Social Media Indicator and Local Elections in the Netherlands: Towards a Framework for Evaluating the Influence of Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Social media has become a popular tool in the political landscape. As a result, it is of increased importance to evaluate social media campaigns of politicians. However, there is currently little knowledge how to measure and evaluate the influence of social media in political campaigns, especially at the local scale. This chapter is a step further towards the development of a theoretical framework and an algorithm that contributes to more reliable impact measurement of social media campaigns by politicians. The Social Media Indicator-2 framework and a related scoring algorithm are introduced to evaluate the influence of individual political candidates via social media on their social environment. The framework is tested by applying it in an empirical pilot study based on the local 2014 municipal elections in the Netherlands. We collected data for the political candidates and their parties in a pre-defined period and were able to relate scores to voting outcome. Positive correlations were revealed between social media contribution scores of politicians and their preference votes within the province of Overijssel in the Netherlands.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSocial Media and Local Governments: Theory and Practice
EditorsM. Zahid Sobaci
Place of PublicationSwitzerland
PublisherSpringer
Pages281-298
Number of pages18
ISBN (Print)978-3-319-17721-2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Publication series

NamePublic Administration and Information Technology
PublisherSpringer International Publishing
Volume15

Keywords

  • HMI-MR: MULTIMEDIA RETRIEVAL

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