Tweeting Conventions: Political journalists' use of Twitter to cover the 2012 presidential campaign

Abstract

This study explores the use of Twitter by political reporters and commentators—an understudied population within the rapidly growing literature on digital journalism—covering the 2012 Republican and Democratic conventions. In particular, we want to know if and how the “affordances” of Twitter are shaping the traditional norms and routines of US campaign reporting surrounding objectivity, transparency, gatekeeping, and horse race coverage, and whether Twitter is bursting the “bubble” of insider talk among reporters and the campaigns they cover. A sample derived from all tweets by over 400 political journalists reveals a significant amount of opinion expression in reporters' tweets, but little use of Twitter in ways that improve transparency or disrupt journalists' (and campaigns') role as gatekeepers of campaign news. Overall, particularly when looking at what political journalists retweet and what they link to via Twitter, the campaign “bubble” seems at the moment to have remained largely intact.