The rise of social networking sites (SNSs) allowed common users to provide personal opinions, favouring the development of online discourse communities (Herring 2008). Though new media called for the identification of proper behaviours (Kiesler 1997), non-appropriate conducts have proliferated in SNSs, especially towards public personalities. Against this background, this paper aims at assessing the tone of reactions to institutional communications, especially in politics-related environments. Following a methodology used in other works (Meledandri 2023), the analysis would manually assess (van Atteveldt et al. 2021) the number of supportive vs. non-supportive and hateful engagement on Twitter/X. In detail, the assessment would focus on contents posted by Rishi Sunak following his appointment as new Prime Minister of UK in October 2022. Results from six examples show that three out of four comments in response to Sunak’s contents are negative. Negativity and hate affect the reach and status of institutional stakeholders (Rathje et al. 2021), crushing the traditional affiliation process between politicians and their (alleged) electorate.
#Ready4Dishy? Assessing TwitterX's Controversial Engagement in UK Political Communication
Francesco Meledandri
2023-01-01
Abstract
The rise of social networking sites (SNSs) allowed common users to provide personal opinions, favouring the development of online discourse communities (Herring 2008). Though new media called for the identification of proper behaviours (Kiesler 1997), non-appropriate conducts have proliferated in SNSs, especially towards public personalities. Against this background, this paper aims at assessing the tone of reactions to institutional communications, especially in politics-related environments. Following a methodology used in other works (Meledandri 2023), the analysis would manually assess (van Atteveldt et al. 2021) the number of supportive vs. non-supportive and hateful engagement on Twitter/X. In detail, the assessment would focus on contents posted by Rishi Sunak following his appointment as new Prime Minister of UK in October 2022. Results from six examples show that three out of four comments in response to Sunak’s contents are negative. Negativity and hate affect the reach and status of institutional stakeholders (Rathje et al. 2021), crushing the traditional affiliation process between politicians and their (alleged) electorate.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
