CCTP 804 Advanced Statistical Methodology - Final Project:

Social Media Use and Campaign Behavior

Elaine Yinan Cai
Introduction and Data
This is a joint project with professor Owens research seminar Media and
American Election. In the seminar, the research team designed and conducted a
survey on Survey Monkey, so the data used in this paper are primary data collected by
the team. 1182 respondents took this survey, among whom 592 are females (50.1%),
590 (49.9%) are males. The sex ratio is basically consistent with the national sex ratio
of the United States (1.05, male: female). Among the 1182 respondents, 37.7% are 18
to 29 years old (446); 47.0% are 30 to 49 years old (555), and 15.3% are 50 years old
or above (181). In terms of the sex ratio and age distribution, the data is
representative.

Research Question and Hypothesis

This paper explores the relationship between social media use and offline
campaign behavior. Previous studies are inconsistent with social medias effect on
engaging citizens in politics and elections. Some researches show evidences that only
social media political use has a positive influence on campaign behavior (Vitak et al.
2010; Johnson et al. 2011; Gil de Ziga 2012; Yamamoto, Kushin, and Dalisay 2013;
Gil de Ziga, Molyneux, and Zheng 2014;); while other researches reveal that even
social media use for interaction or social media use in general can engage people into

political elections (Xenos, Vromen, and Loader 2014). There are also studies
purporting that social media use, either for political purpose or for interaction, has no
influence on peoples offline campaign behaviors at all(Dimitrova et al. 2011;
Dimitrova and Bystrom 2013).
Nevertheless, though the findings of previous studies are inconsistent, we
observe that the majority support that social media use is a strong predictor of
peoples offline political behavior. Based on this observation, the author also
hypothesizes that social media political use is a strong predictor for voters offline
campaign behavior (H1). However, the author believes that social media are not the
most influential factor for campaign behavior, instead, political interest has greater
influence. Thus, the author hypothesizes that among demographics, political interest,
political knowledge, and social media political use, political interest is the strongest
predictor of campaign behavior (H2).
The author also develops a path model to explain why social media influence
campaign behavior (H3):
Political knowledge
Social media political use

Campaign behavior
Political interest

The author hypothesizes that social media political use influences campaign
behavior through increasing users political interest and political knowledge.
Moreover, the author hypothesizes that social media political use can be
classified into different categories (H4), and will use factor analysis to sort out the 21

items (q12a-q12u).
At last, since the voter turnout in the 2014 midterm election is reported as the
lowest in the past 72 years (The Editorial Board 2014; Alter and Oaklander 2015), the
author will explore the reason why the voter turnout is low, and test whether or not
social media use helps better predict the possibility of certain groups of people to cast
a ballot. The author thus hypothesizes that among younger people with low political
interest and low political knowledge, those who use social media for political
purposes are more likely to vote in the 2014 midterm election (H5); and among people
with low education, low political interest and low political knowledge, those who use
social media for political purpose are more likely to cast a ballot in the 2014 midterm
election (H6).

Measures
This project includes five groups of variables: demographics, social media
political use, political knowledge, political interest, and campaign behavior. Among
these variables, social media political use is the main independent variable, and
campaign behavior is the main dependent variable.
Demographics. Demographics refers to peoples basic information including
gender, race, education level, income, and so on. In this project, demographical
variables only include four items: gender, age, education, and income.
Social media political use. When social media users use online social platforms
specifically for political purpose, we regard it as social media political use. In the data

set, 21 items (q12a q12u) consist of the index of social media political use
(Cronbachs Alpha .923). We asked whether or not the respondents have done the 21
things on social media during election campaigns, including looked for information
about a candidate, followed news about a campaign, shared or reposted
information about the election or a candidate, expressed the opinion about a
candidate and or issue, organized a campaign-related event on social media,
donate an campaign on social media, and so on. Score 1 indicates Yes and score 2
refers to no.
Political knowledge. Broadly speaking, political knowledge refers to peoples
understanding towards politics and political issues, including basic factual knowledge
about political system, political issues, and politicians. In this study, we look into
peoples knowledge about election specifically. So political knowledge in this book
only refers to peoples knowledge towards political-campaign-related issues. We
measured peoples political knowledge by asking them to identify potential 2016
presidential candidates party identifications. Candidates include Republican Ted
Cruz, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, Independent Bernard Sanders, and so on.
These variables were coded into dummy variables, in which 1 means the respondents
identified the candidates party identifications correctly, while 0 means they answered
these questions wrongly. 14 items in total consist of the political knowledge index
(Cronbachs Alpha .896).
Political interest. In this study, political interest is defined as peoples interest
and attention towards election campaigns. One question in our survey measures this

variablehow interested are you in election campaigns, whose scale ranges from 1
very interested to 4 not at all interested.
Campaign behavior. Campaign behavior refers to offline events related to
election campaigns which require peoples psychical attendance and involves
face-to-face interaction. 9 items in question 10 (q10c-a10k) consist of the offline
activities index. Questions such as have you ever volunteered for a candidate's
campaign, donated money to a candidate, political party, or political organization
gone door to door for a political campaign, Displayed a yard sign, bumper
sticker,or button for a candidate are included (Cronbachs Alpha .818). In these 9
questions, yes is coded as 1 and no coded as 2.

Method
In this project, the author will adopt factor analysis, OLS regression, path nalysis
and logistic regression to test the hypotheses.
The author chooses these methods because these methods are commonly used
and broadly accepted in the field of political communication. Researchers usually
adopt factor analysis to distinguish similar concepts and definitions. For example, Gil
de Ziga (2013) employed factor analysis in his research to classify the difference
between civic engagement and political participation, so as to decide whether political
consumerism should be categorized into civic participation or political
consumerism (and he found that political consumerism was closer to civic
participation instead of political participation, which contradicted his initial

hypothesis).
Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) is not very commonly used in political
communication, however, the author decides to incorporate this method because the
author find it is a reliable test, and the results of MDS analysis are usually consistent
with the result of factor analysis. So the author decides to employ this technique as a
double check for the results of the factor analysis.
Though cluster analysis has a similar function with factor analysis and MDS, the
author does not use it because cluster analysis is somewhat unreliablechanging any
parameter in this analysis can change the whole result. This method might be more
popular in scientific studies rather than in social science researches. So the decides to
exclude this method.
Logistic regression and path analysis are also popular in political communication
and political science. Since a key dependent variable in the fieldsvoting
behavioris a dichotomous variable (there are only two values for this variable:
voted or did not vote/ will vote or will not vote), so political scientists use binary
logistic regression a lot. Path analysis is commonly used, too, because it allows
researchers to compare causal relationships of different factors (independent variables)
on the dependent variable. Sometimes more than one causal relationship exist in a
hypothesis. At this time, path analysis is useful for researchers can incorporate more
than one causal relationship in the model.
The author will not use MANOVA, ACOVA, or pooled time series analysis
because the dataset in this project is cross-sectional.

Results and Analyses

The factor analysis shows that there are 3 factors among the 21 observed
variables, because 3 components eigenvalues are larger than 1. Besides, component 4
is the elbow on the scree plot. Three dots are before the elbow, which indicates that
there are 3 factors among those variables.
Rotated Component Matrixa
Component
1
2
Shared or reposted
information about the
election or a candidate
Shared campaign-related
content
Expressed an opinion about a
candidate or issue knowing
others may disagree
Shared or posted an election
video or picture
Tried to convince others to
turn out to vote
Participated in
election-related discussions
Tried to convince others to
vote for or against a
candidate
Encouraged other people to
take action on behalf of a
candidate or issue
Liked or favorited
campaign-related content
Clicked the "I Voted" button
on Facebook or announced
that you voted on social
media

.783

.196

.167

.770

.225

.157

.718

.057

.305

.696

.310

.101

.683

.143

.238

.650

.162

.272

.633

.290

.187

.620

.383

.160

.599

.235

.267

.464

.212

.178

Organized a campaign
.114
.786
related event
Created campaign-related
.229
.688
content
Joined a campaign-related
.309
.686
group
Donated to a campaign
.162
.682
Accepted a friend request
from a political candidate,
.296
.626
political party, or political
organization
Been encouraged to donate
to a candidate, political
party, or political
.295
.423
organization through social
media
Learned about candidates
.218
.000
and issues
Looked for information
.194
.139
about a candidate
Followed news about a
.283
.129
campaign
Watched campaign ads
.196
.181
Followed those with
opposing political views to
.366
.260
your own
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 5 iterations.

