An exploration of “localness” on twitter during the 2012 U.S. elections

This poster presents an exploratory method used to analyze the geography of Twitter use. A shift has taken place in political speech from local to diffuse online environments, which necessitates the use of new tools and methods to analyze discourse. As such, this study presents a geo‐spatial analysis of tweets to members of the U.S. Congress in 2012 to aid researchers carrying out comparable research in the future. This poster also presents summarized findings about the sometimes localized, often national distribution of geo‐located tweets to Congress members. This poster concludes by calling for discussion about spatial analysis and social media tools, while highlighting methodological problems encountered in this study and offering directions for future research.

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