Exploring the relationship between campaign discourse on facebook and the public's comments: A case study of incivility during the 2016 US presidential election

Rossini, P. , Stromer-Galley, J. and Zhang, F. (2021) Exploring the relationship between campaign discourse on facebook and the public's comments: A case study of incivility during the 2016 US presidential election. Political Studies, 69(1), pp. 89-107. (doi: 10.1177/0032321719890818)

Abstract

Social media is now ubiquitously used by political campaigns, but less attention has been given to public discussions that take place on candidates’ free public accounts on social media. Also unclear is whether there is a relationship between campaign messaging and the tone of public comments. To address this gap, this article analyzes public comments on Facebook accounts of candidates Trump and Clinton during the US election presidential debates in 2016. We hypothesize that attack messages posted by the candidates predict uncivil reactions by the public and that the public is more likely to be uncivil when attacking candidates. We use content analysis, supervised machine learning, and text mining to analyze candidates’ posts and public comments. Our results suggest that Clinton was the target of substantially more uncivil comments. Negative messages by the candidates are not associated with incivility by the public, but comments are significantly more likely to be uncivil when the public is attacking candidates. These results suggest that the public discourse around political campaigns might be less affected by what campaigns post on social media than by the public’s own perceptions and feelings toward the candidates.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: The research was supported in part by a Fellowship from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and also with support from the Center for Computational and Data Science in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Rossini, Dr Patricia
• Authors: Rossini, P., Stromer-Galley, J., and Zhang, F.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Politics
• Journal Name: Political Studies
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• ISSN: 0032-3217
• ISSN (Online): 1467-9248
• Published Online: 06 April 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © The Author(s) 2020
• First Published: First published in Political Studies 69(1): 89-107
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy