The Use of Twitter during the 2009 German National Election

Abstract

During the 2009 election campaign, Twitter not only served as a source of news for the media but also became a public stage for active political users. In particular, hopes were raised about a pluralistic grass-roots sphere of public communication in which political information can be shared in a non-ideological, decentralised and egalitarian manner. To test whether Twitter led to new patterns of political interaction and to determine the beneficiaries, we present findings from a large-scale network analysis investigating about four million tweets by more than 33,000 users including citizens, journalists and politicians in the 2009 National Election. Our analysis identifies the most popular users, contents and topics in this political sphere, revealing the Pirate Party movement as the most influential group during the campaign. A network analysis of the participating actors confirms the strong position of established online activists and bloggers in contrast to traditional mass media, politicians and parties.