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

Abstract

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