The emerging of Twitter in political discourse

Twitter

Twitter which serves as a popular micro-blogging tools with high speed and mobility, designed to deliver short messages with a personal tone is becoming popular in the political field. The politicians use Twitter to send short instant updates, ideas and thoughts on current affairs instead of long personal journals. Twitter followers are constantly fed with “live” updates of the trial, which are the element absent with blogging.

According to a study by Tumasjan A.and peers (2009), Twitter is indeed used extensively for political deliberation. Moreover, through an analysis of the Tweet’s political sentiment demonstrates close correspondence to the parties and politicians’ political positions indicating that the content of Twitter messages plausibly reflects the offline political landscape. Twitter has become a legitimate communication channel in the political arena as a result of the 2008 US election campaign. The current US president Barak Obama has establish Twitter and other social media as integral parts of his political campaign toolbox and this tools has greatly contribute to his victory in 2008 President election in United States. Shortly after his victory, Obama used Twitter to let the web community know how he felt: “This is history”.

U.S. President:Barack Obama thanks to his supporters via Twitter

Twitter is used in the governmental context not only for engaging stakeholders in conversation, but for building relationships by creating a social presence with these constituents ( F.Dianne Lux Wigand,2010). For instance, politicians communicating with the electorate and use it to mobilize their supporters. In Malaysia context, Twitter is use by political leaders like Anwar, DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang and others politicians to send instant updates, ideas and thought on current affairs instead of long personal journal, in fact, Twitter attracting more hits than blogs, politicians even use Twitter to promote their blog. Technorati(2009) states that blog with greater than 100 view a day, 83% of the hits are referral from Twitter. In addition, blogs content in-depth information, takes time to reach audience whereas Twitter can let followers get the first hand information instantly. Diana Eastment(2010) opined that blogs have had their day but they are too ponderous and lack of spontaneity of the microblogs, especially Twitter, they lack the social interactivity of networking sites such as Facebook.

In conclusion, since Twitter is easily accessed by wireless devices, it has become new phenomenon in political world as well as the public.

Reference List:

1. Diana Eastment (2010), “Blogging”, Oxford ELT Journal 2010, Vol. 64, no.1 pp119-122

http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/cgi/content/full/64/1/119

2.

F. Dianne Lux Wigand (2010), "Twitter in Government: Building Relationships One Tweet at a Time," itng, pp.563-567, 2010 Seventh International Conference on Information Technology, 2010

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/proceedings/i#5

3.

Technorati Report 2009, viewed June 12 2010,

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/

4.

Tumasjan A., Sprenger T., Philipp G. Sandner, Isabell M. Welpe(2009), “Predicting elections with Twitter: What 140 Characters reveal about political sentiment”, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence