Normalizing Community Structure’s

Restraint on Critical Tweets About a

Polluting Industry
Brendan R. Watson

There is an ongoing debate as to whether the Internet broadly, and social me-
dia specifically, has radicalized or normalized existing patterns of participation
in discussions of public affairs. Previous studies of traditional media’s coverage
of polluting industries have found media in less structurally pluralistic, more
economically dependent communities are less likely to be critical in their
coverage of industrial pollution. This study examines whether or not the influ-
ence of local community structure was normalized in Gulf Coast Twitter users’
tweets about the 2010 BP oil spill. While it has been suggested that the Internet
‘‘overrides’’ the influences of local geography, like journalists, the producers of
online content still live and work in local geographic communities. Thus, this
study examines whether Twitter users in less pluralistic, more economically
dependent communities are less critical of BP and its response to the crisis.

During the 2010 BP oil spill, the public flocked to both traditional news media and
social media to make sense of the disaster. It was that years’ most followed domestic
news story and the most discussed topic on social media for more than a month (Pew
Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010). This study examines
a portion of those social media discussions about the oil spill. Because Americans’
reactions to the oil spill were highly partisan (Pew Research Center for the People &
the Press, 2010), it is expected that tweets will also reflect individual Twitter users’
political and environmental attitudes. However, this study goes beyond individual-
level beliefs, examining whether tweets about the oil spill were also shaped by
community structure variables—the degree of structural pluralism and economic
reliance on the polluting industry—that previous scholars have found to restrict
the traditional news media’s coverage of environmental crises, including the BP
oil spill (Griffin & Dunwoody, 1995, 1997; Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1980;
Watson, 2014). That is, has local community structure been normalized as a force
that restricts conversations in this new online space, even though the Internet’s

Brendan R. Watson (Ph.D., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) is an assistant professor in the School
of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. His research interests
include community information needs, how social media are/are not changing communication about local
public affairs issues and quantitative research methods.
© 2014 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 58(4), 2014, pp. 581–600
DOI: 10.1080/08838151.2014.966359 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online
581
582 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

network extends beyond geographically bounded, local communities (e.g., counties,

towns, states, etc.)?
There is ongoing tension between the radical or new mobilization and nor-
malization theories of the Internet. Proponents of the new mobilization theory
assert the Web is challenging existing power structures by bringing new voices
to the forefront and changing patterns of participation in public discourse. The
normalization theory, however, posits that existing patterns of participation and
existing power relationships are largely reproduced online (Margolis & Resnick,
2000; Wright, 2011). The Internet is diverse enough that one can find evidence to
support either hypothesis. Thus, any one study cannot definitively settle this debate.
It is possible, however, to examine which theory of online participation/mobilization
is more dominant in a specific instance, in this case tweets about the BP oil spill.
Thus, this study examines the most followed (i.e., most dominant) Gulf Coast
Twitter users’ attitudes and tweets about the oil spill, examining whether these
users’ tweets about the oil spill normalized the local community structure variables
that scholars have found restrict the traditional media’s coverage of environmental
issues.

Literature Review

Revolution or Normalization?

The Internet has expanded the potential audience available to alternative voices,
and its networked structure has made new forms of radical political action possible
(Downey & Fenton, 2003). These features of the Internet have led many to trumpet
its revolutionary potential, and there are examples of Twitter being used to mobilize
significant social activism, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab
Spring (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Tufekci & Wilson, 2012). There was also Twitter
activism in response to the BP oil spill, including @BPGlobalPR, a satirical account
that poked fun at BP’s inept response to the crisis.
But according to Margolis and Resnick (2000), the Internet’s radical potential runs
up against the offline realities of entrenched social, political, and economic interests,
which tend to reinforce business-as-usual. Despite the diversity of alternative voices
available online, a relatively small number of mainstream commercial sites capture
the majority of online traffic (Dahlberg, 2005). It has also been demonstrated that
online political discussions adopt a similar hierarchical structure as offline conver-
sations (Himelboim, 2011). Furthermore, despite there being 100 million-plus active
Twitters users, Wu, Hofman, Mason, and Watts (2011) found that just 20,000 ‘‘elite
users’’—primarily celebrities, large media outlets like CNN and the New York Times,
and corporations such as Google—produce the majority of tweets consumed on the
social networking Web site. The authors concluded that ‘‘while attention that was
formally restricted to mass media channels is now shared amongst other ‘elites,’
information flows have not become egalitarian by any means’’ (p. 6).
 Watson/RESTRAINT ON CRITICAL TWEETS 583

