+

Social Media Metrics and PoliticsBy Hayley Solonynka

+Introduction

Social media fastest growing form of media Changes the way we interact

Political campaigns and officers Accountable and accessible Can customize image based on analytics

What does this mean? Political messages and campaigns Political engagement through social media Audience opinions on political current events

+Social Media and Political Campaigns Recent Presidential elections increased Free video posting for campaign ads Algorithms used to predict election outcome

Analyze key words Probability-based prediction on how voters would vote

Immediate feedback Algorithms aren’t perfect

New and little data to pull from Important to question it, before accepting it

+Social Media and Obama Campaign Barack Obama

Twitter followers 2008: 118,000 Twitter followers 2012:

20+ million

+2016 Election

Could be a major component of an effective political campaign Message out to millions, mobilize activists, target swing

voters

+Hillary Clinton

Announced via YouTube and Twitter Generated much more Facebook conversation than

either Paul or Cruz Doesn't capture whether those interactions were

positive or negative

Candidate Twitter FacebookHillary Clinton 3.41 million 752,000

Rand Paul 604,000 1.9 millionTed Cruz 400,000 1.2 million

+Social Media and Political Engagement More than promotion, Engagement How do you know if your strategies are working?

Monitor and track engagement Twitter will track: important followers, analytics for

tweets, overall reach, top tweets Facebook monitors too

several likes and shares appear at the top of your newsfeed

Relevant vs. popular

+Social Media and Political Current Events Shape how we react to and perceive certain political

events Bias when searching specifically, closed off Providing vs. Participating

Quick and easy way to make voice heard Hashtags connect users with similar opinions

+Social Media and Political Current Events Created an atmosphere where nothing can be hidden,

everything is displayed and public Anthony Weiner (Congressman)

caught sending explicit photos to women through Twitter

Chris Christie closure of three lanes on George Washington Bridge in New

Jersey Talking about the 91-year-old woman who died during the

closure Displaying assistant’s email sent out incriminating their

involvement

+Research Questions

Will social media still be useful in the 2016 elections? How big of a role will it play in the candidate’s campaigns? How can we use the data we have now to predict future campaign changes?

How are early candidates exerting social media influence on Twitter?

Is current political engagement reflective of a polarized crowd, as defined by Pew Internet research?

To what extent is the Election 2016 hashtag already being used on Twitter in April of 2015?

+NodeXL

+Limitations

Still knew, little research to gather information from Articles tend to be biased toward a specific party,

which can limit the research results Hard to track specifically how politicians are making

the most of their campaign usage

+Conclusion

Predicting much more social media use during the 2016 elections, could be more information learned from that data

More tools than last election Full potential

Engaging with users Creating online discussions to form government policies and

express public opinion

hsolonynka.wordpress.com twitter.com/HN_Solo