Social Influence in Televised Election Debates: A Potential Distortion of Democracy

Social Influence in Televised Election Debates: A Potential Distortion of Democracy

A recent innovation in televised election debates is a continuous response measure (commonly referred to as the "worm") that allows viewers to track the response of a sample of undecided voters in real-time. A potential danger of presenting such data is that it may prevent people from making independent evaluations. We report an experiment with 150 participants in which we manipulated the worm ...

Social media as a political backchannel: Twitter use during televised election debates in Norway

Twitter has within few years become a prominent “backchannel” for televised political debates by making audience reactions visible online. By adding a specific hashtag to their tweets, Twitter users can take part in larger, public conversations about an event, reaching outside their own network of followers and followees to join the “virtual loungeroom” (Harrington, 2012). The # character is us...

Televised Debates in Parliamentary Democracies

Semantic networks and competition: Election year winners and losers in U.S. televised presidential debates, 1960-2004

Drawing on network theory, this study considers the content of U.S. presidential debates and how candidates’ language differentiates them. Semantic network analyses of all U.S. presidential debates (1960–2004) were conducted. Results reveal that regardless of party affiliation, election winners were more central in their semantic networks than losers. Although the study does not argue causation...

Linking for influence: Twitter linked content in the Scottish Referendum televised debates

Twitter, the micro-blogging social media tool, has established a critical role in facilitating social engagement. Its low technical and economic barriers to uptake provide a readily accessible forum for public engagement with events such as televised political debates, and in this context provides a ‘backchannel’ to mainstream media, allowing users to comment on and engage in debates. Most rece...