Of big birds and bayonets: hybrid Twitter interactivity in the 2012 Presidential debates

摘要: The 2012 US Presidential debates were hybrid media events. Millions of viewers ‘dual-screened’ them, simultaneously watching their televisions and commenting on social feeds. In doing so, they helped transform verbal gaffes zingers into debate-defining moments that may have influenced public opinion coverage. To examine this phenomenon, we apply network qualitative textual analyses to a unique data set over 1.9 million tweets from the first third presidential debates. We address two questions networked information flow within debate-relevant Twittersphere: who was most responsible for spreading ‘Big Bird’ ‘horses bayonets’ memes, how did use humour discuss it? Our results reveal non-traditional political actors prominent hubs in both widespread debate among anti-Romney users.