1. Tweeting as civic engagement in England: the case of the General Election 2015 Mike Coombes CURDS, Newcastle University acknowledgements: Colin Wymer (CURDS) and other colleagues in SoMAG

2. The aspiration for wider civic engagement via social media Civic engagement, measured by indicators such as voting rates, has been declining Some population groups less likely to respond when public bodies seek engagement Recent research in Finland found political engagement via the internet (eg. petitions) was mostly by people who hadn’t engaged in pre-internet political activity

3. The aspiration for wider civic engagement via social media Civic engagement, measured by indicators such as voting rates, has been declining Some population groups less likely to respond when public bodies seek engagement Recent research in Finland found political engagement via the internet (eg. petitions) was mostly by people who hadn’t engaged in pre-internet political activity Residents of more deprived areas tend to have lower levels of civic engagement Younger people have become increasingly alienated from traditional political debate BUT social media use is highest among young adults, and the mobile devices which it is supported by are increasingly ubiquitous across all social groups…SO… Can social media help public bodies to engage groups that they find ‘hard to reach’?

4. Twitter and engagement: the case of General Election 2015 There is ample evidence that Twitter is most actively used by younger people (although the older groups have been ‘catching up’ in more recent years) SO if there is evidence that Twitter was used for engagement in the General Election ‘conversations’ then young people were very likely to have been participating There is no real data on how much Twitter is used by people who are or less well off,or who live in areas with higher or lower levels of deprivation

5. Twitter and engagement: the case of General Election 2015 There is ample evidence that Twitter is most actively used by younger people (although the older groups have been ‘catching up’ in more recent years) SO if there is evidence that Twitter was used for engagement in the General Election ‘conversations’ then young people were very likely to have been participating There is no real data on how much Twitter is used by people who are or less well off,or who live in areas with higher or lower levels of deprivation SO there are 3 Questions we aimed to explore here: Q1 was there much use of Twitter to engage with issues around the General Election? Q2 do people in more deprived areas use Twitter as much as other people? Q3 did people in more deprived areas tweet about the General Election?

6. Twitter data collected for the research The collected data covered 100% of tweets which met the following criteria… WHEN sent over 10 days in May 2015, from before to just after polling day itself WHO !×! no reliable social/demographic information on the author of each tweet WHERE located by call-specific grid reference within England ! BUT at most 2% of all tweets have such a call-specific grid reference… and the nature of the bias involved in such a ‘sample’ is not known

7. Preparing the data for analysis The dataset included approaching 500,000 tweets with grid references in England These tweets had been sent by over 70,000 users of Twitter (tweeters) From the grid reference, each tweet is located to one of the 32,844 English LSOAs (Lower-layer Super Output Areas, defined for ‘neighbourhood’ scale data)

8. Preparing the data for analysis The dataset included approaching 500,000 tweets with grid references in England These tweets had been sent by over 70,000 users of Twitter (tweeters) From the grid reference, each tweet is located to one of the 32,844 English LSOAs (Lower-layer Super Output Areas, defined for ‘neighbourhood’ scale data) The timing of tweets shows that nearly 325,000 were sent ‘out-of-hours’ (not between 08:00 & 18:00 on weekdays): these are the most likely to be sent from home SO the home of a tweeter was taken as the LSOA of most of their out-of-hours tweets, BUT if there were under 3 tweets in that LSOA, that tweeter and their tweets are deleted

9. Preparing the data for analysis The dataset included approaching 500,000 tweets with grid references in England These tweets had been sent by over 70,000 users of Twitter (tweeters) From the grid reference, each tweet is located to one of the 32,844 English LSOAs (Lower-layer Super Output Areas, defined for ‘neighbourhood’ scale data) The timing of tweets shows that nearly 325,000 were sent ‘out-of-hours’ (not between 08:00 & 18:00 on weekdays): these are the most likely to be sent from home SO the home of a tweeter was taken as the LSOA of most of their out-of-hours tweets, BUT if there were under 3 tweets in that LSOA, that tweeter and their tweets are deleted …this produces a dataset of nearly 14,774 tweeters we have a ‘home’ location for: they sent 377,926 tweets in all (nb. these are their tweets from any location, on any day of the week, at any hour of the day)