.006
.086
.126
.154
.190

.360

.824
.804
.776
.616
.400

Figure 1.
Observing the rotated component matrix (figure 1), we find that variables in
factor 1 are all about online political expression or online persuasion; variables in
factor 2 can be categorized as online political activities or online activism; and
that variables in factor 3 are all political information seeking behaviors.
Almost all the items listed have simple structures (having high factor loadings
for only one factor). However, the categorization for several variables are

controversial.
First, though the factor analysis shows that encouraging other people to take
action on behalf of a candidate or issue falls into the first category online political
expression or persuasion, this item seems to fit better into the second category
(online activism) theoretically. After pulling this variable out of the first category,
the Cronbachs alpha of the remaining variables decreases from .902 to .892, which is
not a lot. Since Cronbachs alpha .892 still indicates a high reliable scale, the author
decided to pull encouraging other people to take action on behalf of a candidate or
issue out of the first category, and put this variable into online activism, because it
does not theoretically fit into the first category. After this item was put into the scale
for the second category (online activism), the Cronbachs alpha for the scale of
online activism increases from .795 to .818. This indicates that encouraging people
to take actions fits online activism better.
The author also finds accepting a friend request from a political candidate,
political party, or political organization seems not to fit into online activism.
However, after pulling it out, the Cronbachs alpha for the online activism scale
drops from .795 to .755, which is somewhat observable. So the author decided to keep
this item in this category.
Thus, the final classifications are:
Factor 1: online political expression and online persuasion, which includes 9
items: Shared or reposted information about the election or a candidate Shared
campaign-related content Expressed an opinion about a candidate or issue knowing

others may disagree Shared or posted an election video or picture Tried to

convince others to turn out to vote Participated in election-related discussions
Tried to convince others to vote for or against a candidate Liked or favorited
campaign-related content Clicked the "I Voted" button on Facebook or announced
that you voted on (Cronbachs alpha=.892).
Factor 2: online activism, which includes 7 items: Organized a campaign
related event Created campaign-related content Joined a campaign-related group
Donated to a campaign Accepted a friend request from a political candidate,
political party, or political organization Been encouraged to donate to a candidate,
political party, or political organization through social media and Encouraged other
people to take action on behalf of a candidate or issue (Cronbachs alpha=.818).
Factor 3: online campaign information seeking, which includes 5 items:
Learned about candidates and issues Looked for information about a candidate
Followed news about a campaign Watched campaign ads, and Followed those
with opposing political views to your own (Cronbachs alpha=.801).
Accordingly, H4 is supported, social media political use can be classified into
different categories.
Unfortunately, the author failed to conduct the multidimensional scaling (MDS)
test because SPSS shows that there are not enough cases in the dataset for this
analysis, Thus the author did not conduct this analysis to double check the result of
the factor analysis.
As for the influence on campaign behavior of demographics, political interest,

political knowledge, and social media use, the OLS regression shows that social
media use (=.565), instead of political interest (=.124), has the strongest
influence on campaign behavior (figure 2). The partial correlation test also verifies
this finding. The partial correlation also shows that social media political uses
influence on campaign behavior is not mediated by political interest, political
knowledge, and education. After controlling these three variables, the correlation
between social media political use and campaign behavior only drops around .006
(from .643 to .587). This outcome confirms that social media political use has the
strongest influence on campaign behavior. H1 is supported while H2 is rejected1:
social media political use is a strong predictor of voters offline campaign behavior,
while political interest is not the strongest predictor of campaign behavior.

figure 2.
The ANOVA test shows that this regression model is significant (p=.00).
The adjusted R square of this model is .463, which means this model explains 46.3%
of all variances of the dependent variable. Both ANOVA and R2 indicate that this
model is reliable.
It is surprising that social media political use is the strongest influencer of

1

Note: for gender is not significantly correlated with campaign behavior, and income is not significant in the OLS
model, these two demographical variables were excluded

campaign behavior, which is stronger than political interest. The frequency test shows
that nearly all of the respondents are social media user (1152, 97.5%); only 2.5% (30)
of the respondents didnt have social media account. Among the respondents, 84.5%
use social media for political purpose, at least occasionally (figure 3). Since a
majority of social media users use these platforms for political purpose (whether or
not they are interested in politics), and social media political use is the strongest
influencer on campaign behavior, it may indicate that social media can engage people
into offline campaign activities.

figure 3.

figure 4.
However, this conclusion may bear limitations: 78.9% of all our respondents are

interested in election campaigns, so the percentage of those who use social media for
political purpose in our sample might be higher than the population. The sample may
lack representativeness.

