Social Media Content Analysis can help campaigns develop more effective messaging and provide warning to emerging threats.

1. Alan Rosenblatt, Ph.D.
arosenblatt@LakeResearch.com
May 3, 2017
Lake Research Partners
Washington, DC | Berkeley, CA | New York, NY
LakeResearch.com
202.776.9066
Ossoff Threat Assessment:
Efforts to Tie Him to Soros and Al
Jazeera

2. 2
Social media content analysis and candidates
• While campaigns focus much attention on who is
interacting with their own social media channels, there is
much more to be learned looking beyond to see how
people are talking about the candidate on their own
channels.
– During the 2016 Presidential cycle, as much as 98% of social media
buzz about candidates was generated apart from the campaigns’
own posts.
– Pew Research Center reports that more than 20% of adult social
media users said what they saw social media influenced their
views on candidates and/or issues.
• This presentation demonstrates some insights social media
content analysis can shed on how it is used to smear a
candidate (Jon Ossoff, GA-06).

3. 3
Smear rumors start small and spread
• Blog posts, “news” articles
and social media posts by
propagandists start the
process.
• Rank and file activists
spread and twist the
message.
• Ordinary voters are
persuaded by repetitive
messaging.
• Even a few hundred social
sharers can reach an
audience of millions.

4. 4
Blogs Tie Ossoff to Soros
Opus 2017-122: Cornerstone Considerations: Article 1, No Scandal Here, This Time
We should welcome the run-off in Georgia that features the $8+ million Democrat candidate who lost to Republicans who
could not decide from a field of many. Why?
First, it might cost Soros another $8 million, not that he will notice. – MedleyOfWorship.com 4/21/17
George Soros and Hollywood Liberals Want a Receipt
Jon Ossoff failed to win a 50% plus one majority in last night's Georgia 6th District special election. Nine million dollars from
outside the district (as opposed to $1,000 raised locally) wasn't enough to buy the Democrats an election
- LeftCoastLiberal.com 4/18/17
ALL THAT MONEY GOT OSSOFF HILLARY CLINTON NUMBERS IN #GA06
After all the hype, the millions of dollars from out of state Democrats and Soros organization, Jon Ossoff, who doesn’t even
live in the district he ran for managed to get basically what Hillary Clinton got in the three counties of GA06. –
FireAndreaMitchell.com 4/18/17

5. 5
Twitter responds to blogs, generating 8,023 tweets
• #TrumpTrain picks
it up
• @LouDobbs is a
key source
– Says Soros, not
GA-6 voters,
funding Ossoff
– 2.8K RTs, 4.1K
Likes, 306 Replies
– 3,178 tweets
mentioning
Ossoff, Dobbs and
Soros

6. 6
Tying Ossoff to Human Smuggling
• Right-wing news site GotNews.com
publishes story about Ossoff’s film
company paying human smugglers
in Europe.
– 100 tweets by 92 people share the
story reaching 317,779 people.
– Was shared on Reddit in
AskThe_Donald sub-reddit with 31
comments.
• RebelTV’s Washington
correspondent shares story and
another tweeter asserts Soros
connection.

7. 7
Tying Ossoff to Al Jazeera – 5,083 tweets
• @RightWingAngel says
Ossoff is “in pocket” of
Al Jazeera, Pelosi and
DNC; slurring all of them
at once.
– 1.4K RTs
– 1.7K Likes
• Tweet turns his job and
connections to
Democratic party into
negatives.

8. 8
Start at 30,000 feet and dive
• Word Clouds of what people are tweeting give a 30,000 ft.
view of what people are saying.
– Diving into Word Clouds, removing extraneous words, amplifies
substantive key words.
– Identifying which keywords are most likely correlated with each
other adds context to our analysis.
– Diving into the tweet text to read key subsets, provides deeper
context, revealing source patterns, etc.
– Additional analyses help us catalogue the key sources and
influencers involved in spreading the message.
– Measuring the reach and impressions of tweets containing key
phrases tells us how many people seeing it and how frequently.

9. 9
What are people saying about Ossoff’s connections
to Soros, Pelosi and Al Jazeera?
• When talking about connections
between Ossoff and Pelosi/Soros/Al
Jazeera, people say Ossoff
– Is a puppet (14.6%)
– Is funded by Soros (8.20%)
– Supports open borders (7.6%)
– Is in their pocket (6.1%)
– Doesn’t live in the district
– Sold his soul to the devil (6.2%, 911
tweets)
• Key hashtags
– #MAGA (24.1%)
– #TrumpTrain (13.6%)
– #FlipThe6th (13.3%)
• Key influencers
– @LouDobbs
– @RightWingAngel
– @GeorgiaDirtRoad

10. 10
Deeper dives into social media content are possible
• The preceding analysis was generated by keyword
searches of all tweets, blog posts, Facebook page posts
and news articles over a 1-month period straddling the
GA-06 special election on April 18, 2017.
– It was limited to tweets from people identified as being in Georgia
• Deeper analyses using a sample of registered voters in the
district on Twitter are possible.
– Requires targeted sample order from voter file data and a process
of matching data to social media accounts
• Analyzing the two datasets separately and looking at the
differences between them help us begin to understand
the amount of influence people, organizations and bots
have on voters in a district.

11. 11
Enhancing the full research process
• In addition to direct insights gleaned from social media
analysis, our findings help us improve the rest of the
research process.
– Focus groups – Having learned the full range of issues and frames
through which voters are looking at an election (or issue), we can
ensure that focus groups include people representing all of these
perspectives.
– Surveys – Knowing the range of viewpoints people are expressing
on social media helps us construct better survey instruments to
test messages.
• It ensures that we test the full range of messages in the voting
population.
• It ensures that we craft messages to test that work with the frames
people are already using.

12. 12
Social media content analysis enhances research
• Building social media content analysis into the initial
phase of your research process (benchmarking) improves
the quality and usefulness of the results.
• Tracking changes in how people talk about your candidate
and issues after implementing new messaging developed
from your research helps determine the impact of your
campaign message.

13. arosenblatt@lakeresearch.com
Washington, DC | Berkeley, CA | New York, NY
LakeResearch.com
202.776.9066