Scholars have suggested that one aspect of the Internet’s potential to alter society is
its ability to override geography (Downey & Fenton, 2003; Reese, Rutigliano, Hyun,
& Jeong, 2007). This assertion, though, addresses the distribution of online content,
not its production. Like local journalists, Twitter users live and work in local,
geographically bounded communities, and may be influenced by characteristics
of these places, including their social structures.
Wright (2011) argues that the theoretical position one takes—viewing the Inter-
net as a normalizing or radical force—is a function of where one turns to find
examples of either type of activity. This present study skirts this issue by viewing
the normalizing/radical debate in terms of what dominates in a specific instance,
rather than viewing the debate as either/or. Thus, this study focuses on the most
followed Twitter users in communities along the Gulf Coast, and whether their
attitudes toward the oil industry and tweets about the oil spill normalized the role of
local community structure in tempering news media coverage of polluting industries
(Griffin & Dunwoody, 1995, 1997; Tichenor et al., 1980; Watson, 2014).

Community Structure and Coverage of Polluting Industries

According to Tichenor and his colleagues (Donohue, Olien, & Tichenor, 1985;
Tichenor et al., 1980), news media coverage of issues involving conflict, including
environmental contamination, varies according to the social structure of the commu-
nity in which the news media are embedded. In small, homogenous communities,
conflicts are dealt with among a small group of elites. The press respects this social
arrangement, downplaying conflict in its coverage.
But in larger, more pluralistic communities, social power is distributed among
diverse social groups—trade unions, religious organizations, social clubs, etc. Plu-
ralistic communities rely on the media to communicate shared social norms among
diverse social groups and to serve as a feedback mechanism, enabling gradual
changes in norms and institutions based on shifts in public opinion. Because the
media play a more central role in such a community, they are freer to critically
cover conflicts that arise (Donohue et al., 1985; Tichenor et al., 1980).
Since Tichenor et al. (1980), structural pluralism, which is primarily measured
based on the distribution of the population across different major social groups
enumerated in U.S. Census data, has been applied to a wide range of topics. (For
a meta-analysis of the community structure literature, see Nah & Armstrong, 2011.)
This study focuses on the role of structural pluralism in affecting Twitter coverage
of polluting industries.
Griffin and Dunwoody (1995, 1997) found that newspapers in more pluralistic
communities are more likely to use scientific frames that linked local environmental
contamination to threats to human health than are newspapers in less pluralistic
communities. However, they also found that a community’s economic reliance
on manufacturing is a stronger predictor of how newspapers will cover an en-
vironmental controversy than structural pluralism (Griffin & Dunwoody, 1995).
584 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

Even newspapers in more pluralistic communities were less likely to focus on risks
posed to human health if the community was more reliant on manufacturing for
its economic base. They concluded that even in more pluralistic communities, the
press’ willingness to raise controversy is tempered by economic dependencies of the
community. In regards to the BP oil spill, Watson (2014) found that journalists who
work in communities that rely more heavily on the oil industry for local employment
had more positive attitudes toward the oil industry and in turn wrote more positive
stories about the disaster. Journalists who worked in more pluralistic communities
were more likely to write negative stories about the BP oil spill.

Coverage of the BP Oil Spill

Because this study focuses on examining whether tweets about the BP oil spill
normalized patterns found in traditional news media coverage, it turns to literature
on news coverage to define relevant variables. This article examines four primary
aspects of tweets about the BP oil spill: their evaluative tone; whether they used
episodic or thematic frames; whether they focused on BP’s or the government’s role
in the disaster; and whether they mentioned official or unofficial sources. These
variables are of interest because previous studies have found that these elements
of media coverage vary—at least in the traditional news media’s coverage—based
on local communities’ degree of structural pluralism and economic reliance on
the oil industry (Castelló, 2010; Griffin & Dunwoody, 1995; Griffin, Dunwoody, &
Gehrmann, 1995).
Furthermore, these attributes of media coverage are not only indicative of how
critical that coverage was, but are also likely to affect how negatively the audience
perceives the oil spill. For example, the media’s negative coverage of an issue is
also likely to cause the public to have negative opinions toward that issue (Sheafer,
2007). Furthermore, according to Iyengar (1991, 1996), media coverage that uses a
thematic frame—focusing on the underlying causes and consequences underlying a
particular issue—is more likely to result in societal attribution of responsibility for a
given issue. Hart (2010) also found that environmental stories framed thematically
are more likely to result in the audience supporting further environmental regulation.
This study also examines whether tweets focused primarily on BP or the govern-
ment’s response to the crisis. According to Kensicki (2004), while the majority of
the newspapers’ environmental coverage mentioned industry as the cause of the
pollution, it was government, not industry that was portrayed as being responsible
for fixing the problem. This pattern shifts responsibility for addressing the root causes
of environmental pollution away from industry, in this case BP.
Lastly, this study examines Twitter users’ use of official and unofficial sources.
According to Smith’s (1993) analysis of coverage of the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil
spill and Entman and Rojecki’s (1993) analysis of coverage of the nuclear freeze
movement, officials not only make up the majority of the media’s sources, but also
are more likely to downplay environmental concerns. Entman and Rojecki found
 Watson/RESTRAINT ON CRITICAL TWEETS 585

that protesters were quoted in only 12% of the media’s stories, yet stories quoting
protesters comprised a majority of the coverage that raised concerns about nuclear
weapons.

