Twitter in Politics: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Abstract

This literature review covers some 115 studies on the use of Twitter in politics. For this discussion, studies are grouped in three topical categories: studies addressing the use of Twitter by politicians and campaigns; studies addressing the use of Twitter by various publics during election and issue campaigns; and comments on Twitter during campaign events – such as televised debates, party conventions, and election day coverage. I will start the review with a discussion of the theories, research designs, methods of data collection and data selection that were most common in the literature included in this review. Following this, I will provide short synopses of the included studies. I will close this working paper with a discussion of perspectives on further research.