Introduction: How to Use Twitter in the Social Sciences

Abstract

All over the world, a variety of digital tools are routinely used in political campaigns. They have changed the way political campaigns are conducted, organized, covered by the media and talked about by the public. Digital tools have created interconnected spaces, contributing to the political communication spheres of traditional media and social interaction. Thereby, they have become influential channels through which politics and campaigns are mediated. The growing use of digital tools in political communication also leads to the emergence of new data sources available to scientists. Each user interaction with a digital service creates data traces, documenting this interaction. While online services vary widely with regard to the accessibility of these data traces to researchers, in principle such data traces hold significant research potential for social scientists since they document actual human behavior. This book presents an interpretative framework on how to use digital trace data in the social sciences and puts forward a series of analyses, illustrating the dynamics of Twitter as a political communication space. These contributions are closely interconnected as any meaningful discussion of links between Twitter data and political phenomena presupposes an understanding of the specific patterns and dynamics of political communication on Twitter. This chapter provides the introduction and a roadmap to the remainder of the book.