[Paper Review] Trump vs. Hillary: What went Viral during the 2016 US Presidential Election

Kareem Darwish, Walid Magdy+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jul 11, 2017

Misinformation and Its Impacts8 citations

TL;DR

This study analyzes the top 3,450 most retweeted tweets from September 1 to November 8, 2016, during the US presidential election, using manual tagging and quantitative and qualitative analysis to compare social media strategies of Trump and Clinton. It finds Trump’s campaign was more effective in viral reach, message penetration, and framing Clinton through attacks, particularly via high-engagement slogans, swing-state promotion, and amplified attacks on her email scandal.

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we present quantitative and qualitative analysis of the top retweeted tweets (viral tweets) pertaining to the US presidential elections from September 1, 2016 to Election Day on November 8, 2016. For everyday, we tagged the top 50 most retweeted tweets as supporting or attacking either candidate or as neutral/irrelevant. Then we analyzed the tweets in each class for: general trends and statistics; the most frequently used hashtags, terms, and locations; the most retweeted accounts and tweets; and the most shared news and links. In all we analyzed the 3,450 most viral tweets that grabbed the most attention during the US election and were retweeted in total 26.3 million times accounting over 40% of the total tweet volume pertaining to the US election in the aforementioned period. Our analysis of the tweets highlights some of the differences between the social media strategies of both candidates, the penetration of their messages, and the potential effect of attacks on both

Motivation & Objective

• To understand the dynamics of viral political discourse on Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election.
• To compare the social media strategies of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton based on retweet volume and content.
• To assess the credibility and reach of news links and hashtags shared in viral tweets.
• To investigate how candidate attacks and support messages influenced public engagement and visibility.
• To identify key factors in viral content that may have contributed to the election outcome.

Proposed method

• Collected the top 50 most retweeted tweets per day from September 1 to November 8, 2016, totaling 3,450 unique tweets.
• Manually tagged each tweet as supporting or attacking Trump, supporting or attacking Clinton, or neutral/irrelevant.
• Conducted quantitative analysis on retweet volume trends, most frequent hashtags, keywords, and locations.
• Identified and analyzed the most retweeted accounts, tweets, and shared news links by credibility level.
• Classified shared links by credibility (high, mixed, low) to assess the spread of reliable information.
• Mapped geographical focus of tweets, especially regarding swing states, to evaluate regional campaign penetration.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 Which candidate received more support or attack in viral tweets, and what proportion of retweets were pro- or anti-Trump vs. pro- or anti-Clinton?
• RQ2 Which election-related events, topics, or issues generated the highest user engagement and how did they affect each candidate’s visibility?
• RQ3 How credible were the news links and sources shared in viral tweets, and what role did they play in shaping public discourse?
• RQ4 What were the most effective social media strategies used by each campaign in terms of message penetration and audience reach?
• RQ5 How did the framing of each candidate—through attacks or support—affect their overall visibility and perceived momentum?

Key findings

• Trump’s campaign slogans, particularly 'Make America Great Again,' achieved significantly greater reach and virality than Clinton’s 'Stronger Together.'
• The Trump campaign effectively promoted rallies and campaign activities in swing states, with tweet volumes related to these topics being two orders of magnitude higher than for Clinton.
• Clinton’s support was predominantly framed through attacks on Trump, with her own campaign tweets focusing more on opposing Trump than promoting her own platform.
• Tweets attacking Clinton accounted for 58% of all shared links in viral tweets, with approximately half originating from highly credible sources and the remainder from mixed-credibility sites.
• Despite high visibility of attacks on her email scandal, Clinton’s overall campaign presence in viral content was less cohesive and less effective in driving positive momentum.
• Trump supporters were more likely to share links from low-credibility sources, though WikiLeaks—high-credibility—was the most prominent source in attacks against Clinton.