The Use of Twitter as a Tool to Predict Opinion Leaders that Influence Public Opinion: Case Study of the 2016 United State Presidential Election

Y. T. Alfarhoud

Chapter 10 in Knowledge Discovery and Data Design Innovation:Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM 2017), 2017, pp 191-206 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: The availability and ease of access of social media have allowed the general public to interact in political discussion. Social media are a widely-used instrument for political engagement. The purpose of this study is to understand Twitters users’ involvement in politics and in particular in political elections and to explore the use of Twitter as a tool to predict the opinion leaders that will influence the general users in the context of a political election. This study also explores the reliance of campaigns on Twitter as a tool to affect the voters’ opinions. The scope is the United States 2016 president election. The outcomes of this study indicated the importance of social media, specifically Twitter, as a tool to encourage Twitter users to participate in the elections and influence their opinions. The study revealed that the majority of opinion leaders were individual users rather than campaigns, organizations, or affiliations.

Keywords: Knowledge Discovery; Big Data; Data Science; Data Analytics; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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