title: How (Not) to Talk on Twitter: Effects of Politicians' Tweets on Perceptions of the Twitter Environment.
abstract: Politicians' Twitter habits can vary considerably. Those who choose to use may do so as part of a broad discussion community or as a one-to-many broadcaster. Because each user sees a different mix of tweets, a politician seen by one user as interacting with the public may be seen by another as engaging in one-way communication, potentially prompting different evaluations of the politician, the ongoing discussion, or even Twitter itself. This study uses an experiment to test the effects of different engagement and framing styles in politician tweets on evaluations of the politician, other discussants, and Twitter itself. Findings suggest that politicians who use Twitter to broadcast, rather than engage with other users, not only receive worse evaluations themselves but that the negative evaluation carries over to other users discussing the same topics, as well as to evaluations of the utility of Twitter as an information source. This effect is attributed to intramedium interaction, in which reactions to one aspect of a multimedia object carry over to other aspects of the same object.
authors.affiliation: 1 College of Mass Communication & Media Arts, Southern Illinois University Carbondale , Carbondale, Illinois.
authors.forename: Benjamin A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Lyons
authors.affiliation: 2 School of Journalism, Southern Illinois University Carbondale , Carbondale, Illinois.
authors.forename: Aaron S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Veenstra
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011057:Politics; D061108:Social Media; D012938:Social Perception