Articles
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/974
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Item Visibility Through Information Sharing: The Role of Tweet Authors and Communication Styles in Retweeting Political Information on Twitter(2019) Engelmann, Ines; Kloss, Andrea; Neuberger, Christoph; Brockmann, TobiasIf a speaker’s political message on Twitter is retweeted, both the speaker and the message become visible to a wider network of Twitter users, making the tweet actor more prominent on the Twittersphere or beyond. This study analyzes the effects of different types of tweet authors (such as politicians, journalists, economic actors, members of nonprofit interest groups, and citizens) and the communication styles of political information (affect and rationality) on the number of retweets. The potential effects of these factors are hypothesized based on the heuristic-systematic model but are also discussed in the normative context of public sphere theories. A content analysis of 4,403 tweets shows that the author types, communication styles, and their interactions affect the number of retweets. The theoretical and normative implications of these results are discussed.Item How News Websites Refer to Twitter. A Content Analysis of Twitter Sources in Journalism(2022) Kapidzic, Sanja; Neuberger, Christoph; Frey, Felix; Stieglitz, Stefan; Mirbabaie, MiladThe study presents the results of a standardized content analysis comparing the use of Twitter as an information source on the websites of five news media types (quality newspapers, a tabloid newspaper, weekly magazines, broadcasters, and internet only). The theoretical assumption behind the study is that the adoption of Twitter as a source follows the established practices of a particular media type. All articles published online by ten German news media in a period of one month were collected (n = 21,823). A subset of articles containing Twitter-related keywords (n = 496) and 375 tweets cited in these articles was explored in detail. Our focal analysis of n = 287 articles using Twitter as an information source revealed systematic differences between both media types and article topics regarding the number and style of Twitter references as well as the types of accounts cited. We found that the tabloid paper incorporated the highest number of tweets per article, incorporated tweets primarily in articles on human interest and gossip and cited non-elite sources more often than other media types. Quality papers, weekly magazines, and broadcasters used tweets as sources primarily in articles on politics and economy and cited public actors, such as politicians or officials, more frequently.