Political accountability in press conferences and social media

Abstract Research has acknowledged that social media users sometimes adopt roles that align with traditional journalism, for example, when holding politicians accountable for their decisions. This kind of engagement has led to recognizing the potential of social media as an accountability forum. However, it remains unknown to what extent such attitude prevails in online discussions, and how it differs from traditional settings, like press conferences. This paper explores how discussions unfold on Twitter and a press conference to understand how accountability dialogues take place in each forum. A corpus of journalists’ questions and users’ posts are analyzed in terms of argumentative moves to see how they contribute to accountability. Results showed that both fora served accountability purposes. In the press conference, the discussion was more balanced, with journalists refraining from proposing solutions. On Twitter, plenty of arguments and opinions were advanced but many of them were unrelated to accountability purposes.