{"id":209,"date":"2020-10-08T13:41:58","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T13:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1322400"},"modified":"2020-10-08T13:41:58","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T13:41:58","slug":"data-trump-is-more-engaging-on-facebook-now-than-he-was-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=209","title":{"rendered":"Data: Trump is more engaging on Facebook now than he was in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Facebook was the election battleground that helped fuel Donald Trump\u2019s journey to the White House in 2016<\/a>, and the president continues to dominate on the social media platform in 2020.<\/p>\n

My initial analysis of 4,450 Facebook posts from equal campaign periods before the 2016 and 2020 elections indicates that the current Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is trailing the performance of Hillary Clinton in 2016. In contrast, Trump is exceeding his 2016 performance.<\/p>\n

In my research of Facebook use<\/a> by British political parties, I\u2019ve seen Facebook fit ever more closely into the heart of modern political campaigning, with the rise of targeted advertising and novel types of organic (unpaid) posts and memes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While much attention has been paid to the growth of paid-for targeted advertising on Facebook<\/a>, research also points to the importance of organic campaigning<\/a> \u2013 social media activity that occurs without paid promotion. It is this organic battle that Trump won so clearly in 2016, and the data I\u2019ve been looking at shows a similar situation in 2020.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been using Facebook\u2019s research tool, Crowdtangle<\/a>, to compare the performance of posts made by the official Facebook pages of Clinton and Trump in 2016 with those by Trump and Biden in 2020. I focused on a 100-day period, ending 30 days before polling day in both years. Crowdtangle picks up all the posts sent by these two leaders\u2019 Facebook pages during the 100 days; however, as social media posts can be deleted, it is possible that some data has been lost.<\/p>\n

These pages only reflect a portion of party campaigns on Facebook because they don\u2019t include the targeted advertising battle currently underway, nor the hundreds of other Facebook pages the parties use to campaign. But the Biden and Trump official Facebook pages \u2013 with a combined following of 32 million \u2013 are central to how the two campaigns spread their message organically on the platform. As such, they provide a clear insight into the overall health of the two parties\u2019 campaigns, allowing for an appreciation of follower enthusiasm and the wider reach the candidates have achieved.<\/p>\n

Trump soldiers on as Biden stumbles<\/h2>\n

Facebook users can follow someone or something by liking the overall page. According to data from the archive site Wayback<\/a>, by early October, Trump had increased the number of people who like his Facebook page by 164% between 2016 and 2020, from 11 million to 29 million. He is far ahead of Biden on 3 million, who has half the 6 million people liking his page that Clinton had gathered in October 2016.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Graph<\/a>
<\/i><\/a>Number of people who follow a candidate\u2019s Facebook page by liking it in early October. Data estimates via Wayback machine., Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The Crowdtangle data shows that average engagement with Trump\u2019s posts also grew between the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Although he was already way ahead of Clinton on Facebook in 2016, his lead has now increased over Biden. Biden has also failed to achieve the levels of engagement on Facebook that Clinton had in 2016. The Democrats have allowed their position to fall back while the Republicans have stormed forward.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Graph<\/a>
<\/i><\/a>Average engagement with Facebook pages during a 100-day period. For 2016 the period was July 1 to October 9; for 2020 the period was June 26 to October 4. Data from CrowdTangle, Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

However, the number of times Trump\u2019s own posts have been shared has been going down since the 2016 campaign. This decline in shares is also evident when comparing shares of posts by Clinton and Biden. This shows that both Trump and Biden have followers who, although still likely to engage with posts, are less keen to take ownership of content and spread it directly to their own networks.<\/p>\n

This trend potentially fits into the wider stagnation of Facebook, which has experienced stalling user growth<\/a>, and it means political parties are having to battle even harder to engage their followers. This decline in shares is a direct threat to the ability of both the Biden and Trumps campaigns to break out of social media echo chambers<\/a>, environments where people only encounter information that reflects their existing opinions.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s small but active base<\/h2>\n

Although the Democrats appear to have acted far too late to develop Biden\u2019s page, a metric I\u2019ve developed called the \u201cvirtual member activity score\u201d shows a more positive picture for the Democrat candidate. This measure takes the total engagement and divides it by the number of followers to show the number of engagements a page has achieved per follower.<\/p>\n

The data shows that Biden has a small but active online support base who like, comment and share posts on Facebook at a similar rate to Trump\u2019s followers, but like and comment at higher rates than Clinton achieved.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Graph<\/a>
<\/i><\/a>Follower engagement activity, based on virtual member activity score. Crowdtangle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Although Biden\u2019s followers are few, they are very active. However, because they are less likely to share posts, content is not spreading as effectively. This is most clearly seen through average video views. As videos mainly auto-play on Facebook, this shows the reach posts achieved. In 2016, Clinton gathered 423,429 views per video post to Trump\u2019s 346,532. Her audience was extremely effective in sharing videos and content was clearly engaging. However, today Biden has fallen badly behind with 130,737 views per video post to Trump\u2019s 441,722. Although Biden has an engaged audience, his messages don\u2019t appear to be getting to the Facebook population.<\/p>\n

The fact that Trump\u2019s much larger support base is nearly as engaged as Biden\u2019s in terms of liking and sharing his posts means the Trump campaign has a far stronger ability to spread its message more widely across Facebook.<\/p>\n

Type of engagement<\/h2>\n

The data from Crowdtangle also suggest that the large increase in total engagement with Trump\u2019s posts isn\u2019t down to people who necessarily dislike him. While there has been an increase in comments (which may be negative), when looking at the type of reactions Facebook allows \u2013 love, wow, haha, sad, angry and care \u2013 Trump has not received more angry reactions than he did in 2016. Instead, he\u2019s increased the proportion of people who \u201cloved\u201d his posts between 2016 and 2020.<\/p>\n

This is in contrast to Biden, who has received fewer love and angry reactions, but more sad reactions compared with Clinton in 2016.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Graph<\/a>
<\/i><\/a>Types of reactions to candidates\u2019 Facebook pages (care did not exist in 2016). Crowdtangle, Author provided<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Overall, the picture today is remarkably similar to 2016. Facebook is still the most important social network for political campaigning because it is more representative of the US population<\/a>, and people\u2019s Facebook networks are more likely to include people they know in the real world<\/a> than networks such as Twitter.<\/p>\n

Engagement on Facebook matters, and it\u2019s in this popularity contest that Trump is succeeding once again. Today, many people are acting like digital doorstep campaigners for the president, delivering political content integrated with their own social characteristics. And at the moment, more people on Facebook are doing this for Trump than for Biden.\"The<\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> by Tristan Hotham<\/a>, PhD Researcher, University of Bath<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read next:<\/b> Are plug-in hybrids worse for the planet than we\u2019ve been told? It depends <\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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