10. Tweeting about the General Election Tweets can include #s (hashtags) which refer to topics of more general interest; of the tweets in our data there are 201,106 which include at least one # We ranked the most frequently used #s and the most numerous type was those about the general election; the second most numerous was about football, and they provide a comparator in the analyses here (all these #s were in ≥25 tweets) here the #name size reflects how often it was tweeted (and as shown, election #s out-number football #s)

11. Using the 2015 IMD: looking at who lives in which areas The focus on civic engagement led to interest in people living in more deprived areas The official measurement of English neighbourhoods’ levels of deprivation is the IMD (Index of Multiple Deprivation), updated in 2015 with a ‘score’ for every LSOA LSOAs are grouped by IMD score so that 20% of all people live in each of the quintiles quintile 1 = the highest IMD‘scored’ LSOAs, and so the most deprived people SO we can see how many people living in more deprived areas are in our data on users of Twitter: People in more deprived areas are not much less likely to tweet than is the average for England

12. Twitter and engagement: who tweeted about the Election? The proportion of tweeters who sent at least one tweet with at least one # (c. 65%) doesn’t vary between people in more or less deprived areas Of all tweeters who sent tweets with #s, there is more variation in how likely they were to have used an election # BUT tweeters living in more deprived areas were ‘average’ in how far they showed this evidence of civic engagement

13. Twitter and engagement: but who tweeted about football? Of tweeters who sent tweets with #s, tweeters living in more deprived areas were a bit below the average in how far they tweeted about football Summarising the evidence on election-related tweeting as a form of civic engagement: compared to the average for all people in England, those in more deprived areas are…  slightly less likely to tweet at all … but then it’s just as likely they will use a #  Then equally likely to tweet about the Election … but less likely to tweet about football

14. Conclusions about civic engagement via social media There are some key limitations to the study, which is essentially exploratory:  social media use solely use of Twitter, and hugely limited to tweets that geo-located  imperfect home area allocation, then used to analyse by deprivation of neighbourhood  Civic engagement limited to interest in the General Election

15. Conclusions about civic engagement via social media There are some key limitations to the study, which is essentially exploratory:  social media use solely use of Twitter, and hugely limited to tweets that geo-located  imperfect home area allocation, then used to analyse by deprivation of neighbourhood  Civic engagement limited to interest in the General Election Q1 was there much use of Twitter to engage with issues round the General Election? Over 1 out of 6 tweeters sending tweets with #s tweeted with an election-related # (strongly outnumbering football #s); …given that young people are over-represented among tweeters, public bodies using Twitter for engagement could find that young people become more involved

16. Conclusions about civic engagement via social media There are some key limitations to the study, which is essentially exploratory:  social media use solely use of Twitter, and hugely limited to tweets that geo-located  imperfect home area allocation, then used to analyse by deprivation of neighbourhood  Civic engagement limited to interest in the General Election Q1 was there much use of Twitter to engage with issues round the General Election? Over 1 out of 6 tweeters sending tweets with #s tweeted with an election-related # (strongly outnumbering football #s); …given that young people are over-represented among tweeters, public bodies using Twitter for engagement could find that young people become more involved Q2 do people in more deprived areas use Twitter as much as other people? Residents of more deprived areas are only slightly below average in the use of Twitter

17. Conclusions about civic engagement via social media There are some key limitations to the study, which is essentially exploratory:  social media use solely use of Twitter, and hugely limited to tweets that geo-located  imperfect home area allocation, then used to analyse by deprivation of neighbourhood  Civic engagement limited to interest in the General Election Q1 was there much use of Twitter to engage with issues round the General Election? Over 1 out of 6 tweeters sending tweets with #s tweeted with an election-related # (strongly outnumbering football #s); …given that young people are over-represented among tweeters, public bodies using Twitter for engagement could find that young people become more involved Q2 do people in more deprived areas use Twitter as much as other people? Residents of more deprived areas are only slightly below average in the use of Twitter Q3 did people in more deprived areas tweet about the General Election? The tweeters living in more deprived areas were ‘average’ in how far their tweets with #s were about the general election …this is positive hint at the potential of Twitter involving the ‘hard to reach’ in civic issues