The Clinton Debate: Some Issues
On September 29th, roughly 80 million people “watched” the first presidential debate. By “watched,” we mean they tweeted, blogged, posted, and all other forms of technology-mediated communication (probably no telegraphs or actual phone calls though) about the first debate.
We here at the News in New Media center have been closely following this election. We have conducted research on select issue areas for each candidate. An analysis of conversation about Donald Trump’s Monday night performance can be found here.
Nearly 380,000 posts were made last week about Secretary Hillary Clinton. We identified five of the foremost public discourse topics surrounding this year’s election. Defense, economy, immigration, social issues, and health care are among both what voters care about and the most pressing issues America is facing.
The data show defense was the number one concern area for the viewing and soon-to-be voting public. Issue topics such as military spending, Syria, and ISIS are included in this category. Over 160,000 of Sec. Clinton’s media hits are from this one subject area.
Let’s take a look at a deep dive analysis of the sentiment of the 8,235 posts in the defense discussion.
The light green area shows that most of the conversation was overwhelmingly negative; over 75% negative compared to the 20% of positive sentiment. Social media users expressed deep concern and outrage about the U.S. lifting U.N. sanctions against Iranian Banks.
Other negative posts cite what they deem to be other general misconduct and corruption during Sec. Clinton’s career. Many posts also express disdain for the handling of Syria issues.
There are clearly some very strong opinions about Sec. Clinton in the area of defense. Even posts coded positively are examples of sarcasm.
Economy, the topic area with the highest hits for Donald Trump, is a close second to defense in Hillary Clinton’s analysis. Similarly to defense, a vast majority of the media hits are negative; they account for 77% of the 7,570 posts over the past week.
The posts range in subject matter from Hillary Clinton wanting to export jobs to Asia, proposals to raise taxes, and to suspicions of controversy around the Clinton Foundation.
Though most of the social media chatter about this election is negative, it shows that there is at least a rich dialogue about the political climate of this country. America may be hate-watching and only one short month from hate-voting, but they are loving their right to exercise their constitutional freedom of speech.