Hypotheses and Research Questions

Americans’ attitudes toward oil drilling in the aftermath of the BP oil spill were
highly shaped by their political and environmental attitudes (Pew Research Center
for the People & the Press, 2010). Thus, it is expected that Twitter users’ attitudes
toward the oil industry will be similarly shaped by both their political and environ-
mental beliefs:

H1 : More conservative Twitter users will have more favorable attitudes toward
the oil industry following the BP oil spill.
H2 : More pro-environmental Twitter users will hold attitudes more critical of the
oil industry following the BP oil spill. In turn, it is expected that Twitter
users with more favorable attitudes toward the oil industry following the BP
disaster will be less likely to post critical tweets about the spill.
H3 : Twitter users’ positive attitudes toward the oil industry will negatively predict
their critical stance toward the oil spill; they will be less likely to:
H3a : use a negative tone;
H3b : use thematic frames;
H3c : focus on BP’s role in the disaster; and
H3d : use unofficial sources.

This study also explores whether a community’s degree of structural pluralism

and economic reliance on a polluting industry, which have tempered traditional
news media’s critical coverage of polluting industries, have been normalized in
most followed Gulf Coast Twitter users’ discussion of the BP oil spill.

RQ1 : Will the degree of structural pluralism in the community where a Twitter
user lives affect his/her attitudes toward the oil industry?
RQ2 : Will the community’s economic reliance on the oil industry where a Twitter
user lives affect his/her attitudes toward the oil industry?
RQ3 : Will the degree of structural pluralism in the community where a Twitter
user lives affect whether tweets about the oil spill:
RQ3a : use a negative tone;
RQ3b : use thematic frames;
RQ3c : focus on BP’s role in the disaster; and
RQ3d : use unofficial sources?
RQ4 : Will the degree of economic reliance on the oil industry in a community
where a Twitter user lives affect whether tweets about the oil spill:
RQ4a : use a negative tone;
586 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

RQ4b : use thematic frames;

RQ4c : focus on BP’s role in the disaster; and
RQ4d : use unofficial sources?

Methods

This study is part of a larger project examining media coverage of the 2010 BP
oil spill (see also, Watson, 2014). Tweets were gathered using a custom program
created for this project. It first referenced Twitaholic.com to generate a list of the
250 most followed users in 125 Gulf Coast communities of varying sizes. Then the
program used Twitter’s Application Programing Interface (API) to download the last
2,500 tweets from these users’ profiles. This resulted in a database of more than
14.2 million tweets from the most followed users. These tweets were searched for
the following keywords: BP, oil spill, and Deep Water Horizon. A total of 25,501
tweets written by 4,396 authors used these keywords.
A second automated program sent tweets to these users with an embedded link
inviting them to participate in an online survey. A total of 731 users completed
the survey, accounting for a 16.6% response rate. Twenty-eight users who did not
give their user names (preventing data matching), or were accidently included in
the original sample (for example, they lived in Birmingham, England, instead of
Birmingham, Alabama) were deleted. The final survey data included 703 Twitter
users, who had written 6,437 tweets about the oil spill.
Due to the wide range in the number of tweets individual authors wrote—Twitter
users wrote from 1 to 107 tweets (M D 9.070, SD D 14.503)—it was not possible
to devise a summary measure of each user’s tweets. Thus, 1,000 randomly sampled
tweets, rather than Twitter users, were used as the unit of analysis. Survey and
community-level data were matched based on a Twitter user’s handle (@username)
and the name of the city where the user lived. Using tweets, some of which are au-
thored by the same person, as cases violates the independence assumption required
in traditional path analysis. The hypotheses and research questions, however, were
answered by conducting a path analysis in MPlus (version 7). MPlus can estimate
models with categorical outcome variables (Muthén, 1984). The software can also
control for the violation of the independence of cases by creating clusters that group
non-independent observations to produce robust standard errors (see Asparouhov
& Muthen, 2006). Because tweets and not users were sampled, not every user who
answered the survey was represented in the final data set. The final data set included
240 clusters (i.e., unique Twitter users).

