Social media popularity and election results: A study of the 2016 Taiwanese general election.

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the relationship between candidates' online popularity and election results, as a step towards creating a model to forecast the results of Taiwanese elections even in the absence of reliable opinion polls on a district-by-district level. 253 of 354 legislative candidates of single-member districts in Taiwan's 2016 general election had active public Facebook pages during the election period. Hypothesizing that the relative popularity of candidates' Facebook posts will be positively related to their election results, I calculated each candidate's Like Ratio (i.e. proportions of all likes on Facebook posts obtained by candidates in their district). In order to have a measure of online interest without the influence of subjective positivity, I similarly calculated the p

SUBMITTER: Zhang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6261632 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature