# Does Campaigning on Social Media Make a Difference? Evidence from candidate use of Twitter during the 2015 and 2017 UK Elections

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.07087 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07087/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 19 Oct 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Design and analysis of tweet-based election models for the 2021 Mexican legislative election](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00626/) (2023)
- [DoDo Learning: DOmain-DemOgraphic Transfer in Language Models for Detecting Abuse Targeted at Public Figures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16811/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Social media are now a routine part of political campaigns all over the world. However, studies of the impact of campaigning on social platform have thus far been limited to cross-sectional datasets from one election period which are vulnerable to unobserved variable bias. Hence empirical evidence on the effectiveness of political social media activity is thin. We address this deficit by analysing a novel panel dataset of political Twitter activity in the 2015 and 2017 elections in the United Kingdom. We find that Twitter based campaigning does seem to help win votes, a finding which is consistent across a variety of different model specifications including a first difference regression. The impact of Twitter use is small in absolute terms, though comparable with that of campaign spending. Our data also support the idea that effects are mediated through other communication channels, hence challenging the relevance of engaging in an interactive fashion.