Survey Measures

Other than political conservatism, all survey items were measured on a 5-point
scale anchored by strongly disagree (1) and strongly agree (5).
 Watson/RESTRAINT ON CRITICAL TWEETS 587

Table 1
Twitter Users’ Political Conservatism and Pro-Environmental Attitudes
(Descriptive Statistics)

M SD

Political Conservatism

How would you characterize your political ideology, 3.750 1.508

from left to right?

Pro-environmental Attitudes

Humans are severely abusing the environment. 3.920 1.060

The balance of nature is strong enough to cope with the 3.733 1.073
impacts of modern industrial nations. (reverse coded)
The so-called ‘‘environmental crisis’’ has been greatly 3.738 1.281
exaggerated. (reverse coded)
Humans will eventually learn enough about how nature 3.871 1.012
works to be able to control it. (reverse coded)
Total pro-environmental attitudes 3.815 0.860

N 240

Political Conservatism.

Political conservatism was measured using a single item, adapted from Patterson
and Donsbach (1996): ‘‘How would you characterize your political ideology, from
left to right?’’ (M D 3.75 out of 7, SD D 1.508).

Pro-environmental Attitudes.

Environmental attitudes were measured using the four highest-loading items from
the New Environmental Paradigm scale (Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000).
(Cronbach’s ˛ D .749, M D 3.815 out of 5, SD D .860). (See Table 1 for question
wording and descriptive statistics.)

Attitudes Toward Oil Drilling.

This portion of the survey adapted 13 questions from public opinion surveys about
oil drilling (CBS News, 2010), energy policy and government regulation (Bolson &
Cook, 2008), and industry responsibility (Miller & Sinclair, 2009) (˛ D .912, M D
2.670 out of 5, SD D .849). (See Table 2 for question wording and descriptive
statistics.)
588 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

Table 2
Twitter Users’ Attitudes Toward the Oil Industry Following the
2010 BP Oil Spill (Descriptive Statistics)

M SD

Oil drilling companies are generally concerned with 2.45 1.142

limiting their environmental impact.
Oil drilling companies are committed to protecting the 2.35 1.091
public.
The government does not do enough to regulate the oil 2.46 1.192
drilling industry. (Reverse-coded)
The oil drilling industry generally complies with 2.80 1.106
government regulation.
Government regulation of the oil industry is adequate. 2.46 1.112
U.S. regulators should allow continued off-shore drilling for 3.23 1.222
oil at current levels.
The U.S. should encourage exploration for new off-shore 3.18 1.296
oil fields.
Strict environmental laws and regulations cost too many 2.44 1.229
jobs and hurt the economy.
Government regulation of business is necessary to protect 2.00 0.937
the environment. (Reverse-coded)
U.S. energy policy should continue to encourage 3.48 1.124
production of more domestic oil supplies.
U.S. energy should shift attention away from fossil fuels to 1.68 0.947
sources of renewable energy. (Reverse-coded)
The collapse of the Deep Water Horizon oil platform and 3.15 1.232
the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was a rare accident.
Tragic as the Deep Water Horizon accident was, we cannot 3.04 1.327
let it get in the way of developing domestic oil supplies.
Total attitudes toward oil industry 2.67 0.849

N 240

Demographics.

The survey also collected a series of demographic questions. Respondents were

asked their age, race, income, and what industry they worked in. Despite this study’s
focus on a social media platform open to the public, journalists were not eliminated
from the study because they are among those most followed influential users who
are likely to shape discussions about the BP oil spill on Twitter.
 Watson/RESTRAINT ON CRITICAL TWEETS 589

Content Analysis

Coding Procedure.

The author conducted the content analysis. A second trained coder double-coded
a random sample of 10% (N D 100) of the tweets to establish intercoder reliability.
Reliability was measured using simple agreement and Krippendorf’s alpha, which
controls for chance agreement (Hayes & Krippendorf, 2007).

Evaluative Tone.

Tweets were categorized as having a positive, negative, or neutral tone toward

the oil spill. This study adapted Hester and Gibson’s (2003) definition of good
bad news. They defined good news about the stock market not as news of the
market’s value increasing, but rather whether a change in the market was portrayed
as desirable. Good bad news, for example, occurred when the market contracted,
but media coverage focused on the fact that the contraction was less severe than
analysts’ forecasts. Similarly, positive tweets about the spill emphasized desirable
outcomes (e.g., BP making progress on capping the well); negative tweets empha-
sized negative results (e.g., negative impacts on Louisiana’s fragile wetlands); and
neutral tweets either did not mention positive or negative outcomes, or mentioned
both simultaneously (˛ D .819, 90%).

Episodic/thematic Frames.

