Has Twitter made election coverage more democratic in Iran and the UK? YIJIN 1453544 King’s College London Digital Culture & Society 20 Aug 2014

Outline Twitter in 2010 UK general election Reflection of real public opinion poll Diversity of information sources Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election Stability of contents Reliability of contents Limitation of Twitter

Thesis statement A certain degree of limitation, e.g. locating and murdering protestors in Iran, but… Twitter has on the whole promoted the democratization of election coverage in Iran and the UK.

Twitter in 2010 UK General Election Picture from Williamson, A. (2010). 2010: the internet election that wasn't. Political Insight, 1(2), p60.

Twitter in 2010 UK General Election Picture from http://www.theguardian.com/media/pda/2010/may/13/twitter-tweetminster-election http://leftfootforward.org/2012/12/survation-poll-early-election-financial-crisis/

Twitter in 2010 UK General Election Shaping & reflecting public opinion poll Mainstream media dominated the campaign (Wring and Ward, 2010) TV audiences Twitterers (Williamson, 2010) Mainstream media Twitter Mainstream media - was driven by other factors (Ampofo, Anstead & O’Loughlin, 2011) E.g. Mainstream media - endorsed parties (Strӧmbäck & Dimitrova, 2011) Twitter’s diverse biases Mainstream media’s biases made the election coverage more democratic. > > >

Twitter in 2010 UK General Election Diversify range of information sources Finding and contacting diverse sources Supplement the election coverage (Broersma and Graham, 2012) Mainstream media → ‘copy factory’ (Lewis et al., 2008) Reliance on Twitter → Crisis of journalism Destroying diversity & balance of election coverage Asking for clarification democratization of Twitter (Broersma & Graham, 2012)

Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election Picture from http://torahcodes-mn.blogspot.co.uk/2012_11_01_archive.html http://newshopper.sulekha.com/us-iran-elections-protest_photo_872953.htm http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/29/iran.social.media/

Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election Stability of twitter-generated contents Restriction of mainstream media versus report from Twitter Supplement the election coverage (Grossman, 2009)

Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election Stability of twitter-generated contents Mainstream media stability of information supply (Tuchman, 1978) E.g. BBC → 2000 journalists & 55 bureaus (Barnes, Liu and Vidgen, 2001) Mainstream media stability of information supply in Iran News embargo during Iran 2009 protests (Carafano, 2009) Twitter → key source for BBC Persian TV (Newman, 2009) Stability of news sources - Twitter > mainstream media

Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election Reliability of Twitter-generated contents self-correction → reliability Mainstream media corroborates Twitter-generated content (Newman, 2009) Reliability: Mainstream media > Twitter News embargo reliability of mainstream media Government controls mainstream media (Carafano, 2009) E.g. Press TV - criticizing western media and Twitter (Carafano, 2009)

Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election Reliability of Twitter-generated contents self-correction → reliability Twitter’s Low accessibility threshold and price rumors (Yang, Greenberg and Endsley, 2011) Twitter verifiability Contradictions from other users correct the misinformation (Newman, 2009)

Limitation of Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election Adverse effect on the protests Being Used for identifying, locating & killing protestor (Burn et al., 2009) Promoting Iranian activists & the US activists Influencing international events (Burns & Eltham, 2009)

Conclusion Promoting the democratization of election coverage in Iran and the UK. A certain degree of limitation e.g. locating and murdering protestors in Iran Reflection of real public opinion poll Diversity of information sources Stability of content Reliability of content Adverse effect on Iranian protests

References Ampofo, L., Anstead, N., & O'Loughlin, B. (2011). Trust, confidence, and credibility: Citizen responses on twitter to opinion polls during the 2010 UK general election. Information, Communication & Society, 14(6), 850-871. Ayres, J. M. (1999). From the streets to the Internet: The cyber-diffusion of contention. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 566(1), 132-143. Barnes, S. J., Liu, K., & Vidgen, R. T. (2001). Evaluating WAP news sites: the WebQual/m approach. ECIS 2001 Proceedings, 17. Broersma, M., & Graham, T. (2012). Social media as beat: tweets as a news source during the 2010 British and Dutch elections. Journalism Practice, 6(3), 403-419. Burns, Alex & Eltham, Ben (2009). 'Twitter Free Iran: An Evaluation of Twitter's Role in Public Diplomacy and Information Operations in Iran's 2009 Election Crisis'. In Papandrea, Franco & Armstrong, Mark (Eds.). Record of the Communications Policy & Research Forum 2009. Sydney: Network Insight Institute, pp. 298-310 Carafano, J. J. (2009). All a twitter: How social networking shaped Iran’s election protests (Technical Report). Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation. Grossman, L. (2009). Iran protests: Twitter, the medium of the movement. Time Magazine, 17.

References Lewis, Justin,Williams, Andrew and Franklin, Bob (2008) ‘Four Rumours and an Explanation: apolitical economic account of journalists’ changing newsgathering and reportingpractices’, Journalism Practice 2(1), pp. 27-45. Newman, N. (2009). The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 8(2), 1-5. Strömbäck, J., & Dimitrova, D. V. (2011). Mediatization and media interventionism: A comparative analysis of Sweden and the United States. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 16(1), 30-49. Tuchman, G. (1978). Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York: Free Press Williamson, A. (2010). 2010: the internet election that wasn't. Political Insight, 1(2), 58-60. Wring, D., & Ward, S. (2010). The media and the 2010 campaign: The television election?. Parliamentary Affairs, 63(4), 802-817. Yang, S., Greenberg, A., & Endsley, M. (2011). Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction. Springer, Berlin.

Thank you! yijin.yijin@kcl.ac.uk