This article analyzes social media engagement when elections are adjudicated to one of the contending parties. We extend existing models of political dialogue to explain differences in the engagement (i.e. time-to-retweet) when users support the winner or losers of an election. We show that users who support the winning candidate are more engaged and have a lower time-to-retweet (higher engagement). We also show heterogeneity in Twitter engagement conditional on the number of followers, with accounts with more followers being less sensitive to the election result. We measure the effect of electoral adjudication using a regression discontinuity design, with estimates by winning or losing status, and for accounts with many followers (high authority) or with few followers (low authority). Analyses use Twitter data collected in Argentina (2019), Brazil (2018), United Kingdom (2019), and the United States (2016).
Ernesto Calvo (PhD, Northwestern University 2001), is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and Director of the interdisciplinary Lab for Computational Social Science (iLCSS). His research focuses on the study of comparative political institutions, political communication, and social networks. He is the author of five books and over 70 publications on the politics of Latin America, Europe, and the United States. The American Political Science Association (APSA) has recognized his research with the Leubbert Best Article Award, the Lawrence Longley Award, and the Michael Wallerstein Awards.