When Follow is Just One Click Away: Understanding Twitter Follow Behavior in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

TL;DR

This paper investigates Twitter follow behaviors during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, revealing patterns and influences of gender, occupation, and celebrity status on users' follow choices.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of follow patterns and employs regression models to understand demographic and social factors affecting follow behaviors.

Findings

Most users follow only one or two candidates.

Gender and occupation significantly influence follow counts.

Celebrity influence affects candidate follow choices.

Abstract

Motivated by the two paradoxical facts that the marginal cost of following one extra candidate is close to zero and that the majority of Twitter users choose to follow only one or two candidates, we study the Twitter follow behaviors observed in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Specifically, we complete the following tasks: (1) analyze Twitter follow patterns of the presidential election on Twitter, (2) use negative binomial regression to study the effects of gender and occupation on the number of candidates that one follows, and (3) use multinomial logistic regression to investigate the effects of gender, occupation and celebrities on the choice of candidates to follow.