Iyengar (1991) defined an episodic frame as focusing on a single event—e.g., BP’s

latest attempt to cap the leaking well—while a thematic frame examines broader
trends and implications beyond an isolated incident—e.g., whether government
regulation of the oil industry is adequate to avoid future catastrophes. Only the first
mention of either an episodic or thematic frame was coded present/absent (˛ D
.825, 93%).

Government/BP Focus.

Based on Kensicki (2004), each tweet was coded for whether it focused on
industry’s (BP’s) or the government’s role in the oil spill, or had some other focus
(˛ D .865, 89%).

Sources.

Lastly, tweets were coded for the presence/absence of different ‘‘official’’ and
‘‘unofficial’’ sources. Every individual and/or organization mentioned in a tweet
was coded. Official sources included oil industry representatives and government
officials (including elected officials, regulatory agency employees, and Coast Guard
representatives) (˛ D .960, 98%). Unofficial sources included environmental or
health organization spokespeople; environmental activists and those associated with
590 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

other non-governmental agencies; cleanup volunteers; non-industry sponsored aca-

demics and experts commenting on the spill; industry employees not speaking
on behalf of their employers; and other individuals not fitting one of the above
definitions (˛ D .914, 97%).

Measuring Structural Pluralism

The mere presence of different social groups does not guarantee the distribution of
social power within a given community (Gandy, 1999). However, the distribution of
the population across multiple social groupings does at least increase the potential
distribution of social power. Thus, Blau’s (1975, 1977) diversity index

R
X
Diversity D 1 P2
i
i=1

where Pi is the proportion of the population in a given category/group) was used to

measure the potential sources of organized social power in Twitter users’ commu-
nities. The index measures the probability, on a 0 to 1 scale (1 D greater pluralism),
that two individuals in the population, drawn at random (with replacement) are
from two different groups.
Structural pluralism was calculated as an average of five indicators of pluralism in
the county where Twitter users lived using data from the 2005–2009 American Com-
munity Survey (ACS) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010) (M D .399, SD D .067, range D
.297 to .598). The five indicators were: population, race, educational attainment,
income, distribution of the workforce in different industry sectors, and population.
(See review of previously used measures in Nah & Armstrong, 2011.) Other than
population, each indicator of structural pluralism was broken into discrete groupings
and Blau’s index was used to measure the distribution of the population across these
groups. Race was divided into white and non-white; educational attainment into
less than high school, high school graduate, some college (including associate’s
degree), college graduate, and advanced degree (master’s, J.D., Ph.D., etc.); and
income into a quintile distribution of the median U.S. household income. Industry
sectors were divided by using the major classification groups of the Bureau of
Labor Statistics (2011): goods-producing (construction and manufacturing), services-
producing (information services, transportation, retail trade, wholesale trade, etc.),
and agriculture. To preserve the easily comprehensible 0–1 scale of the Blau index,
population was calculated as a ratio of Houston, Texas’ population, the largest city
in the sample. Because population is highly correlated with other dependent media
measures (Tichenor et al., 1980), it is necessary to ensure that communities that end
up ranking highest in their degree of structural pluralism are not simply the largest,
but also rank highly on other indicators of the distribution of potential social power.
Thus, the measures were added and then divided by the total number of items in
 Watson/RESTRAINT ON CRITICAL TWEETS 591

the scale (5) to give each pluralism measure equal weight in the final index (M D
.399, SD D .067, range D .297 to .598).

Economic Reliance on the Oil Industry

Following Griffin and Dunwoody (1995), economic reliance on the oil industry
was measured as the percentage of the local workforce employed in ‘‘mining,
quarrying, and oil and gas extraction’’ industries, according to the ACS (M D .006,
SD D .014, range D 0 to .143) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). More direct measures
of the local economic impact of the oil industry—for example, the percentage of
the economy’s GDP contributed by the oil industry—are not available because the
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) restricts the data at the local level to protect
data on individual companies (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2011).

Data Screening and Transformations

There were twelve cases (less than 5%) with missing data for the survey measures
that were deleted, the most conservative approach for dealing with a small number
of missing values (Tabacknick & Fidell, 2007). The final analysis included 988 tweets
(and 240 Twitter users).
To correct the non-normality of the local workforce employed in the oil industry
(skewness D 6.477, SE D .121, kurtosis D 56.227, SE D .242) and a community’s
degree of structural pluralism (skewness D 1.395, SE D .121 kurtosis D 1.847,
SE D .242), these variables were log-transformed. (See Tabacknick and Fidell, 2007,
pp. 88–86, for a discussion of appropriate data transformations.)

