Twitter and Politics - Part 2 - A Case Study

Last month, I wrote a post about Twitter as a tool for political communication and the Republican Party's hopes for microblogging as an integral part of its return to power. Since that essay, Twitter has made more headlines in the political world, especially for its international role in facilitating grass-roots protests in Iran and China, although the benefits and perils of Twitter in those cases still generate debate (see Darrell West's HuffPost article on "The Two Faces of Twitter").

So, setting aside for this post, the issue of Twitter as a tool for organizing social protest, another way to study Twitter politics is the old-fashioned way--looking at the utility of the platform for making and circulating political arguments and information. In other words, will Twitter change any minds? Will it influence? Or is it just good for venting?

Pursuing these questions during the past few months, I've been reading a Twitter page that engages almost exclusively in political commentary. The writer, a friend of mine during high school & college years, is a very intelligent guy from an everyday background. His Twitter name is "indyrallen" and he describes himself as a "Christian, conservative, news junkie, systems engineer, cyclist and drive-by political commenter." He probably is the type of smart, articulate, and dedicated conservative whose regular presence on Twitter gives those on the right such hope for that platform. He has 347 followers, and, judging from my random viewing of about 15 of those folks, they seem to be mostly, if not all, fellow conservatives.

After reading "indyrallen" for most of the summer, I have to admit I'm skeptical about Twitter as an effective tool for political advocacy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater. I tweet daily and often about politics. But the platform is quite flawed if one's goal is political persuasion.

First, Twitter's design is problematic. The 140-character limit is the most obvious hindrance. It encourages sound bite logic, generalization, and unsupported claims. One could use multiple tweets to make an argument, but Twitter is usually consumed via a real-time feed consisting of tweets from all of one's followers, so a multi-tweet argument would likely be interrupted by other people's messages. Clicking to the person's profile to read the tweets uninterrupted is possible, but Twitter posts the most recent messages first, so the reader would have to scroll down to the start of the argument and then read up. None of this takes long, but it's well-established that the more levels one has to penetrate to reach online material, the less likely it will be consumed. Twitter does allow the writer to insert links into the tweet, which significantly bolsters the ability to support claims. However, multiple concerns arise here: (1) the previously mentioned extra level of access issue, (2) the entire link address must be inserted, which eats up much of the 140 character allotment, and (3) the writer inevitably morphs from an advocate to a distributor of others' advocacy.

Regarding the quality of argument itself, Twitter leaves much to be desired. In the case of "indyrallen," tweets sometimes are repeated verbatim, or nearly so. The writer has recycled tweets about Obama responding to foreign policy and military challenges with "more adjectives," the prospect of needing a prescription to buy Cheerios, and comparing presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs to "Hogan's Heroes" character Sergeant Schultz. Maybe the pressure to tweet numerous times each day encourages such recycling; nevertheless, excessive repetition injects a bit of staleness into a medium which embraces the immediacy of text messaging.

Such immediacy also leads to carelessness and lessened credibility. Tweets posted in haste and with insufficient context are more likely to offend or cause unwanted controversy (as discussed in my previous post on this subject, or as seen in the cases of Senator Chuck Grassley or CNN journalist Rick Sanchez). In indyrallen's case, misspellings and typos are the culprit, as numerous messages contain errors of haste. The writer seemingly agrees that such mistakes are credibility indicators when he tweets, "Interesting to read the tweets of those calling Palin stupid. Usually full of misspellings and profanity." A more serious credibility issue arises from the writer's reliance on biased sources. In one tweet, he cites a title of a right-wing blog post as a “headline," suggesting the quote comes from a more objective journalistic source.

The succinctness of Twitter makes for easy use but also results in confusion and unanswered questions. For example, indyrallen, on several occasions, states that he is a former liberal who is now a conservative. However, his tweets don't address the reasons behind his conversion, so it comes off as a simple flip-flop rather than a thoughtful political journey. Such a journey, if explained effectively, could significantly bolster the writer's appeal. In one of his most recent tweets, indyrallen writes: "Obama's comments about the [Henry Louis] Gates incident are setting up "no" votes on Healthcare and Cap & Tax as racist." Similar sentiments appear on a number of other conservative Twitter pages. However, without more explanation, this claim lacks coherence. Why would Obama intentionally inject himself into a brewing racial controversy at precisely the same press conference intended to energize his health care policy? In fact, his comment distracted public and media attention away from health care to the point that the President eventually offered a public clarification of his Gates statement. To argue, without reasons or evidence, that Obama was setting up an elaborate "race card" strategy for two major legislative initiatives down the road is tantamount to the type of conspiracy rhetoric that is far too common on both extremes of the political spectrum. What it's not is effective political communication. Again, the writer is a smart guy, but Twitter doesn't give his intelligence much room to operate.

I believe that Twitter can be effective for political organization (as demonstrated in Iran and China) and, to a lesser degree, the distribution of political information (through the use of links, hash tags, and retweets). However, on the 15 conservative Twitter pages that I reviewed, only two recently attempted to organize political action, such as encouraging calls to Congress or participation at an upcoming "tea party" protest. The rest engaged in micro-punditry, or, as indyrallen puts it, "drive-by" political commentary. His metaphor is apt and illustrates the level of superficial engagement that Twitter encourages. I should note that, to his credit, indyrallen employs a level of civility in his tweets often not found in the followers that I sampled.

If Republicans bank heavily on Twitter to reverse their political fortunes, they need to develop the platform into a massive yet nimble organizational force in a way that their opposition won't anticipate. According to The Atlantic, Democrats are already using Twitter for online fundraising. So the GOP doesn't have much time to figure it out. If they don't, Twitter will become not "the central component of GOP resurgence" (see my June 6 post) but rather a high-tech, low-impact echo chamber of sniping and snark.