Analysis of the 2015 Presidential Campaign of Burkina Faso Expressed on Facebook

Abstract

Since the Arab spring, the social media have become more popular among young people in Africa. Their uses have been illustrated during political and social events that occurred recently in the continent. Not long ago, Burkina Faso has been a field of important political events, the insurrection followed by the presidential election. In this work, we study how Facebook has been used during the 2015 presidential campaign. We use a language model to analyze many Facebook pages of political parties and media. We find that the campaign debates have been focused on campaign slogans and on the candidates rather than their political programs. Our findings show that the Facebook pages content reflect the election result. The most quoted candidate has been the winner.