2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSTUDY: More Tweets More Votes! Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior!
For some people it is difficult to move away from the past even when progess and new technology demand it. Due to this phenomenon, people continue to place undue emphasis and trust in the old Political Polling Methodologies, despite pollsters themselves acknowledging that they have NOT kept up with new technology and its effects on their old Methodologies, which have been increasingly failing for a number of reasons.
It was inevitable therefore that studies would be forthcoming regarding the currently DISMISSED impact of online activity on various Social Media sites because not EVERYONE rejects NEW SCIENCE thankfully, when it comes along.
This is one study and I'm sure there will be more to determine what if any effect Social Media has on elections, among other things:
More Tweets More Votes! Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior!
Joseph DiGrazia,1? Karissa McKelvey,2 Johan Bollen,2 Fabio Rojas 1
1Department of Sociology
2School of Informatics and Computing
Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47408, USA
?To whom correspondence should be addressed; E-mail: [email protected].
...........
Here we show a statistically significant relationship between tweets and electoral outcomesthat persists after accounting for these potentially confounding variables. We compiled two large-scale datasets. First, we collected 2010 election outcomes and sociodemographic variables from all 435 U.S. House districts (18). Second, we retrieved a random sample of 537,231,508 tweets posted from August 1 and November 1, 2010. Then, we extracted 113,985 tweets that contained the name of the Republican or Democratic candidate for Congress.
This is evidence for the conventional wisdom that all publicity is good publicity.
Second, the models show that social media matters even when controlling for traditional television media, such as CNN, which many scholars have argued is important because it shapes political reality via agenda setting (27, 28), but does not seem to have a significant effect in our models.
Finally, this study adds to the mounting evidence that online social networks are not ephemeral, spam-infested
sources of information. Rather, social media may very well provide a valid indicator of the American electorate.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank Emily Winters and Matt Stephens for data collection as well as Clem Brooks, Elizabeth Pisares, and the Politics, Economy, and Culture Workshop at Indiana University for helpful discussions and contributions.
We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (grants SBE 0914939, CCF 1101743), the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the McDonnell Foundation
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2. D. Lazer, et al., Science 323, 7213 (2009).
3. A. Vespignani, Science 325, 4258 (2009).
4. M. Naaman, J. Boase, C.-H. Lai, Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer
supported cooperative work, CSCW 10 (ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2010), pp. 189192.
5. A. Java, X. Song, T. Finin, B. Tseng, Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD
2007 workshop on Web mining and social network analysis (ACM, 2007), pp. 5665.
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AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (Barcelona, Spain, 2011), pp.
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10. S. Stephens-Davidowitz, Quarterly Journal of Economics (2011).
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on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Volume 01, WI-IAT 10 (IEEE
Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 2010), pp. 492499.
12. J. Bollen, H. Mao, X. Zeng, Journal of Computational Science 2, 1 (2011).
13. S. Golder, M. Macy, Science 333, 187881 (2011).
14. P. Dodds, K. Harris, I. Kloumann, C. Bliss, C. Danforth, PloS one 6, e26752 (2010).
15. A. Tumasjan, T. O. Sprenger, P. G. Sandner, I. M. Welpe, Word Journal Of The International
Linguistic Association 280, 178 (2010).
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AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (AAAI Press, 2010), vol. 5, p.
122129.
17. D. Gayo-avello, Arxiv preprint arXiv12046441 pp. 113 (2012).
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of Representatives (2010), pp. 39150.
19. C. Klarner, PS: Political Science & Politics 41, 723728 (2008).
20. A. I. Abramowitz, The Western Political Quarterly 28 (1975).
21. H. Brady, S. Verba, K. Schlozman, American Political Science Review pp. 271294 (1995).
22. K. Schlozman, N. Burns, S. Verba, Journal of Politics 56, 963 (1994).
23. S. Verba, K. Schlozman, H. Brady, N. Nie, British Journal of Political Science 23, 453
(1993).
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28. M. S. Roberts, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 69, 878 (1992)
Every time there is progress in human history, it is initially resisted by people who are more comfortable with the old ways. That is very natural because change can be scary.
Fortunately there are always, also, those who do not resist change but welcome it. And then there are those who want to know whether or not progress/change is good or bad for humanity.
Some things though simply cannot be denied, no matter how much resistance there may be.
zappaman
(20,606 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)zappaman
(20,606 posts)You post.
People reply.
Would it make you happy if I posted in your other OP?
