Searching and Clustering Methodologies: Connecting Political Communication Content across Platforms
Abstract
People create, consume, and share content online in increasingly complex ways, often including multiple news, entertainment, and social media platforms. This article explores methods for tracing political media content across overlapping communication infrastructures. Using the 2011 Occupy Movement protests and 2013 consumer boycotts as cases, we illustrate methods for creating integrated datasets of political event-related social media content by (1) using fixed URLs to link posts across platforms (URL-based integration) and (2) using semiautomated text clustering to identify similar posts across social networking services (thematic integration). These approaches help to reveal biases in the way that we characterize political communication practices that may occur when we focus on a single platform in isolation.
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Biographies
Kevin Driscoll is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research. His research concerns the histories, politics, and popular cultures of personal computer networks.
Kjerstin Thorson is an assistant professor in USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Her research explores the effects of digital and social media on political engagement, activism, and persuasion, particularly among young adults.
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Article first published online: April 9, 2015
Issue published: May 2015
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This article was published in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
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