Political Opinion Expressed in Social Media and Election Outcomes - US Presidential Elections 2012

Abstract

That media is the mirror of the society is more an indisputable fact than a communication theory. But do online social media, too, reflect public opinion to an extent which can be called accurate, given the intricacies of the network and complexity of the communication? With an assumption that they do, this research ventured to test the theory by consolidating political opinion expressed on online social media platforms preceding the 2012 US presidential elections and comparing it with the election results. That way, the strength of the correlation between the two variables the political opinion and sentiments expressed on online social media and the election result which is a representative of the general public opinion—can be deduced. Though it could be claimed logical to think that opinions expressed on the social media reflect public sentiments—since the content is generated by the public—there was a need to conduct a scientific study to test the strength of the correlation, that is, how far the consolidated social media opinion tallies with the electoral outcome, which will be the measurement of the general political lineation. The researchers chose Facebook and Twitter—the top two social networking websites—to conduct the research. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were the leading candidates contesting the US presidential elections. The researchers collected statistical data on the frequencies at which the terms ‘Obama’ and ‘Romney’ were mentioned on Twitter during a month preceding the elections. They also collected “tweets” at regular intervals during the above-said period with the mentions of the two terms and a manual sentiment analysis was performed on them. Based on the examination, the tweets were categorised as positive, negative and neutral for both the terms. On Facebook, the rate at which the number of ‘likes’ increased on the official fan pages of these two candidates was calculated. Sets of comments posted on their Facebook pages were also analysed and categorised as positive, negative and neutral. A consolidated political opinion was formed based on the data collected and compared with the election results, where the mandate was in favour of Obama. The study results pointed to a strong and positive correlation between the two variables, giving credence to the theory that online social