Results

The average Twitter user in the sample was a white (82.4%, N D 196) male
(57.7%, N D 138), approximately 39 years old (M D 39.46, SD D 10.423), with an
average annual income between $50,000 and $60,000. The Twitter users leaned
slightly left (M D 3.75 out of 7, SD D 1.508), had a mild degree of concern for the
environment (M D 3.815 out of 5, SD D .860), and had largely negative attitudes
toward the oil industry following the BP oil spill (M D 2.67 out of 5, SD D .849).
The Twitter users in the sample had an average of 3,589 followers (range D 34 to
119,420, SD D 11,920.168) on the social networking Web site. The 240 Twitter
users in the sample represented 51 unique Gulf Coast communities.
The majority of tweets about the spill were negative (N D 570, 57.0%); only 99
(9.9%) were positive. Overall, tweets were more likely to focus on BP’s role (N D
323, 32.3%) than the government’s role (N D 203, 20.3%) in the BP disaster. Only
176 (17.6%) tweets mentioned an unofficial source, including independent scientists
592 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

(N D 16, 1.6%), or environmental activists (N D 19, 1.9%). Just over 12.6% (N D

126) used thematic frames to discuss the spill.

Hypotheses and Research Questions

The proposed model is shown in Figure 1. The exogenous variables were Twitter
users’ political conservatism and pro-environmental attitudes, and a community’s
degree of structural pluralism and percentage of the local workforce employed in the
oil industry. The endogenous variables were Twitter users’ attitudes toward the oil
industry following the BP oil spill, and the tone of the tweets, whether they focused
on BP’s or the government’s responsibility for the spill, used thematic frames, and
cited unofficial sources.
The model was an acceptable fit: 2 (13) D 13.888, p D .381, root mean square
error of approximation (RMSEA) D .008, comparative fit index (CFI) D .994 (Hu &
Bentler, 1999). The model did explain 72.8% (R2 D .728) of the variance in Twitter
users’ attitudes toward the oil industry. The model, however, explained only 8.9%
(R2 D .089) of the variance in the tone of the tweets, and 5.1% (R2 D .051) of
the variance of the focus on the government’s role. The other R2 values were non-
significant.
H1 predicted that Twitter users’ political conservatism would positively predict
their attitudes toward the oil industry. As shown in Table 3, H1 was supported; more

Figure 1
Path Model: How Community-level Variables and Twitter Users’ Personal
Attitudes Affect Their Tweets about the BP Oil Spill
 Table 3
Coefficients of Path Model

Path 95% CI
Estimate
From To (Std YX Est.a ) SE LL UL P

Structural pluralism Government focus .866 ( .048) 1.084 3.657 1.926 .425
BP focus .892 (.049) .970 1.606 3.391 .358
Thematic frames .795 ( .044) 1.173 3.917 2.227 .498
Story tone 2.543 ( .139) .795 4.592 .495 .001
Unofficial characters .486 (.027) .836 1.667 2.640 .561
% workforce in oil industry Government focus .010 ( .006) .097 .259 .239 .916
BP focus .065 ( .040) .087 .290 .160 .458
Thematic frames .123 ( .076) .108 .401 .156 .256

593
Story tone .031 (.019) .087 .194 .256 .719
Unofficial characters .054 ( .033) .081 .262 .154 .504
Structural pluralism Attitudes toward oil industry 1.179 (.065) .474 .043 2.401 .013
% workforce in oil industry Attitudes toward oil industry .113 (.070) .071 .070 .297 .112
Twitter users’ political conservatism Attitudes toward oil Industry .300 (.523) .024 .239 .361 <.001
Twitter users’ pro-environmental attitudes Attitudes toward oil industry .476 ( .369) .067 .649 .303 <.001
Attitudes toward oil industry Government focus .224 (.225) .042 .115 .334 <.001
BP focus .079 ( .080) .059 .231 .072 .178
Thematic frames .043 (.044) .045 .072 .159 .333
Story tone .268 (.267) .071 .152 .385 <.001
Unofficial characters .075 ( .075) .038 .174 .024 .051

Note. 2 (13) D 13.888, p D .3813, RMSEA D .008, CFI D .994, TLI D .980; statistically significant paths are in bold; a The StdXY column contains
the coefficients standardized using the variance of both the X and Y variables.
594 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