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)zappaman
(20,606 posts)Who is stalking you?
treestar
(82,383 posts)A lot of the same people will respond to them. It's a message board.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)I coined that term several months ago against a Bernie Supporter who had been following me around. I suppose it was magnificent and said it all. But I used it against a persistent stalker, not just against someone who would simply respond to occassional posts.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)a good way to keep track of them. They never fail to oblige.
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)YOUR flattery of yourself to anything I have said. That would only embarrass you.
The documentation of stalkers which I am conducting, is my documentation.
Since I don't pay much attention to what you are doing here unless I run into you on a thread likes this, I am completely unaware of what you have said or didn't say unless it was directed to ME.
Sorry about that, it seems so important to you. But facts are facts!
zappaman
(20,606 posts)There's documentation going on!!!
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)the old fashioned way of a napkin.....and then flush'em.
zappaman
(20,606 posts)I think keeping documentation on other DUers is kinda...creepy.
I wouldn't do that...would you?
sheshe2
(84,057 posts)Lists~
Hmmm someone the other night said they were book marking threads so they would be handy for reference. Wasn't meant in a nice way.
That might be the word I was looking for....
Okay
sheshe2
(84,057 posts)George II
(67,782 posts)...you call them a "stalker"?
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)is what you are doing?
George II
(67,782 posts)zappaman
(20,606 posts)I guess we need a new dictionary?
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)...it comes across as baiting and the complaining when they bite? OR, they could just be responding because you are asking questions or making statements that the responders feel is inaccurate and need refuting.
It really does appears you don't really believe they are stalkers until they say something you don't like then *BAM* to affix the label. It's not a particularly clever tactic to bandy around so much.
polly7
(20,582 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)polly7
(20,582 posts)[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]
and ......... great study and thread, Sabrina. You knew the kind of response you were going to get though, right? Never fails!!
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Well, the OP kind of takes away their argument that there is no 'science' regarding online formats and their relationship to election results.
So far I have received not one single reference to the findings in the study. It's interesting!
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)Until the alert, I couldn't see most of the responses in your thread due to an anti-flyswatter hiding binge I went on recently. I had to laugh at what you were responding to.
On Mon Nov 16, 2015, 06:02 PM an alert was sent on the following post:
Stalkers are creepy!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=817391
REASON FOR ALERT
This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.
ALERTER'S COMMENTS
Stop calling other DUers stalkers.
You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Mon Nov 16, 2015, 06:41 PM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.
Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Seems the how thread is flamebait.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Hilarious. Cat was cute.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Another bogus alert.
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Oh for Pete's sake. If you post OPs/post responses in a thread, people are going to respond. Some are going to find your posts tiresome and they will express it. If you can't handle it don't post
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I agree, stalkers are creepy.
Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)Had to laugh at the irony.
On Mon Nov 16, 2015, 06:02 PM an alert was sent on the following post:
Stalkers are creepy!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=817391
REASON FOR ALERT
This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.
ALERTER'S COMMENTS
Stop calling other DUers stalkers.
You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Mon Nov 16, 2015, 06:41 PM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.
Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Seems the how thread is flamebait.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Hilarious. Cat was cute.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Another bogus alert.
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Oh for Pete's sake. If you post OPs/post responses in a thread, people are going to respond. Some are going to find your posts tiresome and they will express it. If you can't handle it don't post
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I agree, stalkers are creepy.
Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)how creepy stalking is. But it's good to have this kind of thing documented which I will continue to do making it much easier to show the pattern.
Thanks for the link!
zappaman
(20,606 posts)Stalking is creepy.
Thanks for the post!
That is all.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)We need to get some thoughts from the "Sane" Progressive.
TM99
(8,352 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)I was wrong. I notice not a single refutation of the Science in the OP. Which can only mean, they have no response.
TM99
(8,352 posts)If Clinton was winning on the online polls, they would be just fine.
It is just the standard talking points, memes, deflections, and frankly, bullshit that is spouted as loudly and with great fury.
It really doesn't mean a damned thing.
Thanks for the excellent article. I am not surprised.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)'scientific' proof that the anger over these polls was never about anything other than Bernie is winning them all by huge margins.
Like you, I have suggested that if Hillary were winning, and I don't know she is not considering all candidates have equal opportunity to do so, we would hear how 'scientific' they are. Lol!
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Oh, my paws and whiskers! I'll be late!
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Thanks for reminding me, though that was not part of THIS study, it's interesting to see that it is consistent with the study's findings.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)or go into a thread WITHOUT reading the OP and attempt to make an intelligent comment. I'm wondering why all of a sudden Hillary supporters have lost interest in 'science'! I was hoping to accomodate them assuming they were serious. But, well, so far we have 'leaves and trees' and for some totally inexplicable reason 'Kim Kardishian'.
Segami
(14,923 posts)Whomever is handing out their talking-points orders today seems to be a little mid-day doozy. Definitely, their morning call envelopes have been mixed.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)the campaign knows what happened last time and is attempting to 'mock' them away, to no avail apparently. You're right that the talking points don't seem to be working.
I would think by now they would have fired the 'experts' they've been using, and hired some more qualified personnel. But I'm not complaining, all this is helping Sanders so as far as I am concerned, they are doing just fine, for US! Loll!
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)a one off article you are trying to pass off as well tested and faultless. haa haaa haaaaaaaa.
lets see what happens in the real Primaries and we can test your new found scientific knowledge against reality
bookmarking
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)as I said, is nothing new, so feel free to do so.
sheshe2
(84,057 posts)No one ever will be.
ALLY.HERO.ICON
President of ALL the PEOPLE!!!!
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)sheshe2
(84,057 posts)I am thrilled your thread is going to the top.
Excellent comments here that need to be read!
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)You guys never fail to miss the forest for the leaves.
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Tweets predict votes.
Its too funny.
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)"Legit polls" are not without issues too. Demos, landlines, question crafting... Totally dismissing internet and social media trends is as foolish as totally relying on them.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)... your predictive ability is meaningless "noise" ... also known as unexplained statistical variation.
The idea that tweets predict votes is rather silly, especially when the vote in question is more than 5 months away.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Sometime you throw out comments in a thread and prove you have no basis for the comments even though you COULD have since the material is right there for you to read. But to each their own.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)And because I enjoy reading this kind of study ... my assessment.
1) The first thing you miss is that the results only predicted elections where Republicans won. You assume that the results would transfer to Democrats or to primary voters. On what basis do you make that assumption? Big question unaddressed, why does their data only work for Republicans?
2) The data they collected was for the 3 months IMMEDIATELY prior to the election. The current data you refer to is more than 5 months out from the relevant election.
3) The authors do not claim nearly as much as what you claim. They suggest this is an interesting area for future study. Here is their strongest conclusion.
4) Your authors are not very good. Read this quote from the article.
There is no such thing as a "highly significant" effect in behavioral research. The effect either reaches statistical significance or it does not. Your authors make this mistake multiple times, which suggest that they are not terribly familiar with the methodology they are using. Computers make running these statistics much easier than it was when I was learning this stuff. But learning to do it by hand forces you to understand what it actually means.
5) I enjoyed this sentence.
Do you have any theories on why? Or how about the importance of POC to Democratic elections? They do not go into it, but perhaps, POC are not tweeting as much as whites are. But this might explain why their data correlated well with Republican tweeters, who we can assume, are primarily white
6) Here's an interesting observation from the article.
uncompetitive. If there is little doubt about who the winner will be, there may be little reason to
talk about the election.
I wonder if Hillary being up by 25% makes things uncompetitive?
Any other questions?
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)data, I'm sure. But we TRY and yes, I did manage to read AND understand the findings even though I am both a woman and a Bernie supporter.
You don't like the fact that now finally they ARE beginning to acknowledge, which only makes logical sense, the power of Social Media.
It took a while before many people acknowledged the power of TV also, Radio before that, the Printing Press before THAT.
How 'scientific' are polls that admit now they are far beyond regarding new technology, making it impossible for them to accurately predict the results of elections. I'll take their word for it, especially considering their failures over the past number of years.
zappaman
(20,606 posts)Why would you say such a silly thing?
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)I haven't made my way through the whole thread yet, but i will be calling out anyone that said such a thing. Or are you making this up?
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)... the results of that study have nothing to do with your gender, or your support for Bernie ... although the latter might cause one to lose their objectivity.
And apparently, you are unaware that the behavior sciences (psychology and sociology in particular) tend to be dominated by women. You could learn from them.
As for the polls you whine about ... I could help you understand why some are more predictive than others ... but I would not want to suggest that you need a man to explain such things to you.
Instead, you should seek out some female behavioral scientists, of which there are many, and I suspect they'd be happy to provide you with some of the fundamentals of behavioral science.
Segami
(14,923 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Segami
(14,923 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)You should write a tweet program to auto tweet about Bernie ... that way he can't lose!!!
