Smart politicians use Twitter to converse with constituents

The days are counting down until election day, and with a campaign as short and as sharp as this one, every launch, every interview, every photo in front of a pothole is crucial for those hoping to emerge, victorious, at the other end.

One arena where politicians and their press teams have been trying to shape the national conversation is on Twitter, with good reason. The platform is disproportionately used by a younger audience, who can be difficult to reach through traditional channels. And, since journalists are among the platform’s most avid users, a particularly effective tweet might get picked up in the pages.

Twitter is also immediate: Within a few seconds of an event, any politician armed with a smartphone and 4G can tell the world what they think. Of course, the price of this is often chaos — jokes, insults, and selfies with goats are mixed up with serious commentary — but that’s a price most politicians are willing to pay for a platform and audience. Indeed, some are using this chaos to their advantage.

#GE2016 Got a giggle out of this : pic.twitter.com/w8bfrd3K8O

— Aidan Cooney (@RadioAido) February 3, 2016

The rolling digital debate on Twitter isn’t only chaotic, it’s also enormous. In the three weeks since we began collecting, over 200,000 Tweets have been sent to or from Ireland’s hopeful representatives. In order to make some sense out of all this noise, we’ve been busily building algorithms to separate — in the digital crossfire — all those messages of support and encouragement from the messages of abuse, criticism, or worse. This technology isn’t perfect, of course. These things never are. But it does offer some clues as to what’s going on in this new digital battleground.

So, what happened last week? First, naturally, with an election campaign to fight, politicians upped the intensity of their digital electioneering.

So far, candidates have sent more than 18,000 tweets over the last 10 days; a third more than was sent in the same period before the campaign. This applies across the board, with every party increasing their volume of tweets; most markedly the Greens, who nearly doubled their rates.

Although Sinn Féin have sent the highest volume of tweets for any single party so far, with 3,673 at time of writing, Fine Gael is running close behind. Clearly, every party has increased their efforts since the chequered flag was waved.

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As the politicians have upped their game, people are talking more about them. Parties across the board on average generated twice as many mentions by the public on Twitter in the 10 days since February 3 as they did in the same period beforehand. But what are all these messages saying? We looked at whether people were “booing” or “cheering” candidates as they fought for the upper hand online.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for incumbents, Fine Gael and Labour candidates were mentioned in a huge proportion of tweets. The problem for the former coalition is that much of the conversation about them is negative — they are the two least popular parties in terms of sentiment, with Fine Gael the only party to receive more boos then cheers.

Overall, however, the majority of opinions expressed since campaigning began have been positive. Even Labour, the second least popular party, are still mentioned favourably in 60% of all tweets, behind the AAA at 67%. At the top of this scale sit the Greens — 9 out of every 10 tweets mentioning a Green candidate is a cheer — followed closely by Renua. This may be because these smaller parties have a more vocal and enthused base, but attract less attention and criticism from far less polite and more disgruntled members of the public. Those who are discussing the party will tend to do so to talk them up, which is a pattern we’ve seen in other studies on Twitter.

Information courtesy of Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, University of Sussex.

One striking aspect of these figures is the position of the Social Democrats. Despite fielding only 10 candidates to Fianna Fáil’s 23, the party has sent nearly a third again as many tweets. For their size, the Social Democrats are by far the most vocal party, with each candidate sending an average of 244 tweets since February 3, more than three times as many as the next loudest party, Sinn Féin. In Twitter terms, this strategy is paying off. The party is out-competing its two closest rivals for share of the conversation, earning as many mentions as the AAA and the Greens put together, with 78% of these mentions classed as cheers by our algorithm.

The least vocal parties here are Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with only 38 tweets per candidate. This may help explain each party’s relatively high number of Boos; silent candidates are not only unable to answer their critics, their lack of engagement has the potential to invite derision.

You can’t talk about Twitter and politics without mentioning Gerry Adams. He’s tweeted about as much as every other leader combined during the campaign, he has the biggest followership by far, and he’s popular: we reckon 75% of tweets mentioning him are cheers. This, however, does not make him unassailable. Adams’ sentiment score is beaten by both Eamon Ryan and Lucinda Creighton — the second and third most prolific tweeters, respectively — with cheers for Ryan reaching 87%. This could be a reflection of his engagement with users; over a quarter of Ryan’s tweets were replies, the highest proportion among leaders and in stark contrast to both Kenny and Adams, who sent no replies at all. At 72% boos, Enda Kenny, is the leader with the highest proportion of negative mentions, followed by Micheál Martin with 64%.

Our findings during this campaign suggest that when politicians actually do talk back — and in a more informal way than voters are used to — it can work. One Sinn Féin candidate, for example, has been tweeting more than anyone else in the party. Kildare North councillor Réada Cronin has doubled her output since the campaign started, sending 403 Tweets to Adams’ 297, with about one in six of these replies. Cronin is not only more vocal than Adams, but also attracts a higher percentage of favourable tweets — 80% of those mentioning her are positive. Like Adams, she has an informal, personal style, retweeting jokes and cartoons posted by supporters, These are usually at Fine Gael’s expense, and include the piece of dry humour pictured below from Aidan Cooney.

Twitter is certainly a new battleground, but winners and losers can be hard to pick. Social media is as much about oxygen as positivity, and while Renua and the Greens are enjoying high levels of positive sentiment, they still account for a minor percentage of the conversation. Sinn Féin — largely thanks to Adams — continues to dominate in terms of mentions, but the Social Democrats are punching above their weight in terms of both output and share of the conversation. Fine Gael and Labour, in contrast, are struggling to provoke a positive reaction to their tweets. Of course, on February 26, what matters is votes, not tweets. But in an election where the eventual outcome is in so much doubt, anything could make the difference.

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