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

2. 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

3. 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.

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

5. Twitter in 2010 UK General Election
Picture from

6. 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.
>
>
>

7. 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)

8. Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election
Picture from

9. 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)

10. Twitter in 2009 Iranian presidential election
Stability of twitter-generated contents
Mainstream media stability of information supply
(Tuchman, 1978)
E.g. BBC → 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

11. 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)

12. 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)

13. 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)

14. 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

15. References
Ampofo, L., Anstead, N., & O'Loughlin, B. (2011). Trust, confidence, and credibility: Citizen responses on twitter to opinion polls during the UK general election. Information, Communication & Society, 14(6),
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),
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),
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 Sydney: Network Insight Institute, pp
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.

16. 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
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),
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),
Wring, D., & Ward, S. (2010). The media and the 2010 campaign: The television election?. Parliamentary Affairs, 63(4),
Yang, S., Greenberg, A., & Endsley, M. (2011). Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction. Springer, Berlin.

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