The 2010 US Senate Elections in Less Than 140 Characters : How Senate Candidates Use Twitter as a Campaign Tool

Much of the recent changes in campaigning have been in how politicians use the Internet and social media. The 2010 elections saw candidates use Twitter as a standard campaign tool for the first time. This study examines how the 71 Senate candidates on Twitter used it in 2010, analyzing over 12,000 “tweets” from Senate candidates in the sixty days prior to the election. The results show that overall, candidates used Twitter to advertise the most, while interacting with other Twitter users and taking issue positions the least. Winning candidates tended to post fewer tweets but did so for different reasons. Overall, candidates use their Twitter accounts more as RSS feeds for their campaign than as a means for more interactive and direct conversation with constituents.