The public's perception of political parties during the 2014 Québec election on Twitter

Abstract

Background This article investigates how to extract signals from social media (Twitter) concerning political parties during an election. Analysis 670,000 messages were collected during the 2014 Québec election regarding each political party using a framing strategy. After associating each message to one of the four main topics of the campaign, two logistic models were developed to describe the election. While having been set by the incumbent party, the topic of "Independence" was not the most important topic of the campaign ("Economy" and "Society" were). When dominating in terms of mentions, each party was associated to a topic, and such association changed during the campaign. Conclusion and implications From a practical standpoint, the findings of this article could be used to implement a framework to understand political campaigns dynamics through social media.