Segami
(14,923 posts)try some decaf this week,.....it will help.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)... I thought this thread was funny ... and not meaningful in any way.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)zero content, unrelated to the topic, and the kind of comment that contributes nothing to the discussion on this forum.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)He did not get that I used leaves instead of trees specifically because they are even smaller.
Tweets predict votes.
Its hilarious.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)read the entire study. So far, you're only contribution to this study was incredibly, 'Kim Kardashian' Could you explain for those of us who simply didn't get the connection between a completely moronic reality show personality, good friend of Hillary's or not, and a study on the impact of the New Media on elections? I would try to figure it out myself, but I just don't have that much time ....
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)And I say that as one who has spent 3 decades working in behavioral science research.
And the idea that tweets more than 5 months before anyone votes predict anything is even more ridiculous.
Having said that, I am getting a huge kick out of your OPs suggesting that online activities, in which the participants self select, somehow predict anything.
Its a rather humorous form of wishful thinking. About as likely to be predictive as the calls for a primary challenge to Obama.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)showing equally strong positive correlations ... like whether the Redskins win their last game before the election and the ending of the previous years Oscar winning movie.
Gotta love science for the numerically illiterate!
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Last edited Tue Nov 17, 2015, 09:53 PM - Edit history (1)
tishaLA
(14,176 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)tishaLA
(14,176 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)But don't you think that the Don is too 'muy feo' to win?
winter is coming
(11,785 posts)Which will be less obvious than footing the bill for dubious polling.
ieoeja
(9,748 posts)I know Bernie's supporters are bigger on social media. But do they post more positives about Bernie, or negatives about Hillary? According to this study if tweets about Hillary, good and bad, outnumber tweets about Bernie that would indicate a win for Hillary.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)that has to do with policies. I follow hundreds of Bernie supporters and most of them post positive things about Bernie, not so much about Hillary at all. Unless there is something relevant in the news.
But it is what it is, eg, are Hillary supporters posting more NEGATIVE things about Bernie, than positive things about Hillary?
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)tritsofme
(17,435 posts)that Hillary "stole" the election? My guess is that the transition will be seamless.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)CT speculative nonsense adds nothing to the discussion.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)JI7
(89,287 posts)Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Or did you get the false memo that I might be intimidated by people kicking an old thread or something?
I can assure you that I am always flattered when one of my FP OPs are remembered. So whosever Idea that was,it is about as effective as all the other troll like efforts to try to slow down Sanders incredible momentum. Which is 'zero'.
But let me ask you something, don't you feel embarrassed, just a teeny bit, to become part of a small group of massively ineffective swarmers when you could come up with something a lot better, because let's face it, that was one of the lamest attempts to stalk any Duer I've seen yet?? I know I would be!
JI7
(89,287 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)people who jump into threads making off topic comments, following the lead of childish pranksters who are generally ignored by most posters here. But I am always optimistic that I might be wrong for once.
JI7
(89,287 posts)Is doing .
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)have families, children, elderly relatives we care about.
Elections for us ordinary people are about issues. They are not about anonymous stalkers on the internet. But we all have to make choices, mine is to choose the candidate that has a record of fighting for ordinary Americans.
Btw, thanks for kicking this thread, I am getting a lot of excellent feedback from it thanks to those who kept it going.
JI7
(89,287 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)feature to disappear non constructive commentary. I believe in using everything, including non constructive drive bys to kick important threads. Seems to work for me.
Mmm, I just checked the FP. Looks like you have helped me to get two OPs on the FP. Wow, thanks, AGAIN!
JI7
(89,287 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)JI7
(89,287 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)just backfire?
But even backfires have their silver linings, not necessarily for those who inadvertently cause them. This one is for Bernie. Thanks again!
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)Had to laugh at the irony.
On Mon Nov 16, 2015, 06:02 PM an alert was sent on the following post:
Stalkers are creepy!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=817391
REASON FOR ALERT
This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.
ALERTER'S COMMENTS
Stop calling other DUers stalkers.
You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Mon Nov 16, 2015, 06:41 PM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.
Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Seems the how thread is flamebait.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Hilarious. Cat was cute.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Another bogus alert.
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Oh for Pete's sake. If you post OPs/post responses in a thread, people are going to respond. Some are going to find your posts tiresome and they will express it. If you can't handle it don't post
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I agree, stalkers are creepy.
Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.
zappaman
(20,606 posts)Totally cute!
Stalking is creepy.
Thanks for posting the results.