Challenges in Applying Machine Learning Methods: Studying Political Interactions on Social Networks

Abstract

This document discusses the potential role of Machine Learning (ML) methods in social science research, in general, and specifically in studies of political behavior of users in social networks (SN). This paper explores challenges which occurred in a set of studies which we conducted regarding classification of comments to posts of politicians and suggests ways of addressing these challenges. These challenges apply to a larger set of online political behavior studies.