# Trump vs. Hillary: What went Viral during the 2016 US Presidential Election

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03375 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.03375/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Jul 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

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- [MAGPIE: Multi-Task Media-Bias Analysis Generalization for Pre-Trained Identification of Expressions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07910/) (2024)
- [Cross-Target Stance Detection: A Survey of Techniques, Datasets, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13594/) (2024)
- [Social and Political Framing in Search Engine Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13325/) (2025)
- [LASTIST: LArge-Scale Target-Independent STance dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25783/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we present quantitative and qualitative analysis of the top retweeted tweets (viral tweets) pertaining to the US presidential elections from September 1, 2016 to Election Day on November 8, 2016. For everyday, we tagged the top 50 most retweeted tweets as supporting or attacking either candidate or as neutral/irrelevant. Then we analyzed the tweets in each class for: general trends and statistics; the most frequently used hashtags, terms, and locations; the most retweeted accounts and tweets; and the most shared news and links. In all we analyzed the 3,450 most viral tweets that grabbed the most attention during the US election and were retweeted in total 26.3 million times accounting over 40% of the total tweet volume pertaining to the US election in the aforementioned period. Our analysis of the tweets highlights some of the differences between the social media strategies of both candidates, the penetration of their messages, and the potential effect of attacks on both