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What Tweets and YouTube comments have in common? Sentiment and graph analysis on data related to US elections 2020

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Shevtsov
  • Maria Oikonomidou
  • Despoina Antonakaki
  • Polyvios Pratikakis
  • Sotiris Ioannidis

Abstract

Most studies analyzing political traffic on Social Networks focus on a single platform, while campaigns and reactions to political events produce interactions across different social media. Ignoring such cross-platform traffic may lead to analytical errors, missing important interactions across social media that e.g. explain the cause of trending or viral discussions. This work links Twitter and YouTube social networks using cross-postings of video URLs on Twitter to discover the main tendencies and preferences of the electorate, distinguish users and communities’ favouritism towards an ideology or candidate, study the sentiment towards candidates and political events, and measure political homophily. This study shows that Twitter communities correlate with YouTube comment communities: that is, Twitter users belonging to the same community in the Retweet graph tend to post YouTube video links with comments from YouTube users belonging to the same community in the YouTube Comment graph. Specifically, we identify Twitter and YouTube communities, we measure their similarity and differences and show the interactions and the correlation between the largest communities on YouTube and Twitter. To achieve that, we have gather a dataset of approximately 20M tweets and the comments of 29K YouTube videos; we present the volume, the sentiment, and the communities formed in YouTube and Twitter graphs, and publish a representative sample of the dataset, as allowed by the corresponding Twitter policy restrictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Shevtsov & Maria Oikonomidou & Despoina Antonakaki & Polyvios Pratikakis & Sotiris Ioannidis, 2023. "What Tweets and YouTube comments have in common? Sentiment and graph analysis on data related to US elections 2020," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(1), pages 1-31, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0270542
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270542
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    8. Mike Thelwall & Pardeep Sud & Farida Vis, 2012. "Commenting on YouTube videos: From guatemalan rock to El Big Bang," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(3), pages 616-629, March.
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