{"id":2172,"date":"2013-04-04T09:30:15","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T23:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/?p=2172"},"modified":"2013-04-05T12:05:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T02:05:59","slug":"social-media-in-the-media-iii-uses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/2013\/04\/04\/social-media-in-the-media-iii-uses\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media in the Media III: Uses"},"content":{"rendered":"

In previous posts I outlined the details of a preliminary study we conducted on how social media are used as political tools and how this activity is portrayed in traditional media outlets. I provide an overview of the study and insights into the way in which newspaper articles compare and contrast new and traditional media as political tools here<\/a>, as well as an analysis of different user groups (politicians, journalists and the general public) of social media for political purposes and how traditional news media report on this activity here<\/a>. In this post, I want to take a closer look at some preliminary insights into what the newspaper articles we analysed had to say about the different uses of social media in politics.<\/p>\n

Subgroup: How\/Why\/For what are social media used in politics?<\/h1>\n

Most of the articles that mentioned user groups also gave an indication of why and for what these tools were used. In total, 30 out of the 56 articles we analysed discussed different uses of social media as political tools. This makes it the most discussed topic out of all of the categories we identified in our analysis. The chart below provides an overview of the 13 types of uses the articles we studied mentioned and the number of articles that cited these uses.<\/p>\n

\"3.1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Using social media as a tool for interaction or online debate, as a means for politicians to create personal connections with voters, to create a personable image and to reach voters were the most commonly mentioned uses of social media in politics. It is noteworthy that all of these uses refer to how politicians use social media tools, not the public or journalists. This is in line with our previous finding<\/a> that most of the articles that looked at user groups referred to politicians. Another well-represented reason why people use social media as political tools was to cut out the traditional media as a mediator between politicians and the public. The fact that this is a desirable quality of social media is revealing, in light of our interest in understanding how social media and traditional media interact. It seems that both politicians and the public see merit in a use of social media that sets them apart from traditional journalistic formats as mediators of political messages. It would be interesting to utilise sentiment analysis to tease out how newspapers react to and portray this kind of information that puts in question their authority as transmitters of political news and mediators between politicians and the public.<\/p>\n

Some final words on the study and future plans<\/h1>\n

This was only a small-scale sample of what can be done, and the results I covered in this series of three blog posts only provide some preliminary insights into the representation of social media as political tools in traditional media outlets. In the future we seek to repeat the study on a larger scale with a more even distribution of articles across the years, and clearer limitations on which sources we obtain the articles for analysis from. Already, another more specific search has been performed on the Australia\/New Zealand Reference Centre database, using the search terms polit* AND Twitter OR Tweet* OR Social Media OR Facebook. <\/b>The publications were strictly limited to domestic news sources and these were then limited down further to 11 outlets (including the AAP and ABC News) that were deemed most relevant. We also decided it would be useful (and in the interest of limiting amounts of data so as not to end up with unmanageable results) to analyse articles by year and then compare them. At the moment we are thinking of searching for articles from 2008, 2010 and 2012 and perhaps 2013, and comparing across these years. The years were chosen because they represent important political events (2010 and 2013 federal elections) and a logical succession. 2008 was chosen because Twitter was in its infancy then and it will be interesting to compare how the perception of it as a political tool has changed between then and today. In order to further keep in check the amount of articles generated over such long periods of time, we have decided to look at articles only from the first week of every month of each year. An initial search for articles from 2012 resulted in 114 articles, which we will now analyse. To further facilitate our research, we are hoping to employ partially automated content-analysis via WordStat in our future analyses, in addition to manual readings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In previous posts I outlined the details of a preliminary study we conducted on how social media are used as political tools and how this activity is portrayed in traditional media outlets. I provide an overview of the study and insights into the way in which newspaper articles compare and contrast new and traditional media … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Social Media in the Media III: Uses”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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