Brevity is the Soul of Twitter

The Constraint Affordance and Political Discussion

Bibliographic Data

ID22693154
AuthorsKokil Jaidka (0000-0002-8127-1157, Nanyang Technological University), Alvin Zhou (0000-0001-5410-9712, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA), Yphtach Lelkes (0000-0003-1805-056X, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume69
Issue4
Pages345-372
Publication date2019-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9916 • E-ISSN: 1460-2466
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/joc/jqz023
OpenAlexW2902378118
LanguageEN
Citations received53
References cited77

Many hoped that social networking sites would allow for the open exchange of information and a revival of the public sphere. Unfortunately, conversations on social media are often toxic and not conducive to healthy political discussions. Twitter, the most widely used social network for political discussions, doubled the limit of characters in a tweet in November 2017, which provided an opportunity to study the effect of technological affordances on political discussions using a discontinuous time series design. Using supervised and unsupervised natural language processing methods, we analyzed 358,242 tweet replies to U.S. politicians from January 2017 to March 2018. We show that doubling the permissible length of a tweet led to less uncivil, more polite, and more constructive discussions online. However, the declining trend in the empathy and respectfulness of these tweets raises concerns about the implications of the changing norms for the quality of political deliberation.

Affordance · Cognitive psychology · Constructive · Deliberation · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Public sphere · Social media · Sociology · Voting · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Media and Politics

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