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https://doi.org/10.12758/mda.2021.04
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A Critical Evaluation of Tracking Public Opinion with Social Media: A Case Study in Presidential Approval
[journal article]
Abstract There has been much interest in using social media to track public opinion. We introduce a higher level of scrutiny to these types of analyses, specifically looking at the relationship between presidential approval and "Trump" tweets and developing a framework to interpret its strength. We use place... view more
There has been much interest in using social media to track public opinion. We introduce a higher level of scrutiny to these types of analyses, specifically looking at the relationship between presidential approval and "Trump" tweets and developing a framework to interpret its strength. We use placebo analyses, performing the same analysis but with tweets assumed to be unrelated to presidential approval, to assess the relationship and conclude that the relationship is less strong than it might otherwise seem. Secondly, we suggest following users longitudinally, which enables us to find evidence of a political signal around the 2016 presidential election. For the goal of supplementing traditional surveys with social media data, our results are encouraging, but cautionary.... view less
Keywords
social media; twitter; survey; opinion research; public opinion; data capture
Classification
Public Opinion Research
Methods and Techniques of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, Computer Methods
Free Keywords
sentiment analysis; presidential approval
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 215-240
Journal
Methods, data, analyses : a journal for quantitative methods and survey methodology (mda), 15 (2021) 2
ISSN
2190-4936
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed