The Chance of Winning Election Impacts on Social Media Strategy

TL;DR

This study examines how candidates' social media strategies vary based on their chances of winning, revealing that frontrunners focus more narrowly on specific audiences and targets.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of social media campaign strategies conditioned on electoral prospects, highlighting behavioral differences among candidates.

Findings

Candidates with higher winning chances target narrower audiences.

Leading candidates focus more on electoral districts and influential accounts.

Campaign strategies vary significantly with electoral prospects.

Abstract

Social media has been a paramount arena for election campaigns for political actors. While many studies have been paying attention to the political campaigns related to partisanship, politicians also can conduct different campaigns according to their chances of winning. Leading candidates, for example, do not behave the same as fringe candidates in their elections, and vice versa. We, however, know little about this difference in social media political campaign strategies according to their odds in elections. We tackle this problem by analyzing candidates' tweets in terms of users, topics, and sentiment of replies. Our study finds that, as their chances of winning increase, candidates narrow the targets they communicate with, from people in general to the electrical districts and specific persons (verified accounts or accounts with many followers). Our study brings new insights into the candidates' campaign strategies through the analysis based on the novel perspective of the candidate's electoral situation.