Presidential election
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Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election Open
Following the 2016 US presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumpti…
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Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote Open
Significance Support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election was widely attributed to citizens who were “left behind” economically. These claims were based on the strong cross-sectional relationship between Trump support and lacking a col…
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Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks Open
Significance Twitter and other social media platforms are believed to have altered the course of numerous historical events, from the Arab Spring to the US presidential election. Online social networks have become a ubiquitous medium for d…
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Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Open
The 2016 U.S. presidential election brought considerable attention to the phenomenon of "fake news": entirely fabricated and often partisan content that is presented as factual. Here we demonstrate one mechanism that contributes to the bel…
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Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure Open
Has rising import competition contributed to the polarization of US politics? Analyzing multiple measures of political expression and results of congressional and presidential elections spanning the period 2000 through 2016, we find strong…
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Social bots distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential election online discussion Open
Social media have been extensively praised for increasing democratic discussion on social issues related to policy and politics. However, what happens when this powerful communication tools are exploited to manipulate online discussion, to…
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Influence of fake news in Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election Open
The dynamics and influence of fake news on Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election remains to be clarified. Here, we use a dataset of 171 million tweets in the five months preceding the election day to identify 30 million tweets, …
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Fake News and The Economy of Emotions Open
This paper examines the 2016 US presidential election campaign to identify problems with, causes of and solutions to the contemporary fake news phenomenon. To achieve this, we employ textual analysis and feedback from engagement, meetings …
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Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election Open
In the 2016 US presidential election campaign, social media platforms were increasingly used as direct sources of news, bypassing the editorial media. With the candidates’ millions of followers, Twitter has become a platform for mass commu…
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Political Ideology Predicts Perceptions of the Threat of COVID-19 (and Susceptibility to Fake News About It) Open
The present research examined the relationship between political ideology and perceptions of the threat of COVID-19. Due to Republican leadership’s initial downplaying of COVID-19 and the resulting partisan media coverage, we predicted tha…
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Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon Open
This study investigated the cognitive processing of true and false political information. Specifically, it examined the impact of source credibility on the assessment of veracity when information comes from a polarizing source (Experiment …
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Disinformation and social bot operations in the run up to the 2017 French presidential election Open
Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been coor…
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Why Does Globalization Fuel Populism? Economics, Culture, and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism Open
There is compelling evidence that globalization shocks, often working through culture and identity, have played an important role in driving up support for populist movements, particularly of the right-wing kind. I start with an empirical …
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Explaining the Trump Vote: The Effect of Racist Resentment and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments Open
The campaign leading to the 2016 US presidential election included a number of unconventional forms of campaign rhetoric. In earlier analyses, it was claimed that the Trump victory could be seen as a form of protest voting. This article an…
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The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy Open
We develop and test a theory to address a puzzling pattern that has been discussed widely since the 2016 U.S. presidential election and reproduced here in a post-election survey: how can a constituency of voters find a candidate “authentic…
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County Presidential Election Returns 2000-2024 Open
This dataset contains county-level returns for presidential elections from 2000 to 2024.
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Anatomy of an online misinformation network Open
This dataset is provided to facilitate reproducibility of results presented in the following paper: Chengcheng Shao, Pik-Mai Hui, Lei Wang, Xinwen Jiang, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer and Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia (2018): Anatomy of …
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Mobilizing Sexism: The Interaction of Emotion and Gender Attitudes in the 2016 US Presidential Election Open
The outcome of the 2016 US presidential election cycle generated a great deal of attention about the political psychology of the average American voter. A familiar narrative was that authoritarianism, perhaps triggered by fears of cultural…
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Helping populism win? Social media use, filter bubbles, and support for populist presidential candidates in the 2016 US election campaign Open
International audience
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Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing Open
Many critics raise concerns about the prevalence of ‘echo chambers’ on social media and their potential role in increasing political polarization. However, the lack of available data and the challenges of conducting large-scale field exper…
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Network Analysis on Attitudes Open
In this article, we provide a brief tutorial on the estimation, analysis, and simulation on attitude networks using the programming language R. We first discuss what a network is and subsequently show how one can estimate a regularized net…
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Partisan Provocation: The Role of Partisan News Use and Emotional Responses in Political Information Sharing in Social Media Open
Peer Reviewed
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Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency’s impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017 Open
There is widespread concern that Russia and other countries have launched social-media campaigns designed to increase political divisions in the United States. Though a growing number of studies analyze the strategy of such campaigns, it i…
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Playing the Woman Card: Ambivalent Sexism in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Race Open
Late in the 2016 U.S. Presidential primary, Donald Trump attacked Hillary Clinton for playing the “woman’s card.” Theories of system justification suggest that attitudes about gender, particularly endorsement of hostile and benevolent sexi…
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Elite rhetoric can undermine democratic norms Open
Significance Democracies depend on candidates and parties affirming the legitimacy of election results even when they lose. These statements help maintain confidence that elections are free and fair and thereby facilitate the peaceful tran…
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An Evaluation of the 2016 Election Polls in the United States Open
The 2016 presidential election was a jarring event for polling in the United States. Preelection polls fueled high-profile predictions that Hillary Clinton’s likelihood of winning the presidency was about 90 percent, with estimates ranging…
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The Effects of Unsubstantiated Claims of Voter Fraud on Confidence in Elections Open
Political elites sometimes seek to delegitimize election results using unsubstantiated claims of fraud. Most recently, Donald Trump sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 US presidential election by falsely alleging widespread fraud. Our …
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An ideological asymmetry in the diffusion of moralized content on social media among political leaders. Open
Online social networks constitute a major platform for the exchange of moral and political ideas, and political elites increasingly rely on social media platforms to communicate directly with the public. However, little is known about the …
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A Long-Term Analysis of Polarization on Twitter Open
Social media has played an important role in shaping political discourse over the last decade. At the same time, it is often perceived to have increased political polarization, thanks to the scale of discussions and their public nature. In…
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Racism in Trump's America: reflections on culture, sociology, and the 2016 US presidential election Open
Despite much positive change in the post civil rights era, U.S. notions of racism and white supremacy remain powerful elements of American culture. The adaptability and enduring power of these forces can be seen in the emergence of a new h…