conservative Twitter users were more likely to have positive attitudes toward the oil
industry (ˇ D .300, p < .001).
H2 predicted that Twitter users’ pro-environmental attitudes would negatively
predict Twitter users’ attitudes toward the oil industry. H2 was supported: more
environmentally conscious Twitter users had more negative attitudes toward the
oil industry (ˇ D .476, p < .001). It is worth noting that Twitter users’ pro-
environmental attitudes were strongly and negatively correlated with their political
conservatism (r D .803, p < .001); more conservative Twitter users are less
concerned about the environment. Table 4 shows the statistically significant indirect
effects of Twitter users’ political conservatism and pro-environmental attitudes on
the content of their tweets via their attitudes toward the oil industry.
H3 predicted that Twitter users’ positive attitudes toward the oil industry would
negatively predict tweets’ H3a : tone; H3b : use of thematic frames; H3c : focus on
BP’s responsibility for the oil spill; and H3d : use of unofficial sources. Only H3a
was supported. Twitter users with more positive attitudes toward the oil industry
following the BP oil spill wrote more positive tweets about the disaster (ˇ D
.268, p < .001). They were also more likely to focus on the government’s role
in the disaster (ˇ D .224, p < .001). Furthermore, there was a strong and negative
correlation between whether a Twitter user focused on the government or BP’s role
in the disaster (r D .834, p < .001). It appears that focusing on the government’s
role in the crisis is a means of shifting attention away from BP. Twitter users’ attitudes
toward the oil industry did not significantly predict the other characteristics of their
tweets.
RQ1 asked whether the degree of structural pluralism in the community where
a Twitter user lives would affect users’ attitudes toward the oil industry. Structural
pluralism positively predicted users’ attitudes toward the oil industry (ˇ D 1.179,
p < .05). This is opposite of what might be expected (i.e., that Twitter users in
more pluralistic communities would be freer to have critical attitudes toward the oil
industry). However, it should be noted that pluralism is positively associated with
the percentage of the local workforce employed in the oil industry (r D .140, p <
.001), in part due to the influence of the oil industry in large cities, such as Houston,
Texas.
RQ2 asked whether the community’s economic reliance on the oil industry where
a Twitter user lives would affect the user’s attitude toward the oil industry. This
was not the case. Communities’ economic reliance on the oil industry did not
significantly predict Twitter users’ attitudes toward the oil industry (ˇ D .113, p >
.05).
RQ3 asked about the effects of structural pluralism on tweets’ tone (RQ3a ), use
of thematic frames (RQ3b ), focus on BP’s role in the disaster (RQ3c ), and use of
unofficial sources (RQ3d ). As shown in Table 3, structural pluralism only significantly
affected the tone of the tweets (RQ3a ); Twitter users who lived in larger, more
heterogeneous (i.e., more pluralistic) communities were more likely to write negative
tweets about the BP oil spill (ˇ D 2.543, p < .01). As shown in Table 4, there
was also a significant indirect effect of structural pluralism on Twitter users’ focus on
 Table 4
Significant Indirect Paths Via Twitter Users’ Attitudes Toward the Oil Industry

95% CI
Estimate
Indirect Path (Std. Est.) SE LL UL P

Twitter users’ political conservatism Tweet tone Total .080 (.140) .015 .041 .120 <.001
Indirect .080 (.140) .015 .041 .120 <.001
Twitter users’ pro-environmental attitudes Tweet tone Total .128 ( .099) .028 .199 .057 <.001
Indirect .128 ( .099) .028 .199 .057 <.001

595
Structural pluralism Tweet tone Total 2.227 ( .122) .793 4.270 .185 .005
Indirect .316 (.017) .314 .029 .661 .018
Twitter users’ political conservatism Government focus Total .067 (.118) .012 .036 .099 <.001
Indirect .067 (.118) .012 .036 .099 <.001
Twitter users’ pro-environmental attitudes Government focus Total .107 ( .083) .030 .184 .030 <.001
Indirect .107 ( .083) .030 .184 .030 <.001
Structural pluralism Government focus Total .601 ( .033) 1.088 3.405 2.202 .581
Indirect .264 (.015) .117 .038 .566 .024

Note. Non-statistically significant indirect paths were excluded from this table.
596 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

the government’s responsibility for the oil spill (ˇ D .264, p < .05). As previously
discussed, Twitter users who lived in more pluralistic communities actually had
more positive attitudes toward the oil industry, and in turn were more likely to
focus on the government’s responsibility for the crisis. That is, even though the
tweets’ tones are more negative in more pluralistic communities, there is still some
effort to shift attention from BP’s to the government’s responsibility for the oil spill.
RQ4 asked about the effects of communities’ economic reliance on the oil in-
dustry on tweets’ tone (RQ4a ), use of thematic frames (RQ4b ), focus on BP’s role
in the disaster (RQ4c ), and use of unofficial sources (RQ4d ). As shown in Table 3,
communities’ economic reliance on the oil industry did not have any significant
direct effects on tweets’ content.

