Somewhat earlier than expected, Queensland finds itself in the throes of a very tightly contested state election campaign, which was called on 6 January and concludes with election day on 31 January. Just like candidates and the media, we in the QUT Social Media Research Group too have been scrambling to put in place the …
Continue reading “Twitter in the Queensland State Election, Two Weeks In”
The 2013 Australian federal election campaign is (finally) over – and as the final vote counts in tightly contested seats conclude, the incoming Abbott government will presumably be sworn into office any week now, after a surprisingly low-key start to the post-election period. Time, then, to explore how the final week of the campaign unfolded …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: The Australian Federal Election on Twitter, Final Week”
For my last post about the Twitter activity around Australian politicians before tomorrow’s election, I’m once again looking at the distribution of Twitter activity across Australia’s 150 electorates (this is excluding Senate candidates by default, therefore). We’ve done this once before during this campaign, a few weeks back – this post covers the period from …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: Twitter Activity by Electorate”
We’re on the home stretch: Australia goes to the polls this Saturday (though quite a few Australians appear to have cast their votes early already). Here’s a final pre-election update on how the election has unfolded on Twitter from the 4 August campaign start through to last Sunday, then – with another look at the …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: The Australian Federal Election on Twitter, Week 4”
Well. Another week of the Australian federal election campaign has just, um, flown by – time, then, to take another look at how things played out on Twitter. I’ve taken slightly different approaches for my various updates so far, and this week we’ll look at yet another aspect of the social media campaign: the different …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: The Australian Federal Election on Twitter, Week 3”
Following on from yesterday’s update of overall Twitter activity patterns around Australian federal politicians’ and candidates’ accounts, here’s a slightly different look at the same data – and before I forget again, I want to say my sincere thanks to CCI researchers Darryl Woodford and Andrew Quodling for their work in pulling together and formatting …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: Twitter Activity across the Electorates”
We’ve entered week three of the 2013 Australian federal election campaign, and current opinion polls still have the major parties within a few points of each other. Time, then, for an update on how the parties and their candidates are doing on Twitter thus far. As I’ve explained in my week one post, we’re tracking …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: The Australian Federal Election on Twitter, Week 2”
Earlier this week I posted the first of our analyses of how the Australian federal election campaign is unfolding on Twitter, based on our observation of the tweets from and @mentions of a large number of members’ and candidates’ accounts since 1 July. As an addendum to this post, and covering the same timeframe from …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: Networks of Interaction on Twitter”
With the Australian federal election finally underway since the official announcement on 4 August, we’re once again tracking the performance the current members of parliament, election candidates, and their parties on Twitter. Over the coming weeks, we’ll try to post regular updates on how the social media campaign is unfolding, and on Monday night I …
Continue reading “#ausvotes: The Australian Federal Election on Twitter, Week 1”
This past Sunday evening, the first reports emerged of a rapid and unusual increase in the number of Twitter and Facebook followers for Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. An overall increase in followers during an election campaign is far from surprising, as our analysis of the follower growth curve for leading Australian politicians from June …
Continue reading “Factcheck: Did Tony Abbott Buy Twitter Followers?”
