Studying topic engagement and synergy among candidates for 2020 US Elections.

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive summary of how candidates running in the 2020 US Presidential Elections used Twitter to communicate with the public. More specifically, it aims to uncover elements linked to public engagement and internal cooperation (in terms of content and stance similarity among the candidates from the same political front, and with respect to the official Twitter accounts of their political parties). Our main subjects are the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates who contested for the 2020 US Elections from the two major political fronts—Republicans and Democrats. Their tweets were evaluated for social reach, content similarity and stance similarity on 22 topics. According to the findings, Joe Biden had the highest engagement and impact (user impact: 177.08k, normalized to 0.99), followed by Donald Trump (user impact: 164.19k, normalized to 0.92). The Democrats depicted a clearer understanding of their audience, portraying an essential link between public participation, internal cooperation and the electoral campaign. The results also demonstrate that specific topics (like US Elections, and Inauguration Ceremony) were more engaging than others (Trump Healthcare Plan, and The Supreme Court Appointments). This study adds to the existing work on using social media platforms for electoral campaigns and can be effectively utilized by contesting candidates.