Fake news and indifference to truth: Dissecting tweets and State of the Union Addresses by Presidents Obama and Trump

David Allen, Michael McAleer and David McHardy Reid
Additional contact information
David McHardy Reid: Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University, Washington, USA.

No 2018-07, Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico

Abstract: State of the Union Addresses (SOUA) by two recent US Presidents, President Obama (2016) and President Trump (2018), and a series of recent of tweets by President Trump, are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they di_er, and their potential implications for the national mood and state of the economy. President Trump's 2018 SOUA and his sample tweets are identi_ed as being more positive in sentiment than President Obama's 2016 SOUA. This is con_rmed by bootstrapped t tests and non-parametric sign tests on components of the respective sentiment scores. The issue of whether overly positive pronouncements amount to self-promotion, rather than intrinsic merit or sentiment, is a topic for future research.

Keywords: Sentiment Analysis; Polarity; Bootstrapped tests; Sign tests. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 C44 C88 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/46802/1/1807.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: FAKE NEWS AND INDIFFERENCE TO TRUTH: DISSECTING TWEETS AND STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESSES BY PRESIDENTS OBAMA AND TRUMP (2018)
Working Paper: Fake News and Indifference to Truth: Dissecting Tweets and State of the Union Addresses by Presidents Obama and Trump (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucm:doicae:1807

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales. Pabellón prefabricado, 1ª Planta, ala norte. Campus de Somosaguas, 28223 - POZUELO DE ALARCÓN (MADRID)
https://www.ucm.es/f ... -de-trabajo-del-icae

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Águeda González Abad ().