Television experience and political discussion on Twitter: exploring online conversations during the 2014 Brazilian presidential elections

Abstract This empirical study aims to investigate the characteristics of the conversation and political discussion on Twitter during the last televised presidential debate in the first round of the Brazilian elections in 2014. Television experience, political participation, and Twitter dynamics were considered for the examination of different kinds of engagement in 100,000 messages collected during the debate. The aim was to identify peaks of user engagement, linking these specific moments and evaluating how the characteristics of the communicative environment may have affected the discourses built around the debate.