Twitter in Politics: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Abstract

[Update: An updated version of this working papers has been published in 2016 by Journal of Information Technology & Politics under the title "Twitter use in election campaigns: A systematic literature review". http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19331681.2015.1132401]

This literature review covers some 115 studies on the use of Twitter in politics. For this discussion, studies are grouped in three topical categories: studies addressing the use of Twitter by politicians and campaigns; studies addressing the use of Twitter by various publics during election and issue campaigns; and comments on Twitter during campaign events -- such as televised debates, party conventions, and election day coverage. I will start the review with a discussion of the theories, research designs, methods of data collection and data selection that were most common in the literature included in this review. Following this, I will provide short synopses of the included studies. I will close this working paper with a discussion of perspectives on further research.

Keywords: Twitter, social media, election campaigns, literature review