Frequency of tweeting during presidential debates: Effects on debate attitudes and knowledge
Full article citation: Houston, J.B., McKinney, M.S., Hawthorne, J., and Spialek, M. (2013). “Frequency of tweeting during presidential debates: Effects on debate attitudes and knowledge.” Communication Studies, 64(5), 548-560. doi: 10.1080/10510974.2013.832693.
Abstract: This study examines the effects of live-tweeting during a 2012 presidential debate. We assessed the influence of sociodemographics and political and campaign characteristics on amount of tweeting during the debate, and also the effect of tweeting frequency on debate attitudes and knowledge. Results indicate that males tweeted more frequently than females, that political engagement and campaign interest were related to more debate tweeting, that campaign media use was not related to frequency of tweeting, and that political talk was marginally related to tweeting. In terms of live-tweeting effects, we found that amount of tweeting was not related to presidential debate attitudes (debate attention, enjoyment, perceived importance); however, we found individuals who tweeted most frequently learned more from the debate compared to individuals who tweeted less.
Keywords: Politics, presidential debate, social media, social watching, Twitter