Broadcast Versus Interaction

Environmental Groups’ Use of Twitter

Bibliographic Data

ID12972162
AuthorsMelissa K Merry (0000-0002-6669-0388, Schlumberger (Ireland), corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume11
Issue3
Pages329-344
Publication date2014-06-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Information Technology & Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1933-169X • E-ISSN: 1933-1681
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/19331681.2014.933723
OpenAlexW2122980070
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited47

This study examines the extent to which interest groups utilize Twitter to engage in interactive communication and the potential of such communication to serve organizational goals such as mobilization, fundraising, and expanding support for groups' causes. Based on a content analysis of 5,000 tweets by environmental organizations in the context of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I show that interactive communication was relatively uncommon and, further, that interactivity did not yield a significant payoff in terms of expanding groups' reach and influence within the medium. These findings suggest that the benefits of interactivity may be overstated, and that other communicative strategies may better serve groups' goals during times of crisis.KeywordsEnvironmentGulf oil spillinteractivityinterest groupsInternetTwitter Notes1. 1. In the case of the WTO protests, scholars noted the rise of citizen-based journalism (see Lievrouw, Citation2011; Pickard, Citation2006). Similarly, studies of the Arab Spring highlighted the importance of social media for delivering information about protest events to the rest of the world, especially when official media were censored (see Eltantawy & Weist, Citation2011; Hounshell, Citation2011; Zuckerman, Citation2011).2. 2. For instance, Bortree and Seltzer (Citation2009) analyzed the Facebook profiles of environmental organizations to determine whether certain types of communication were related to groups' popularity on the site. Similarly, Grant and Moon (Citation2010) studied Australian politicians' use of Twitter, investigating what types of tweets were more likely to re-posted by other users.3. 3. Further, among informational tweets, scholars have identified a number of subcategories. For instance, in characterizing tweets by members of Congress, Hemphill et al. (Citation2013) distinguish tweets that express issue positions from those that provide URLs.4. 4. The Appendix contains a list of these organizations, their Twitter handles, and key group characteristics.5. 5. All of these organizations were part of a larger study of 200 U.S. environmental groups (Merry, Citation2011). Groups were identified through consultation of the following directories: Associations Unlimited, Envirolink, Inter-Environment, Project Vote Smart, National Wildlife Federation, and The National Environmental Directory.6. 6. Data on groups' financial resources and staff sizes were collected from their IRS 990 tax forms.7. 7. Similar to tags used to categorize various kinds of Web-based content, hashtags are key words or phrases preceded by the "#" symbol (Tumasjan, Sprenger, Sandner, & Welpe, Citation2010).8. 8. Variations on these words were also included, such as oiled, oily, drilling, spills, and spilling.9. 9. Tweets containing the hashtags accounted for 65.9% of the sample, while tweets containing keywords (without the hashtag symbol) accounted for 31.7% of the total tweets. 2.4% of tweets were about the spill, but did not contain the hashtags or keywords.10. 10. Typically, Twitter allows searches of tweets up to 10 days old, though the time frame varies depending on the volume of tweets at a given point in time.11. 11. For these organizations, the most recent 3,200 tweets available on Snap Bird did not cover the full time frame of the study.12. 12. The focus on manifest content is particularly appropriate, given that interactivity is an abstract concept and is difficult to observe directly except through indicators (see Neuendorf, Citation2002, p. 23).13. 13. These categories were developed through an inductive process of reading tweets, investigating user profiles, and identifying common types of users.14. 14. More specifically, broadcast tweets are defined as those that do not retweet or mention users in any other way.15. 15. It would be interesting to examine how social media influence coalition dynamics. Do social media lead to new and more diverse coalitions, or do patterns of communication simply reflect pre-existing networks? These questions should be investigated in future research.16. 16. A two-sample t-test indicated that these mean differences were statistically significant (p < .01)17. 17. On average, tweets containing action requests were retweeted 10.8 times, compared to 7.1 for those that did not. Tweets containing donation requests were retweeted an average of 14.3 times, compared to 7.2 for those that did not. As indicated by two-sample t-tests, these mean differences were statistically significant for both features (p < .01).18. 18. Data on groups' followers were collected on March 21, 2012. While ideally, these data would have been collected in 2010, it is likely that groups' followers in 2012 are strongly correlated with their followers in the past.19. 19. In addition, these interactions were most likely one-off exchanges rather than extended conversations, though the data for this study do not allow for an assessment of this. For a discussion of the depth of exchanges on Twitter, see Bruns (Citation2012).Additional informationNotes on contributorsMelissa K. MerryMelissa K. Merry is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Louisville. Her research interests include political communication, information technology, public policy, and environmental politics

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