Role of Twitter in formation of political agendain various socio-political contexts:

the cases of discussions on migrants in Russia and Germany

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Svetlana Bodrunova, PhD, Anna Litvinenko, PhD

School of Journalism and Mass Communications St. Petersburg State University

Theoretical premises1. Hybridization of media systems (Chadwick 2011, 2013):

- Tech-based growth of the web segment of media systems brings in new societal and political cleavages

- Difference in hybridization patterns depends most upon national socio-political conditions (Adam&Pfetsch 2011)

2. Media-constructed public sphere:

- Media as ‘junctions’ of the public sphere => mediatization?

3. Network(ed) communication theory:

- Formation of closed-up communicative milieus (‘echo chambers’)

- The idea of ‘spill-overs’ (online to offline, traditional/new media)

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Twitter as a communicative milieu: optimism vs. pessimism

• Twitter as the milieu of platform-limited horizontal communication with a big news alerts potential (Mancini&Mazzoni 2013, Vaccari et al. 2013)

• Twitter as a de-politicized space for gaming, dating, and chats (Fuchs 2014: Chapter 8)

• Can Twitter be a ‘crossroads of opinion’ in the online public sphere?

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Russia in 21st century is a fundamentally fragmented society (Zubarevich 2011, 2013): «Four Russias» Bodrunova, Litvinenko 2013: formation of the public counter-sphere in Russia of 2008-2012 Germany, in these terms, has developed a more solid society, with the differences between Eastern and Western part gradually

diminishing in many terms; the only striking similarity is huge urban migrant population from the southern direction still under-represented in the media content. Germany has a large number of citizens with migrant background and big diasporas, e.g. Turkish- and Russian-speaking communities which, in terms of media use, often differ from national average indicators (Sauer 2010)

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Public Sphere in Russia and in Germany

Project «Political agendasin hybrid media systems»

• Research team: Svetlana Bodrunova, Dmitry Gavra, Anna Litvinenko, Alena Savizkaya, Anna Smolyarova, Alexandr Yakunin

• Research upon structural and framing features of Twitter discussions in Russia and Germany

• Roles of media accounts in discussions upon polarizing issues- overall mediatization- linkages between media and non-media accounts (the ‘crossroads’

issue)• A case of social polarization: anti-migrant bashings in Biryulyovo

district of Moscow in October 2013

• A ‘calm’ period in Russia and in Germany (March 2014)

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Mixed methodology

1.Web crawling based on pre-selected hashtags2.Frame analysis based on coding of tweets3.Descriptive statistics 4.Discourse analysis (including semantic groups

of lexicon and their interpretation)

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Time-series graphs

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STRUCTURE OF THE DISCUSSION:results of web crawling

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Web graph:Russia,

BiryulyovoBiryulyovo

- political actors- media- ordinary users- fake/spam

Web-graph:

Germany- Political actors- Media- Ordinary users- NGOs

Web-graph: Russia

- Political actors- Media- Ordinary users- Nationalist users- Official accounts- NGOs- Spin-doctoring(!)

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FEATURES OF THE DISCOURSE

15% of tweeets put blame on someone

Just ONE tweet of 673 tells ‘it is the whole society to be blamed’

10% contain nationalist speech

11% contain hate speech

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Features of the discourse: discussion topics

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Features of the discourse: Tweeters’ mood

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Features of the discourse: Tweeters’ mood

Polarization of the public sphere on Twitter

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Features of the discourse: origins of discussants

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Features of the discourse: who is to be blamed?

15% = 100 tweets

Semantic analysis:First 600 stems from the word dataset

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MEDIATIZATION OF THE DISCUSSION

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Mediatization of the discussion: media dominate in N of tweets

- mediatization really high: «breaking news», «news», «novosti», «they say that…», «RIA», «media», «Lifenews», «RT»- national-level political actors: Putin, ‘United Russia’ party, Navalny, Public Chamber - scarce aspect thinking: introduction of visas, football- other issues: LGBT; corruption.

Some results in hashtagging

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‘Discussion triggers’

• mediatization: both real and fake! • media of various Russian public spheres

• nationalists outperform migrants • the role of Public Chamber

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Positions of media in the discussion

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Tweeted media content vs. involved media content

N = 677 tweets

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Twitter in Russia shows a bigger potential for becoming a real "crossroads of opinions", in contrast to the Russian Facebook where anti-governmental discourse predominates, as well as to Vkontakte where political debate is much less noticeable and is encapsulated in closed-up communities. BUT under-representation of migrant community in Twitter obstacles this.

In Russian Twitter, hybrid pro-elite media dominate represented by lifenews_ru, izvestia_ru, pravda.ru, RT_russia, onlinekpru etc., although the anti-mainstreem media are also among influencers (GraniTweet, SvobodaRadio, MaloverjanBBC, ru_rbc).

In general, the case study supported hypothesis about the different role of Twitter in different socio-political contexts.

Conclusion

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Thank you for your attention!