How Do Japanese Politicians and American Politicians use Twitter?

Adam Acar

In our social media seminar, each student is assigned a research project. Yumeno, a senior international relations major, compared how Japanese and American politicians use Twitter. She

collected the last 10 posts of the 10 most popular politicians in the US and Japan in January, 2013.

HOW?

Twitter accounts  

the U.S. Japan1 Barack Obama (@BarackObama) 橋下　徹 (@t_ishin)

2 Al Gore (@algore) 鳩山　由紀夫 (@hatoyamayukio)

3 John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) 東国原　英夫 (@higashi_giin)

4 Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) 蓮舫 (@renho_sha)

5 Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) 猪瀬　直樹 (@inosenaoki)

6 Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) 原口　一博 (@kharaguchi)

7 Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) 河野　太郎 (@konotarogomame)

8 Paul Ryan (@RepPaulRyan) 谷垣　禎一 (@Tanigaki_S)

9 Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) 小池　百合子 (@ecoyuri)

10 Ron Paul (@RepRonPaul) 舛添　要一 (@MasuzoeYoichi)

ComparisonsCategories The U.S. JapanStatus update 1% 8%Criticizing someone or some idea 3% 13%State own opinion 13% 26%Self-Promotion 15% 3%Mention stats,  research finding 1% 1%Updates about articles,  pictures 4% 4%Quotes from speech 5% 0%Promoting another website 34% 13%Promote another group or person who 4% 0%Action 6% 16%Greetings to other politicians 3% 1%Greetings to the supporters and citizen 5% 7%Daily life 0% 6%Quotations 1% 1%Related to interests 3% 1%Quotes others person’s comments or idea 1% 0%

Sample: The last 10 tweets of the 10 most popular American Politicians vs. the last 10 tweets of the 10 most popular Japanese politicians.

Conclusion• Japanese values are not necessarily reflected on Japanese

politicians’ tweets. (Or ) Japanese politicians who actively use Twitter may not be mainstream politicians.

• Although Japanese people tend to criticize others less and state their own opinion less (Gudykunts & Nishida, 1994) compared to Americans, our results indicate that on Twitter Japanese politicians are more outspoken than their American counterparts.

• Self-promotion and promotion of another person or group because of doing a good job was way more common in the US as this may be related with the group oriented nature of Asian societies where groups but not individuals are the main focus.

Contact me to get the dataset

acarteaching –at – gmail.com