scholarly journals Analyzing Political Polarization on Social Media by Deleting Bot Spamming

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Riccardo Cantini ◽  
Fabrizio Marozzo ◽  
Domenico Talia ◽  
Paolo Trunfio
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Opinion Mining ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Rich Data

Social media platforms are part of everyday life, allowing the interconnection of people around the world in large discussion groups relating to every topic, including important social or political issues. Therefore, social media have become a valuable source of information-rich data, commonly referred to as Social Big Data, effectively exploitable to study the behavior of people, their opinions, moods, interests and activities. However, these powerful communication platforms can be also used to manipulate conversation, polluting online content and altering the popularity of users, through spamming activities and misinformation spreading. Recent studies have shown the use on social media of automatic entities, defined as social bots, that appear as legitimate users by imitating human behavior aimed at influencing discussions of any kind, including political issues. In this paper we present a new methodology, namely TIMBRE (Time-aware opInion Mining via Bot REmoval), aimed at discovering the polarity of social media users during election campaigns characterized by the rivalry of political factions. This methodology is temporally aware and relies on a keyword-based classification of posts and users. Moreover, it recognizes and filters out data produced by social media bots, which aim to alter public opinion about political candidates, thus avoiding heavily biased information. The proposed methodology has been applied to a case study that analyzes the polarization of a large number of Twitter users during the 2016 US presidential election. The achieved results show the benefits brought by both removing bots and taking into account temporal aspects in the forecasting process, revealing the high accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approach. Finally, we investigated how the presence of social bots may affect political discussion by studying the 2016 US presidential election. Specifically, we analyzed the main differences between human and artificial political support, estimating also the influence of social bots on legitimate users.

What’s political Twitter talking about?

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-190
Author(s):  
Kylah J. Hedding ◽  
Kevin Ripka
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Presidential Debates ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Policy Agendas

Abstract This study explicates the concept of news media agendamelding. While only one-quarter of U.S. adults are on Twitter, it remains a popular platform among news media and political elites who often still set the public agenda for political discourse. Twitter provides insights into the issues that are at the top of the media and policy agendas, as well as how social media might influence the way journalists approach political issues. At the same time, there is concern about the influence of social media on political polarization. This study uses a specific set of influential Twitter users to examine one main question: Were there differences between right, left, and center political media reactions during the 2016 presidential debates? This study provides further evidence that there is, in fact, a conservative political Twitter media agenda that exists separately from liberal or nonpartisan media outlets.

scholarly journals Predicting the 2020 US Presidential Election with Twitter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Caballero
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Structural Data ◽  
Accurate Method ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Media Data

One major sub-domain in the subject of polling public opinion with social media data is electoral prediction. Electoral prediction utilizing social media data potentially would significantly affect campaign strategies, complementing traditional polling methods and providing cheaper polling in real-time. First, this paper explores past successful methods from research for analysis and prediction of the 2020 US Presidential Election using Twitter data. Then, this research proposes a new method for electoral prediction which combines sentiment, from NLP on the text of tweets, and structural data with aggregate polling, a time series analysis, and a special focus on Twitter users critical to the election. Though this method performed worse than its baseline of polling predictions, it is inconclusive whether this is an accurate method for predicting elections due to scarcity of data. More research and more data are needed to accurately measure this method’s overall effectiveness.

scholarly journals Political communication in post-truth society

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87
Author(s):  
Nina Gorenc
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Apathy ◽  
The Impact

The research behind this paper is set in the context of the 2016 US presidential election that has come to symbolize the post-truth era. We conducted a literature review on the 2016 election, with the aim to better understand the impact of computational propaganda on the election outcome and on the behaviour of voters. The paper opens with a definition of post-truth society and related concepts such as fake news and computational propaganda. It explores the changes of political communication in a digital environment and analyses the role of social media in the 2016 election. It probes into phenomena such as the trivialization of politics and the loss of credibility of political actors, which are both common in post-truth societies. The reviewed literature seems to indicate that social media have become strong actors on the political stage, but so far not the predominant source of political information and influence on the behaviour of voters. The paper makes two important contributions. Firstly, drawing on the concept of post-truth society, it analyses the role of computational propaganda in the 2016 presidential election, and secondly, it attempts to explain the paradox of general political apathy on one hand, and increased political activism on the other. These are some of the challenges we are now facing, and in order to be able to cope with them it is important to acknowledge and understand them.

scholarly journals An Analysis of Fake Narratives on Social Media during 2019 Indonesian Presidential Election

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-368
Author(s):  
Vience Mutiara Rumata ◽  
◽  
Fajar Kuala Nugraha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Radical Group ◽  
Time Frames ◽  
Election Studies

Social media become a public sphere for political discussion in the world, with no exception in Indonesia. Social media have broadened public engagement but at the same time, it creates an inevitable effect of polarization particularly during the heightened political situation such as a presidential election. Studies found that there is a correlation between fake news and political polarization. In this paper, we identify and the pattern of fake narratives in Indonesia in three different time frames: (1) the Presidential campaign (23 September 2018 -13 April 2019); (2) the vote (14-17 April 2019); (3) the announcement (21-22 May 2019). We extracted and analyzed a data-set consisting of 806,742 Twitter messages, 143 Facebook posts, and 16,082 Instagram posts. We classified 43 fake narratives where Twitter was the most used platform to distribute fake narratives massively. The accusation of Muslim radical group behind Prabowo and Communist accusation towards the incumbent President Joko Widodo were the two top fake narratives during the campaign on Twitter and Facebook. The distribution of fake narratives to Prabowo was larger than that to Joko Widodo on those three platforms in this period. On the contrary, the distribution of fake narratives to Joko Widodo was significantly larger than that to Prabowo during the election and the announcement periods. The death threat of Joko Widodo was top fake narratives on these three platforms. Keywords: Fake narratives, Indonesian presidential election, social media, political polarization, post.

