WikiLeaks Gave Trump Edge In Campaign Race, Twitter Study Finds

[DonViejo]

Source: Science Magazine



By Scienmag On Jul 12, 2017

Criticism of Hillary Clinton over documents posted by WikiLeaks played a key role in her failed US presidential campaign, analysis of social media suggests.

A study of viral tweets during the final two months of the 2016 election race shows Clinton was much more heavily criticised on social media compared with her rival Donald Trump.

Posts relating to WikiLeaks were the most common form of attack on social media for the Democratic candidate, who was also heavily criticised on Twitter over an FBI investigation into her use of a private email server.

A study of the top 50 most retweeted posts each day between 1 September and 8 November found that there were three times as many posts attacking Clinton than posts in her favour. By contrast, viral tweets relating to Trump were split equally in favour and against his campaign.

Read more: https://scienmag.com/wikileaks-gave-trump-edge-in-campaign-race-twitter-study-finds/

[HopeAgain]

1. Indisputable proof that the Russians were behind it...

Can you imagine if Donnie Jr.'s emails on Russian collusion had come out before the election?

[Rustynaerduwell]

2. Bill Maher had a great metaphor from the movie Titanic

in which the ship's designer explains that water can overtake four walls and the Titanic won't sink, but if water breaches the fifth wall, the ship will go down. The Russia thing was the water that breached the fifth wall. Without it the Hilary campaign would have stayed afloat

[Gothmog]

3. Wikileaks and Russia botts made a big difference

[Initech]

4. That jackass Assange isn't on our side.

[WhiteTara]

8. Were you confused? He never was anything

except on Julian's side. I have never thought he was a good guy. And the company he keeps doesn't thrill me either...Glen Greenwald.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Edinburgh University self-publicists ought to know better

They did not show that this "played a key role in her failed US presidential campaign". That is a claim without evidence. They showed there were more negative tweets about Hillary; whether that played any role at all would need interviews with more people saying "yes, I kept reading this bad stuff about Hillary on Twitter, and that made me wonder about voting for her".

They went with a claim in their PR headline that wasn't in their analysis at all.

[kimbutgar]

6. I also used to remember these crazy posts on Facebook with these outrageous stories

Against Hillary. That she was working with China, she was getting indictied anyday, bombshell emails against her show she colluded with her foundation who stole money etc. it was so crazy I ignored them but obviously a lot of people were fooled. Now everything I see on Facebook I am skeptic of until I fact check it.

[neohippie]

7. nothing here

There doesn't appear to be anything here that might try to distinguish if these tweets were by real people, voters, campaign organized bots, or even bots that could represent malicious foreign actors

Basically it just examines the amount of tweets for and against the candidates

[riversedge]

9. k for visibility