Een persbericht in 140 tekens?

The aim of this study is to examine tweets from Members of Parliament (MPs) and whether these tweets are used or cited by newspapers. Social media are a relatively new way for politicians to access the mainstream media. This research will provide insights in how journalists actually use tweets from MPs and whether there is a relation between social media use of MPs and coverage in the mainstream media. The question therefore is: What themes emerge in tweets from MPs and are these tweets used by Dutch newspapers? A content analysis of tweets of MPs was employed. All tweets sent by MPs in two weeks in February and March 2013 were examined. In total 4477 tweets were sent during this period. For every tweet I examined which MP wrote the tweet, what theme was discussed in the tweet and whether the tweet was copied by the Dutch newspapers De Telegraaf, NRC Handelsblad and de Volkskrant. Overall, the results of this study show that MPs of the Party of the Animals, CDA and the Greens send relatively the most tweets and PVV the least tweets. In general, the topics covered in tweets are about extremely diverse political topics. Only three tweets are explicitly cited by the newspapers. Also the degree of similarity between the content of the tweets and the content of the newspapers was low. Only 2% of the content of the tweets corresponded to the content of the newspaper. The chance that a tweet send by a MP is published in a Dutch newspaper is very small.