How Twitter drives the global news agenda: Tweets from Brazil, Russia, India, China, the UK and US and online discourse about the 2016 US presidential election

2021 ◽  
pp. 174276652110399
Author(s):  
Jane O’Boyle ◽  
Carol J Pardun
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Online Discourse ◽  
Political Communications ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
The Uk ◽  
India And China

A manual content analysis compares 6019 Twitter comments from six countries during the 2016 US presidential election. Twitter comments were positive about Trump and negative about Clinton in Russia, the US and also in India and China. In the UK and Brazil, Twitter comments were largely negative about both candidates. Twitter sources for Clinton comments were more frequently from journalists and news companies, and still more negative than positive in tone. Topics on Twitter varied from those in mainstream news media. This foundational study expands communications research on social media, as well as political communications and international distinctions.

One of Many Tools to Win the Election

2016 ◽  
pp. 210-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashik Shafi ◽  
Fred Vultee
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Agenda Building ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Public ◽  
Virtual Presence ◽  
Us Presidential Election

Presidential campaigns today are increasingly integrating social media such as Facebook as an efficient tool to communicate with the public and organize their supporters. In a bid to explore how the Facebook is used by the politicians during election campaigns, this chapter explored official Facebook posts by two presidential candidates ahead of the 2012 US presidential election. The findings suggest Facebook was used in the campaign as a platform to organize like-minded voters, and reporting a virtual presence to the voters. Facebook was used strategically to resonate with the real-life campaign, and disseminate instant messages, rather than engaging in discussion with the public. The two candidates had only minor difference in the characteristics of their Facebook contents. The implication of the research for the online political agenda-building tactics is discussed.

The Internet and Access to Information about Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 228-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Dutton ◽  
Bianca C. Reisdorf ◽  
Grant Blank ◽  
Elizabeth Dubois ◽  
Laleah Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Us ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Filter Bubble ◽  
Filter Bubbles

Concern over filter bubbles, echo chambers, and misinformation on the Internet are not new. However, as noted by Howard and Bradshaw (Chapter 12), events around the 2016 US presidential election and the UK’s Brexit referendum brought these concerns up again to near-panic levels, raising questions about the political implications of the algorithms that drive search engines and social media. To address these issues, the authors conducted an extensive survey of Internet users in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the US, asking respondents how they use search, social media, and other media for getting information about politics, and what difference these media have made for them. Their findings demonstrate that search is one among many media gateways and outlets deployed by those interested in politics, and that Internet users with an interest in politics and search skills are unlikely to be trapped in a filter bubble, or cocooned in a political echo chamber.

A hyper differential counterpublic: Muslim social media users and Islamophobia during the 2016 US presidential election

2019 ◽  
pp. 146144481989228
Author(s):  
Stine Eckert ◽  
Jade Metzger-Riftkin ◽  
Sean Kolhoff ◽  
Sydney O’Shay-Wallace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Muslim Population ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Detroit Metropolitan Area ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

We interviewed 61 Muslims in 15 focus groups from the most visible Muslim population in the United States: the Detroit Metropolitan Area. Participants shared their experiences of and responses to Islamophobia on social media and face-to-face during the 2016 US presidential election campaign and aftermath. Applying Fraser’s and Squires’ theories of counterpublics, we developed an adapted understanding of counterpublics in collapsed contexts of online and face-to-face spaces. We argue that everyday Muslim internet users in the United States are an example of a hyper differential counterpublic. They face the pressures of near ubiquitous and ever evolving Islamophobic attacks, while needing to engage with the internet for personal and professional purposes. We suggest that hyper differential counterpublics operate in collapsed contexts of mixed, unimaginable publics, switch between group and individual responses, and craft hyper situational responses to discriminations case by case.

Preventing US election interference may be too late

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Black Market ◽  
Information Campaign ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Media Manipulation

Significance With the 2020 US presidential election looming, there is more attention to the threat of foreign interference. In the 2016 presidential election, Russia carried out a broad information campaign consisting of fake social media accounts and targeted adverts spreading divisive political content to polarise the electorate. Impacts Trust in the results of elections worldwide will continue to decrease. Voters will doubt the veracity of the information they receive even in the absence of interference. The black market for social media manipulation tools will grow.

scholarly journals Incidental Effects of Automated Retweeting: An Exploratory Network Perspective on Bot Activity During Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election in 2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chamil Rathnayake ◽  
Wayne Buente
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Eigenvector Centrality ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
User Expectations ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
And Behavior

The role of automated or semiautomated social media accounts, commonly known as “bots,” in social and political processes has gained significant scholarly attention. The current body of research discusses how bots can be designed to achieve specific purposes as well as instances of unexpected negative outcomes of such use. We suggest that the interplay between social media affordances and user practices can result in incidental effects from automated agents. We examined a Twitter network data set with 1,782 nodes and 5,640 edges to demonstrate the engagement and outreach of a retweeting bot called Siripalabot that was popular among Sri Lankan Twitter users. The bot served the simple function of retweeting tweets with hashtags #SriLanka and #lk to its follower network. However, the co-use of #Sri Lanka and/or #lk with #PresPollSL, a hashtag used to discuss politics related to Sri Lanka’s presidential election in 2015, resulted in the bot incidentally amplifying the political voice of less engaged actors. The analysis demonstrated that the bot dominated the network in terms of engagement (out-degree) and the ability to connect distant clusters of actors (betweenness centrality) while more traditional actors, such as the main election candidates and news accounts, indicated more prestige (in-degree) and power (eigenvector centrality). We suggest that the study of automated agents should include designer intentions, the design and behavior of automated agents, user expectations, as well as unintended and incidental effects of interaction.

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