2017/12/28 by Yu Wang, Jiebo Luo, Wang, Yu +1
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Advertising #Business #Economics #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Law #Media Influence and Politics #Media Studies and Communication #Media studies #Political science #Politics #Popularity #Preference #Presidential campaign #Presidential election #Presidential system #Public opinion #Social Media and Politics #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Sociology #White (mutation) #cs.SI
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1712.09757
10 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1702.00048
arxiv created 2017/12/28 · openalex publication_date 2017/12/28 · arxiv updated 2017/12/29 · openalex created_date 2018/01/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Thanks to their name recognition and popularity, celebrities play an important role in American politics. Celebrity endorsements could add to the momentum of a politician's campaign and win the candidate extensive media coverage. There is one caveat though: the political preference of celebrity followers might differ from that of the celebrity. In this paper we explore that possibility. By carefully studying six prominent endorsements to the leading presidential candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and statistically modeling Twitter "follow" behavior, we show (1) followers of all the celebrities with the exception of Lady Gaga are more likely to follow a large number of candidates and (2) the opinion of celebrity followers could systematically differ from that of the celebrity. Our methodology can be generalized to the study of such events as NBA players' refusing to visit the White House and pop singers' meeting with Dalai Lama.