Discussion

The Twitter users’ attitudes and tweets that were analyzed as part of this study did
normalize certain patterns found offline. Consistent with survey data of the general
American public, these Twitter users’ attitudes were predicted by both their political
and environmental beliefs; more conservative, less environmentally concerned re-
spondents had more positive attitudes toward the oil industry (Pew Research Center
for the People & The Press, 2010). Those with more positive attitudes toward the
oil industry in turn were more likely to focus on the government’s response to the
oil spill, effectively shifting focus away from BP, and were more likely to focus on
positive aspects of the response to the disaster in their tweets (i.e., their tweets were
more positive).
This study, though, was primarily interested in whether the tweets in this study
normalized the relationships between the degree of structural pluralism in a com-
munity and its economic reliance on a polluting industry and media coverage of the
controversy. Despite the fact that Twitter’s online network transcends geographically
bounded communities, both Twitter users’ attitudes toward the oil industry following
the BP oil spill and their tweets about the event were to some degree shaped by these
community-level variables. Contrary to Griffin and Dunwoody (1995), structural
pluralism seems to play a more central role in shaping tweets about the spill than
does economic reliance on the polluting oil industry. This may be due to the fact
that individual Twitter users have less of a direct economic dependence on wealthy
interests in a community than traditional media (i.e., most individual Twitter users
do not rely on advertising support).
Structural pluralism had both an effect on Twitter users’ attitudes toward the oil
industry and on their tweets about the oil spill, though these effects were somewhat
contradictory. Twitter users who lived in more structurally pluralistic communities
had more positive attitudes toward the oil industry, and there was a significant
indirect effect that suggested these users were in turn more likely to focus on the
government’s responsibility for the oil spill (i.e., shifting attention away from BP).
These patterns perhaps reflect that larger, more pluralistic cities, for example New
 Watson/RESTRAINT ON CRITICAL TWEETS 597

Orleans, Louisiana, and Houston, Texas, were also among those in the sample
with the highest percentage (10% in New Orleans) and greatest number (22,503 in
Houston) of employees employed in the oil and gas industry.
Despite those in more structurally pluralistic communities having more positive
attitudes toward the oil industry and as a result shifting focus to the government’s
responsibility for the crisis, tweets in more structurally pluralistic communities were
still more negative. Pluralism had a strong enough influence on tweets’ tone so that
even though Twitter users in more structurally pluralistic communities had more
positive attitudes toward the oil industry following the oil spill—and may also be
aware that others in their communities may also have positive attitudes toward the
oil industry—Twitter users in these pluralistic communities, where social power is
potentially more distributed, were still more likely to raise negative consequences
of the BP oil spill in their tweets. That is, in a more pluralistic community, one is
not only more likely to raise critical issues that may be socially unpopular, but is
more willing to raise issues that contradict one’s own attitudes.
That being said, structural pluralism did not affect whether tweets focused on the
government’s or BP’s responsibility for the crisis, whether they used thematic frames,
or whether they cited unofficial sources. This could be because these characteris-
tics are unaffected by community structure, which would suggest that community
structure is not completely normalized. These findings, however, could also reflect
the difficulty of trying to tease more nuanced meaning out of a 140-character tweet,
which may also explain why many Twitter analyses simply focus on the positive,
negative, or neutral sentiment expressed in tweets.
Nonetheless, these most followed Twitter users did normalize the influence of
structural pluralism on the tone of media coverage of a polluting industry. Perhaps
one reason these most followed Twitter users did not challenge the local power
structures where they lived is that these users were overwhelmingly white, upper-
middle class professionals. That is, they have a vested interest in maintaining existing
power structures that benefit their privileged social group.
While these users do not represent Twitter as a whole, and certainly not the
general population, they do provide an accurate overview of the types of ‘‘elite
users,’’ who, as a function of their number of followers, were dominant and most
likely served as opinion leaders in Gulf Coast Twitter conversations about the
oil spill. It is possible to purchase ‘‘fake’’ followers; thus future research would
benefit from considering other potential measures of a user’s influence beyond the
number of followers. But given the sampling methods used and the nature of the
conversation—corporations or brands are unlikely to wade into such a controversial
topic—most users in this study were individuals who were less likely to benefit from
purchasing followers. Therefore, the number of followers should be a relatively good
measure of these individual users’ potential influence in this particular context.
Because the conclusions one draws as to the normalizing or radical theories of the
Internet depends on what portion of the Internet one analyzes (Wright, 2011), the
specific context to which these findings apply—most followed Gulf Coast Twitter
users’ attitudes toward the oil industry and tweets about the BP oil spill—should be
598 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2014

underscored. Future studies might examine both whether the production of other
types of online content (blogs, YouTube videos, etc.) on other subjects, originating in
a different set of offline communities, are also shaped by the local social structure
in which producers are embedded. This study did highlight, though, that despite
the fact that the distribution of online content via the Internet’s virtual network
transcends geographically bounded communities, the production of this content
still has roots in these traditional local communities, and that aspects of the social
structure of these offline communities are normalized in online content.

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