• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, December 8, 2011

Twitter is emerging as a significant, and very different contributor to the political campaign narrative, according to the latest study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence. The study indicates that campaign discourse on Twitter tended to be "more opinionated and often more negative" about candidates than blogs and in the mainstream news media.

The Twitter conversation about a candidate was also more likely to change from week to week than on blogs.

The biggest beneficiary of the twittersphere is the one that elicits the most grassroots support among Republican presidential aspirants, Texas Congressman Ron Paul.

Pew says he "has fared far better on Twitter than any one else. The same is true in blogs. From May through November, fully 55% of the assertions about the Paul on Twitter have been positive while only 15% have been negative—a 40 point differential. While Paul trails significantly in the polls, and has received less coverage in news outlets than every Republican candidate except Rick Santorum, he is something of a social media phenomenon."

For almost everyone else, Pew found that Twitter has proven a "fairly rough environment in terms of tone."

"For five of the other seven GOP presidential hopefuls, negative opinions outnumber positive ones by a margin of about 2-1 or more. President Obama hasn’t fared well, either. Negative evaluations on Twitter about him outweigh positive ones by 3-1. Yet unlike in news coverage, overall on Twitter (and blogs) other candidates have received harsher treatment than the president."

These are some of the findings of the study, which also updates the tone and amount of attention to each candidate in news coverage overall, in an elite sub-sample of national news outlets, and in the political blogosphere.

The work is part of a new ongoing analysis of the race for president conducted by Pew that will continue through the election, tracking the amount of attention paid to the candidates in different media platforms and the tone of that attention.

The research combines Pew’s traditional ongoing weekly content analysis conducted by human researchers with computer algorithmic technology developed by the company Crimson Hexagon.