en las redes.…”