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Few-to-many communication: Public figures’ self-promotion on Twitter through ‘joint performances’ in small networked constellations
Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, HLK, Media and Communication Studies, Jönköping, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3607-7881
2016 (English)In: ECREA 2016 Abstract Book: Mediated (Dis)Continuities: Contesting Pasts, Presents and Futures, Prague: CZECH-IN, s. r. o. , 2016, p. 217-217Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

RELEVANCE & RESEARCH QUESTIONS: Twitter is often associated with digital citizenship and democratic communication, enabling “anyone to chat with anyone” (many‑to‑many). Simultaneously, research is pointing at a gap between elite users and “ordinary users” with the latter becoming passive audiences of the first. Despite the awareness about the hierarchal nature or Twitter, there is need for detailed analyses of elite power and elite visibility. Not least, it is necessary to pay attention to how users with high status “collaborate” in their efforts to “win the audience” (Castells 2007: 241). Thus, the purpose is to explore how members of a Twitter elite interact and perform together “before” their manifold followers/audiences, as if from a raised platform. The study seeks to answer the following: RQ 1: What different types of “joint performances” are possible to identify and more precisely what does the interaction look like, discursively speaking? RQ2: How could this elite “collaborative” way of establishing mass communication on Twitter be conceptualized? One‑to‑many is restricted to individual performance, but is it possible to formulate an equivalent concept that instead covers “joint performances”?

METHODS & DATA: A qualitative discourse analysis of Twitter activities among six Swedish public figures who are nationally acknowledged politicians, journalists and PR consultants. The empirical material, which was collected in February and September 2014, consists of in total 1689 items (tweets and retweets) in which a selection has been used for the qualitative analysis (primarily tweets while the retweets have served as contextual material).

RESULTS: The identification of three discourse types; expert sessions; professional “backstage” chatting and exclusive lifestreaming. Altogether, they demonstrate how a Twitter elite “socialize” on Twitter in a top‑down manner.

ADDED VALUE: Qualitative knowledge about barriers to democratic interaction on Twitter. The formulation of a concept that complements the widely used concept of one‑to‑many. It is suggested that the identified “elite collaborative” tweeting represents another form of mass communication, namely few‑to‑many.

METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGE/PROBLEM: What happens when transferring discourse analytical tools, originally intended for studies of traditional media, to Twitter?

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Prague: CZECH-IN, s. r. o. , 2016. p. 217-217
Keywords [en]
Twitter, politicians, journalists, PR consultants, mass communication, audiences, few‑to‑many communication, elite, performance, digital citizenship
National Category
Media and Communications
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-104053ISBN: 9788090665507 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-104053DiVA, id: diva2:1734728
Conference
6th European Communication Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, November 9-12, 2016
Available from: 2023-02-07 Created: 2023-02-07 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved

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Berglez, Peter

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
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  • de-DE
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