THE ECHO: Weekly Roundup of Political Discussion on Twitter (March 15–21, 2018)
Unauthorized Political Use of Facebook Data by Cambridge Analytica for the Trump 2016 Campaign, Vladimir Putin’s Re-Election, and Trump’s Tweets on Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, and Sen. Dean Heller
Much of the political conversation on Twitter surrounded President Donald J. Trump. His 2016 campaign’s use of Facebook data re-sold by Cambridge Analytica caused Mark Zuckerberg to respond personally. Trump took to Twitter to cheer on the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, attack Special Counsel Robert Mueller directly for his Russia Investigation, and to clear the GOP field for incumbent Sen. Dean Heller (NV), a previous target of the president’s ire. Stormy Daniels remained active on Twitter ahead of her interview with Andersen Cooper on 60 Minutes this Sunday. Finally, Trump, against his national security team’s recommendations, congratulated Vladimir Putin on his re-election. In campaign news, Illinois held primary elections which were largely ignored on Twitter, perhaps in part because they were not nationalized by media and partisans, in contrast to the special election in Pennsylvania two weeks ago.
Facebook Data and the 2016 Election
This week’s controversy surrounding the 2016 presidential election was about what Trump’s digital director and 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale identified as a key reason why they won the election: Facebook. This week, former Facebook employee Christopher Wylie told The Observer that he worked with a Cambridge University professor to exploit Facebook to harvest more than 50 million Facebook profiles for Cambridge Analytica, which was the data firm used by Trump’s campaign. This data helped efficiently direct media and strategic decisions and was not authorized by Facebook, although it had done this for the Obama campaign according to former staffer Carol Davidsen (skip to 19:00 for the explanation on how).
Our research showed the damage to both organizations. Tweets about Facebook were up 223 percent over the previous week to 1,772,185 while tweets about Cambridge Analytica were up 73,391 percent over the previous week to 1,347,175, suggesting the latter is in much more trouble and explaining the suspension of their CEO, Alexander Nix. An undercover video of Nix had him claiming that their data, through Cambridge University’s misuse of Facebook’s API, “informed all the strategy.” The Ukranian sex lure parts of the video no doubt increased the buzz. Tweets about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were up 4,127 percent to 141,022, driven by his appearance on CNN and other media trying to respond to the crisis.
Trump’s Tweet Storms
Trump’s Twitter was working overtime this week spiking related tweets about the president by eight percent to 5,950,240 related posts. Trump averages about 6.5 million per week based on our tracking since August 2017. In the cases of McCabe, Mueller, and Heller, Trump took characteristically aggressive stances. For the past several months, Trump has targeted McCabe as biased against him because his wife received political help from former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close associate of the Clintons. McCabe’s firing attracted 1,088,552 related tweets, up 1,850 from the previous week. He might return to the Twitter limelight, since he kept notes about his dealings with the president.
In contrast, for several months Trump avoided targeting Special Counsel Robert Mueller directly but this week he did as well as the others working on the Russia investigation, increasing Twitter traffic about him 339 percent from the previous week up to 418,871 related posts. This drew blowback from Republicans, who suggested the president would find trouble if he fired Mueller.
Perhaps most effective, Trump tweeted Danny Tarkanian out of a race against Sen. Dean Heller, who is in a toss-up race in Nevada for re-election. This fueled an increase in tweet volume about Heller of 99 percent (19,586 related tweets) from the previous week.
Foreign and Domestic Campaigns
Perhaps the biggest political victory of the week was Vladimir Putin’s re-election as president of Russia. As with China President Xi Jinping’s reappointment without term limits, it appears that Putin’s win is bringing him closer to serving for life past his six-year term. Putin won 75 percent of ballots cast in an election marred by the elimination of strong competitors from the field. Tweets about Putin (1,066,542) in the United States were up 58 percent from last week.
In a call with President Trump this week, Putin was congratulated for the victory, directing criticism at the Oval Office for disregarding specific recommendations from the national security team not to do so. A potential source of the leak is H.R. McMaster (or someone working on his behalf), who White House sources have leaked is on his way out of the administration. Tweets about McMaster were up 1,540 percent but there were relatively few tweets, 63,561, because he remains on staff.
Finally, there were the important but comparatively under-noticed campaigns in Illinois, which included a billionaire (J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat) defeating a multimillionaire (Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner) to be their party’s nominees for governor. While tweets about the primaries and elections in this state were up 1,607 percent over the previous week, only 61,883 posts were registered by our analytics platform.
“The ECHO” is a publication of The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM). This edition covers political activity on Twitter in the United States March 15–21, 2018. All data from this post, as well as our methodology, is available on our PEORIA Project website and weekly by email (subscribe here). Also available on our website is the first edition of The ECHO Quarterly, summarizing three big things this research can teach campaigns and elected officials.
