There are ways to measure sentiment other than social media. Tracking behavior changes could provide interesting metrics.
E.g., on the nights that important people spoke at the convention, my normally packed Zumba classes at the gym were empty. None of the regulars were there. After the convention these classes were filled again. Testing my theory, I went to another popular Zumba class at this same gym on the night of the debates, and heard crickets because the room was so empty. I don't know if these people are tweeting, but by changing their regular routine, they are demonstrating a high degree of interest/involvement in this election (making them highly likely voters).
Lots of these analyses are based on "likely voters." The demographics of "likely voters" may be different this election. People who are behaving differently on election event nights are likely voters. If someone could get their hands on data for election-related time periods that showed a spike (up or down) in gym attendance and on bar/restaurant revenue, then they might be able to refine the "likely voter" profile for an election.
Tracking behavior changes may be more difficult than counting tweets, but it could be a very telling metric.
I seem to remember an article about how at least half of the Twits (yes, I call 'em that) following the Prez were not "real" IDs. People's pets have Twitter accounts. Heck, even the Martian rover Curiosity has a very amusing feed, and I don't think it will make it back to vote this November (like most of our military, its absentee ballot will probably be conveniently "lost in the mail"). I grow weary of the complete lack of objectivity in reporting -- by both sides of the debate. Why can't they just report the facts, and let us make up our own minds? Do they really think their analysis is needed, especially when it's fairly obvious it has an attached agenda? Inquiring minds WANT to KNOW!
I strongly suspect that means the Democrats are doing a lot of this, very secretly; the Republicans are being very secretive about not doing much at all.
At this stage, with time and money ever tighter, the campaigns should certainly be micro-targeting undecided voters in states they view as in play. It would be interesting to know the extent to which they're using social channels or other online sources to do this, but of course it's shrouded in secrecy.
After nineteenth century's pamphlets and the twentieth century's TV ad revolution, The 2012 election is going to be decided by which campaign is best at exploiting voters' Internet data.The most important breakthrough this year is the campaigns' use of online data to raise money, share information and persuade supporters to vote and this practice is facing the greatest test of its political impact in the race for the White House.
I think an additional problem is controlling for the bias introduced by self-selection. All I mean by that is that users of Twitter are not a random sample; they are self-selected and may have share all kinds of possible sources of bias. My evidence: Obama has almost twenty times the Twitter followers Romney has.
Yes, he's President, but that doesn't entirely explain the discrepancy.
Excellent article and perspective on a growing dimension to political analysis, Karyl. I believe the November results will correlate with the sentiment analyzed on Twitter, etc.; which should make sentiment analysis a more prominent science to monitor in the future.
I believe the project you mention, analyzing sentiment during the debates, will be a good test of its value; that will be interesting.
It will also be interesting to see if political analysts, such as Gallop, etc., will contribute to this assessment and definition of the value of sentiment analysis in political elections.
It's true that the social-media-using population doesn't accurately reflect the population as a whole, but I expect that analysts might be able to correct for the deviation.
And I'd be interested to see just how they're different.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
