The Genesis. New Hampshire is the home of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, and its citizens take this responsibility seriously. They will troop to meet the candidates, multiple times, at house parties, Rotary breakfasts, and schools long before the New Hampshire Secretary of State has even announced the date for the primary.
Following the candidates are the media, their numbers swelling with the candidate's viability and as the primary draws closer. In an effort to make sense of where the cycle is heading, media talk to citizens at the events, stop people on the street, and analyze the poll numbers. For the most part, citizens seem to feel that is part of their responsibility as Granite State voters to respond to media requests. The thirst for information about what NH citizens think is seemingly unquenchable.
As valuable as individual interviews are, they have obvious limitations. Polls can provide a fuller picture, but the cost in terms of time and finances is prohibitive. And, polls cannot effectively reach the youth audience on their mobile phones.
How could we tap into the sentiment of the audiences of political events, especially our youth, a rarely heard voice in American politics.
Contributions to Journalism. This web site gauges feelings about political candidates, issues, and events using hashtag data interpreted for sentiment. It is particularly useful to gauge youth sentiment, which has been difficult to observe and quantify. It can be filtered to cover a specific time period, such as a rally at the local high school, a debate or time between debates.
According to PEW's 2011 study, 60% of Twitter users are 18-35 years old. The analysis of Twitter traffic can provide valuable insight into the sentiments of a youthful Twitter audience toward a candidate, issue or event. And youth engagement in our political processes is critical to the health of our democracy.
Innovation. The use of sentiment analysis, which has been pioneered by business, was explored in the 2012 election. More recently, the analysis of Twitter data—or 56 million tweets--was key to the India Times Now coverage of the nation’s 2014 elections. “The language spoken on Twitter is the language spoken by the young in India,” Raheel Fasheed, of Twitter India. It was “fascinating,” he said, “to watch this entire election unfold on Twitter since January….If you look at the data as it is already visualized, we have been captured by it, stunned by it. “
User Experience. This app provides dynamic visualization of civic sentiment as expressed in Twitter, FB and Instagram.
As conceptualized, the user enters the names of multiple candidates to compare the sentiment inherent in the Twitter, FaceBook and Instagram feed through hashtag data. The data is real-time, and the graph visualizing the changing sentiment is shown in real-time. The latest tweets spin through the screen.
Several audiences would make use of this data, including:
• Journalists, to add robustness to their coverage plans; • Education, to visualize for students their voice in the political process; • Engaged citizens, to understand the real-time dynamics of politics; • Campaigns, to understand; and • Lobbyists.
Business Concept. The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication will launch this site for use during the midterm elections; it will seek the sponsorship of Wayin and other advertisers. It will drive journalists, educators, the public, campaigns and others to the site. This will help establish the validity of the site and its sentiment analysis tool.
After a successful test run, the Center will launch it for public use during the 2014 Presidential Election cycle. It will explore adding a donation button so that the consumers of this site will be able to make a donation to help support it.
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