Mapping the rise and fall in volumes of tweets during televised debates can reveal the speakers and issues voters find most engaging, according to a group of academics at Robert Gordon University (RGU).
A collaborative team of researchers spent last night capturing over 47,000 tweets during the BBC Scottish Leaders’ Debate.
The study used a tracking system developed by Dr John Isaacs from the School of Computing Science and Digital Media, that allowed real-time analysis of Twitter during the debate, creating a minute-by-minute account of which leaders were being discussed the most.
The tweets all included the hashtag #LeadersDebate and showed the dominance of comments about Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson throughout the debate.
This type of ‘backchannel chat’ can help to identify the subjects and debaters that made the most impact on the television audience.
In particular, Twitter was stimulated by exchanges between the two over the Conservative campaign leaflet, which Sturgeon claimed mentioned Independence 26 times, and respecting the 2014 Referendum result.
Dr Iain MacLeod, a Strategy and Policy lecturer from Aberdeen Business School, said: “In a strange reversal of focus, Sturgeon and Davidson sought to distance themselves from the messages they had previously claimed to be at the heart of the election – independence and Brexit.
“Davidson made the most impact on Twitter when turning the debate away from Brexit and towards independence, while Sturgeon dominated Twitter discussion throughout as she tried to refocus the debate on Brexit.”
The research team compiled a graph, showing Twitter mentions over the 90 minute debate.
It demonstrated that Patrick Harvie and Kezia Dugdale only dominated discussion twice – when Harvie discussed inequality and corporation tax and when Dugdale accused Sturgeon of “telling a porkie”.
Interestingly, the study showed that Willie Rennie and David Coburn made little impact on Twitter throughout the evening.
The research team will undertake further live scrutiny of Twitter when four of the leaders return to debate on STV on Wednesday May 24 and will produce their analysis within hours of the debate finishing.
Professor Sarah Pedersen, from the School of Creative and Cultural Business, returning to these issues after leading a similar project at the time of the Scottish independence referendum, is looking forward to comparing results between the two debates.
She said: “It will be interesting to see whether any of the leaders change their approach to debating in light of the response on social media to their performance last night.”