It is not surprising that social media have played an important role in shaping the political debate during the 2016 presidential election. The dynamics of social media provide a unique opportunity to detect and interpret the pivotal events and scandals of the candidates quantitatively. This paper examines several text-based analysis to determine which topics have a lasting impact on the election for the two main candidates, Clinton and Trump. About 135.5 million tweets are collected over the six weeks prior to the election. From these tweets, topic clustering, keyword extraction, and tweeter analysis are performed to better understand the impact of the events occurred during this period. Our analysis builds upon a social science foundation to provide another avenue for scholars to use in discerning how events detected from social media show the impacts of campaigns as well as campaign the election.

1. Event Analysis on the 2016 U.S. Presidential
Election Using Social Media
Tarrek A. Shaban, Lindsay Hexter, and Jinho D. Choi
Emory University

2. BackgroundBackground

3. Spring/Summer 2015
Candidates enter the race
August 2015
Primary debates begin
September 2015
First candidates drop out
February 2016
Primaries begin
May 2016
Trump becomes
presumptive nominee
June 2016
Clinton becomes
presumptive nominee
July 2016
Nominating
conventions
September 2016
First debate
October 2016
Second debate &
third debate2016 Election Timeline

4. July 2016
Nominating
conventions
September 2016
First debate
October 2016
Second debate &
third debate
General Election Timeline

6. Gallup Research shows 40% of
Americans follow election very closely
Like any good sport there has to be a
score card, polling serves that purpose

7. Spring/Summer 2015
Candidates enter the race
August 2015
Primary debates begin
September 2015
First candidates drop out
February 2016
Primaries begin
May 2016
Trump becomes
presumptive nominee
June 2016
Clinton becomes
presumptive nominee
July 2016
Nominating
conventions
September 2016
First debate
October 2016
Second debate &
third debate
(22 days)
Average Error: 3.6%

8. There are a lot of events during an
election, look at all of these! There is no
way each of these was “impactful”
meaning that it changed the dynamics
of the race

9. Moreover if we were to believe the
pundits on TV and in print… each and
every one of them would be a game
changer

10. Data and MethodsData and Methods

11. Number of Tweets Percent of Tweets Tweets per Day
Clinton 35.7 M 26.4% 0.893 M
Trump 51.9 M 38.3% 1.298 M
Both 28.6 M 21.1% 0.715 M
Neither 19.3 M 14.2% 0.4825
Total 135.5 M 100% 3.39 M
Twitter API

12. NYT API
•The New York Times’ Public API was used to collect articles
during this time period
•Only news articles in the politics section were collected
•In total, 760 articles were collected
Author Abstract Headline
Section Page of Paper Keywords
Lead Paragraph URL Date/Time

13. Overview
1. Score Tweets
2. Extract Keywords from
the Tweets Each Day
3. Link Keywords to
Clusters
1. Cluster the Articles
2. Extract Keywords from
Clusters
3. Map Clusters to Tweets
News Dataset Twitter Dataset

14. Clustering Issues with W2V, thus turned to
intelligent pruning and FastText. This
works

15. Clustering
ID Topics Top-3 Words Total Purity
C1 Debates debate, presidential, first 64 95.31
C2 FBI and Emails emails, campaign, fbi 81 87.65
C3 Policies tax, obama, bill 107 91.59
C4 Supreme Court court, supreme, justices 33 87.88
C5 Campaigning
campaign, obama,
presidential
124 85.48
C6 Voting and Polls voters, states, polls 80 47.50
C7 Congress senate, republicans, house 81 88.89
C8
Trump and
Women
says, debate, women 70 60.00
C9 Election
presidential, campaign,
women
120 98.33

16. Overview
1. Score Tweets
2. Extract Keywords from
the Tweets Each Day
3. Link Keywords to
Clusters
1. Cluster the Articles
2. Extract Keywords from
Clusters
3. Map Clusters to Tweets
News Dataset Twitter Dataset

17. TrendsTrends

18. Polling Model - 538

19. Polling Model - 538

20. Google Trends: “Debate”
First Debate
Second Debate
Third Debate

21. First Debate
Second Debate
Third Debate
Clinton Positive Tweets

22. Clinton Volume

23. Clinton Keywords
10/1 #basementdwellers basement audio supporters
10/3 lebron drone strike endorses
10/11 everyday hates arabia saudi
10/12 catholics leaked camp question
10/17 #freejulian cut internet goldman
10/24 ally wife 500 creamer
10/28 weiner investigation server fbi
10/29 comey huma investigation fbi

24. Clinton News Stories
10/1
Parental Basement Dwellers: Hillary Clinton Criticizes Bernie Sanders Voters for Having ‘Bought into False Promise’
Clinton gives frank take on Sanders supporters in audio from hacked email
10/3
LeBron James endorses Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton considered drone attack on Julian Assange
10/11
Latest WikiLeaks release shows Hillary Clinton hated the phrase 'everyday Americans’
Leaked Hillary Clinton emails show U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar supported ISIS
10/12
Catholic group calls for Clinton spokeswoman’s resignation after anti-Catholic comments in emails
What's In The Latest WikiLeaks Dump of Clinton Campaign Emails
10/17
Wikileaks Claims Ecuador Cut Assange's Internet After Clinton Leak
Free Julian Assange: Alleged Cyber Attack On WikiLeaks Came Just Before Organization Released Damaging New
Clinton Videos, Supporters Claim
10/24
Clinton ally gave $500K to wife of FBI agent on email probe
Clinton ally helped fund campaign of key FBI official’s wife
10/28
Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign
FBI reopens Clinton probe after new emails found in Anthony Weiner case
10/29
Justice Dept. Strongly Discouraged Comey on Move in Clinton Email Case
Who is Huma Abedin? Hillary Clinton’s right-hand-woman

25. News Cluster - Emails
Comey’s Letter

26. Google Trends - FBI

27. Negative Sentiment