Joshua Hawthorne

Social media and disasters: a functional framework for social media use in disaster planning, response, and research.

A comprehensive review of online, official, and scientific literature was carried out in 2012-13 to develop a framework of disaster social media. This framework can be used to facilitate the creation of disaster social media tools, the formulation of disaster social media implementation processes, and the scientific study of disaster social media effects. Disaster social media users in the framework include communities, government, individuals, organisations, and media outlets. Fifteen distinct disaster social media uses were identified, ranging from preparing and receiving disaster preparedness information and warnings and signalling and detecting disasters prior to an event to (re)connecting community members following a disaster. The framework illustrates that a variety of entities may utilise and produce disaster social media content. Consequently, disaster social media use can be conceptualised as occurring at a number of levels, even within the same disaster. Suggestions are provided on how the proposed framework can inform future disaster social media development and research.

Live-Tweeting a Presidential Primary Debate: Exploring New Political Conversations

Twitter offers a function called live-tweeting that allows users to communicate about events with each other in real time. This study examines the use of live-tweeting during a 2012 Republican Primary Debate by examining the 181,780 tweets posted during the nationally televised debate. Live-tweeting offers users an opportunity to engage in public conversation about political events and thus potentially influence the framing of what occurred. Our study examines whether citizens utilize the opportunity to contribute to the political narrative or if elite users dominate political conversations through an analysis of tweets used by both groups. Findings show that there were very few differences between the elite and nonelite social media conversations and that elite users views were spread farther than nonelite views.

Social Watching a 2012 Republican Presidential Primary Debate

This study examines the “Twitter election of 2012,” and specifically young citizens’ “social watching” behaviors while live-tweeting a 2012 nationally televised Republican primary debate. We find several important relationships between key demographic, social, and political engagement variables and participants’ social watching activity (frequency of tweeting while watching the debate). We also find important links between tweet content (frequency of candidate mentions in tweets) and debate viewers’ candidate evaluations.

Tweeting during Presidential Debates: Effect on Candidate Evaluations and Debate Attitudes

This study examined the effects of tweeting while watching a presidential debate (live-tweeting) during the 2012 U.S. election. We examined candidate evaluations and debate attitudes for participants who did and did not tweet while watching a presidential or vice presidential debate. We found that tweeting while watching a debate was related to participants reporting more favorable attitudes about Barack Obama, paying more attention to the debate, and perceiving debates to be more important. Live-tweeting a debate was not related to enjoying the debate more. Overall, our results indicate that live-tweeting a televised political event can result in different effects than simply watching a debate and that live-tweeting debates is an activity driven by engagement with and thoughtful processing of debate content rather than primarily about fun or passing time.

Limbaugh's Social Media Nightmare: Facebook and Twitter as Spaces for Political Action

When Rush Limbaugh made his now famous remarks about Sandra Flukes Congressional testimony he set off a social media firestorm. The ensuing backlash cost Limbaugh many prominent advertisers and damaged his public image. In this study, we examine the characteristics that motivated some to engage in the social media conversation while others remained on the sidelines. We find that political information efficacy, or confidence that one has the knowledge and skills necessary to participate, dictate political engagement online. We discuss the implications of this finding for radio, communication and media scholars, and healthy democratic deliberation among young Americans.

Frequency of Tweeting During Presidential Debates: Effect on Debate Attitudes and Knowledge

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.

Co-Viewing, Tweeting, and Facebooking the 2012 Presidential Debates

This article examines the impact of watching political debates with others—whether the others are personally present or linked via social media. Co-viewing theory suggests that watching television with others, in comparison to solo viewing, increases viewing enjoyment and duration. Research about watching political debates suggests that the experience may make viewers feel emotionally negative and insecure, especially when their favored candidate is attacked. Debate viewers may also relish “being part of” an event of national importance. These possibilities suggest that engaging in social watching behaviors, whether face-to-face and/or via social media, will amplify the positive experiences of debate viewing potentially by providing opinion-confirmatory information. In turn, this may increase the likelihood of watching more debates and sticking with each debate longer. These predictions are strongly supported with a sample of American newspaper subscribers, whose political reporters had participated in a paper-sponsored debate-watch/tweet program.

A dual-processing approach to the effects of viewing political comedy

Abstract Stephen Colbert’s announcement that he would take over Late Night for David Letterman signaled the end of nearly a decade long project in political satire. The evolution of political humor since Colbert began his satirical news program has been accompanied by a dramatic expansion in scholarly understanding of the effects of political comedy. This study contributes to research on the effects of political comedy by adopting a dual-processing approach to determine if exposure to political comedy can affect the political knowledge and attitudes of viewers. Two experiments were conducted to test the learning and persuasive effects of viewing a single clip from Colbert’s well-documented Super PAC parody. The first demonstrated that exposure to Colbert’s Super PAC programming generated modest short-term issue recognition characteristic of online learning. The second experiment demonstrated a substantial priming effect such that viewing argumentative forewarning in a Colbert segment about Super PAC attack ads significantly diminished the persuasive effect of those attacks.

Urban Youth's Perspectives on Flash Mobs

Flash mobs are new, emerging, and evolving social phenomena that have recently been associated with youth violence in the US cities. The current study explores how youth understand flash mobs through focus groups conducted in Kansas City, Missouri (a site of violent youth flash mobs). Results indicate that youth have varying familiarity with flash mobs and define them in different ways; that youth perceive youth boredom to be the most frequent cause of problems with flash mobs; that youth connect ongoing social disorder with the violence associated with flash mobs; and that while social media are facilitators of flash mobs, flash mobs have their roots in youth activities that have been going on for generations (e.g., hanging out in groups and cruising). Results illustrate the importance of conducting formative research with youth, particularly about emergent phenomena, when developing interventions and communication campaigns aimed at reducing youth violence.

Issue Ownership Trends and Tensions in 2008: Obama, the Transformative Democrat?

Issue ownership theory posits that candidates and political parties own certain issues and ownership of issues is built on reputation over time. By analyzing the content of nomination acceptance speeches and presidential debates and comparing those findings with public polling results, this study tests issue ownership theory in the 2008 general election. This study found both a continuation of general trends as well as significant variations from issue ownership assumptions. These findings suggest that the 2008 election was one in which the candidates had more to gain by discussing certain issues and that party owned issues may be fluctuating.