Ratioing the President: An exploration of public engagement with Obama and Trump on Twitter

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter engagement patterns of Obama and Trump, revealing differences in controversy and response dynamics, and how these relate to political communication and public engagement.

Contribution

It introduces a ratio-based analysis of Twitter engagement to compare presidential communication styles and their evolution over time.

Findings

Trump's tweets are more controversial with sustained engagement.

Obama's tweets have higher retweet-to-reply ratios, indicating different engagement dynamics.

Engagement patterns shifted around the 2016 election regime change.

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed a marked increase in the use of social media by politicians, most notably exemplified by the 45th President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump. On Twitter, POTUS messages consistently attract high levels of engagement as measured by likes, retweets, and replies. Here, we quantify the balance of these activities, also known as "ratios", and study their dynamics as a proxy for collective political engagement in response to presidential communications. We find that raw activity counts increase during the period leading up to the 2016 election, accompanied by a regime change in the ratio of retweets-to-replies connected to the transition between campaigning and governing. For the Trump account, we find words related to fake news and the Mueller inquiry are more common in tweets with a high number of replies relative to retweets. Finally, we find that Barack Obama consistently received a higher retweet-to-reply ratio than Donald Trump. These results suggest Trump's Twitter posts are more often controversial and subject to enduring engagement as a given news cycle unfolds.