| The aim of the following study was to determine how U.S. talk show hosts use the social network Twitter. Talk show hosts included in the study are Jay Leno, Jason Lewis, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Rick Sanchez. A total of 2,203 tweets were gathered from the time period of July 1, 2009 to December 24, 2009, which was during the peek of President Barack Obama's healthcare campaign. Tweets were categorized according to content by three coders using a code sheet. Results show U.S. talk show hosts use Twitter as a way to reply to comments made by followers. In other words, they are using this social network as a communication vehicle to interact with their audience. However, when broken down individually, results show that each talk show host actually uses Twitter with a different purpose in mind. |
