Project Description
Digital-Born and Legacy News Media on Twitter during the UK General Election
In this RISJ factsheet we analyse a sample of 4.26 million news-related tweets from a larger dataset of 28 million tweets collected during the 2017 UK General Election to examine the role of digital-born and legacy news media1 in online political discussions. To do this, we have mapped Twitter discussions around a range of keywords and hashtags tied to the election as well as the activity of 129 British media outlets, including 105 legacy media and 24 digital-born outlets. Among other rellevant results, we found that legacy media, including most broadcasters – BBC News, Channel 4 News, and Sky News – as well as The Economist and the Financial Times and a few pure digital-players figured very prominently in the political discussion on Twitter. A number of organisations with considerable audience reach that tweeted very frequently, mostly tabloid newspapers, as well as most of the regional and local outlets saw very limited audience engagement during the electoral campaign.
Citation: Majó-Vázquez, S., Zhao, J., Nurse, J. R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Digital-born and Legacy News Media on Twitter during the UK General Election. Oxford, UK.
