Paper presented at the 2014 Australia New Zealand Workshop on Campaign Management and Political Marketing, Sydney, 17-18 July 2014.

1. Twitter in the 2013
Australian Election
Prof. Axel Bruns
ARC Future Fellow
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
a.bruns@qut.edu.au – @snurb_dot_info – http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

2. BACKGROUND
• Research projects:
– ARC Discovery: New Media and Public Communication (QUT)
– NRC FRISAM: Impact of Social Media on Agenda-Setting in Election
Campaigns (QUT, UiO, UiB, Uppsala, CSU LB)
– ATN-DAAD: Mapping Networked Politics (QUT, LMU)
• Study design:
– Comparative study of Twitter usage during Australian, Norwegian,
German (and US) election
– Tracking tweets from and at Twitter accounts of MPs and candidates
before, during, and after election campaigns
– Additional analysis of follower networks, national Twitterspheres, social
media / mainstream media intersections, etc.

3. AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS ON TWITTER
(data to June 2013)

4. @TONYABBOTTMHR’S FAKE FOLLOWERS
(11/12 Aug. 2013)

5. @MENTIONS OF LEADERS (@REPLIES + RETWEETS)
TV debates
Abbott ‘sex appeal’
comments Labor campaign
‘launch’

6. RETWEETS OF LEADERS

7. @MENTIONS OF LEADERS

8. @MENTIONS OF PARTY CANDIDATES
(@KRUDDMP AND @TONYABBOTTMHR REMOVED)

9. @MENTIONS

10. RETWEETS (ALL USERS)
Liberals
Labor
Pirates
WikiLeaks
Greens
Palmer
Katter +
Nationals

11. @MENTIONS BETWEEN POLITICIANS

12. RETWEETS BETWEEN POLITICIANS

13. TWEETS BY LEADERS

14. TWEETS BY PARTY CANDIDATES

15. TWEETS BY LOCAL CANDIDATES

16. @MENTIONS OF LOCAL CANDIDATES

17. @MENTIONS (ELECTION DAY)

18. SOME FIRST CONCLUSIONS
• Campaigning styles:
– Liberal Party:
• ‘small target’ strategy (better to remain silent than to make mistakes)
• focus on leadership team to avoid negative perceptions of Abbott and gaffes by local
candidates
– Labor Party:
• strong campaigns by many local candidates
• lack of coordination across leadership team
• Rudd surprising quiet on social media
– Greens:
• high levels of activity, especially from Milne – too much?
• Public resonance:
– discussion mainly about leaders, rather than engaging with / retweeting them
– no partisan choices in @mentions of political candidates
– strongly partisan selectivity in retweets of political candidates, few retweets overall
– more @mentions of Labor candidates, especially on election night: encouraging?

19. GERMANY

20. @MENTIONS OF LEADERS
(@KRuddMP:
172,000 @mentions)

21. @MENTIONS OF PARTY CANDIDATES
(ALP: 321,000
@mentions)

22. TWEETS BY PARTY CANDIDATES
(ALP: 16,600
tweets)

23. THE HYPOMETERTM
• iOS app developed as functional prototype
to act as a ‘modern TV Guide’ for Australian
television
• Calculates social media ‘hype’ via a
proprietary algorithm which accounts for
national and industry context
• Ongoing evaluation of both hype figures and
predictions vs. post-show TV ratings and
social media engagement.
 Application to measuring electorate
engagement with political accounts?

24. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess
@timhighfield
@dpwoodford
@tsadkowsky
@quods
@socialmediaQUT
http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/