Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What Goes Up Must Not Come Down: The Tweet Retraction Process Of Politicians, Paige Settles

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In 2011, Congressman Anthony Weiner demonstrated the risks politicians face when utilizing Twitter. While past scholarship regarding Twitter has focused on the impact of the tweets candidates share with their voters, academic attention has not been afforded to the tweets candidates delete. This thesis seeks to delve further into the analysis of Twitter as a political campaign tool by examining the practice of tweet retraction. To achieve this end, this research presents two studies. The first analyzes the deleted tweets of members of the 112th Congress between May and November of 2012 in terms of quantity of retractions and the …