The controversy around President Trump’s tweets last week comes at a time when nearly nine in 10 Americans see a nation divided along racial lines, and most believe the parties each hold different ideas about what makes a person an American. CONT. Fred Backus & Anthony Salvanto, CBS News Read more »
Who Leads? Who Follows? Measuring Issue Attention and Agenda Setting by Legislators and the Mass Public Using Social Media Data
Are legislators responsive to the priorities of the public? Research demonstrates a strong correspondence between the issues about which the public cares and the issues addressed by politicians, but conclusive evidence about who leads whom in setting the political agenda has yet to be uncovered. We answer this question with […] Read more »
About one-in-five adult Twitter users in the U.S. follow Trump
… A new Pew Research Center analysis estimates that around one-in-five adult Twitter users in the U.S. (19%) follow Trump’s personal account on the platform, @realDonaldTrump. Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama (@BarackObama), is followed by 26% of U.S. adult Twitter users. CONT. Adam Hughes, Pew Read more »
Parties Face ‘Crackup’ as Outsiders Wield Social Media Against the Establishment
On the night that he conceded defeat in 1992 after the most successful independent presidential campaign of the last century, Ross Perot made it clear that he was not done shaking up the established order. “Believe me,” he declared, “the system needs some shocks.” So perhaps it was only fitting […] Read more »
No, Russian Twitter trolls didn’t demonstrably push Trump’s poll numbers higher
There will always be an audience for a particular type of story about the 2016 election — claims that Russia’s social media activity powered President Trump’s eventual victory. There is a sizable portion of the American public that believes Trump’s electoral-vote victory was illegitimate; some large percentage of that group […] Read more »
Russian Twitter propaganda predicted 2016 US election polls
Trump’s poll numbers went up after high levels of Russian troll activity, though Clinton’s didn’t go down. AP/Mary Altaffer, Chuck Burton Damian Ruck, University of Bristol When Robert Mueller completed his long-awaited investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, he left many questions unanswered. But one conclusion was […] Read more »