As for the path analysis, the goodness of fit for the overall path model is .55,
indicating that the model has a strong explanatory power.

E1=.96

Political knowledge
.283
Social media political use

.112
.416

Campaign behavior
.561

.347

.144
Political interest

e2=.94

e3=.74

Path 1: political knowledge = .283 SMpoliticaluse

Adjusted R2=.079

Path 2: political interest = .347 SMpoliticaluse

Adjusted R2=.120

Path 3: campaign behavior = .112 politicalknowledge + .114 politicalinterest +

.561SMpoliticaluse
e1= sqrt (1 .0792).96; e2= sqrt (1 .1202).94;
GOF=1 e12 * e22 * e32 = 1 .962 * .942 *.742 .55

Adjusted R2=.452
e3= sqrt (1 .4522).74

The path model shows that it is possible that social media political use influences
campaign behavior through increasing users political interest and political knowledge
(GOF of the model: .55). H3 is supported.

At last, the logistic regression shows that among young people (18-29) with low
political interest and low political knowledge, the possibility of those who seldom use
social media for political purpose vote in the 2014 midterm election is .138, while the
possibility of voting in the 2014 midterm election for those who use often social
media for political purpose is .359. H5 is supported. This may implies that social
media can engage more young people who are not interested in politics to vote.
Similarly, among people with low education level (highest education level high
school), low political interest and low political knowledge, the possibility of voting in
the 2014 midterm election for those who nearly do not use social media for political
purpose is .109, while the possibility of voting voting in the 2014 midterm election
for those who use social media for political purpose is .299. H6 is supported. This may
implies that social media can engage more lower educated people who are not
interested in politics to vote.
Both of the two logistic regression models are significant (Chi Square tests are
significant while Hosmer and Lemeshow Test are insignificant), which means the two
models works well and the results shown are reliable.
The pseudo R2 for the first model (DV: whether or not voting in the 2014
midterm election; IV: political interest, political knowledge, social media political use,

and age) is .183 (Cox & Snell R2) and .247 (Nagelkerke R2), which means the model
can explain around 20% of all variances of the dependent variable; after adding the
independent variables into the model, the predict possibility increase from 59.1% to
71.9%.
The pseudo R2 for the second model (DV: whether or not voting in the 2014
midterm election; IV: political interest, political knowledge, social media political use,
and education) is .184 (Cox & Snell R2) and .248 (Nagelkerke R2), which means the
model can also explain around 20% of all variances of the dependent variable; after
adding the independent variables into the model, the predict possibility increase from
59.1% to 71.8%. All of the independent variables in these two models are significant.

Conclusion an discussion
In conclusion, there are three main types of social media political use: online
political expression (such as sharing or commenting to political contents, and like
political contents), online activism (such as donating money to candidates), and online
political information seeking (such as looking for information about a candidate).
Surprisingly, social medias role in campaign behavior is the largest among
domestics, political interest, and political knowledge. Social media political use is the
best predictor for campaign behavior, and its influence is not mediated by a persons
political interest, political knowledge, and education level.
At last, social media may have the function of engaging young people who are
initially not interested in politics into political elections. Social media may also be

able to increase voter turnout among lower educated people with little interest in
politics.
Statistical analyses in this paper support social media political uses strong effect
on campaign behavior. Except for social medias predictive power, this paper also
purports that social media may have the ability to engage young people and less
educated people into political elections. Social medias positive influence on election
campaigns and democracy may be larger than people think.
Social medias role in American elections has long been either over-estimated or
under-estimated. Few people evaluate social medias role objectively. Though
absolute objectivity is unreachable, the author still encourages readers to evaluate
social medias role critically and as objective as possible. This paper provides
empirical evidences supporting social medias strong influence on American elections.
But this paper is only a piece for the whole puzzle of American Elections. To
understand social medias role in elections and campaign behavior, we still need more
research, more observations, and more reflections.
Nevertheless, at least this paper reveals some new findings: social medias role is
larger than political interest in campaign behavior. Future researches may put a step
further, exploring the underlying mechanism of why social medias influence is larger
than political interest. Future researches can also incorporate a panel study or
experiment, to test whether or not the use of social median can increase peoples
political interest and political knowledge, as well as to test whether or not social
media can engage young citizens and less educated citizens into political elections.

References:
Alter, Charlotte, and Mandy Oaklander. 2015. Voter Turnout in Midterm Elections
Hits 72-Year Low. Time.
http://time.com/3576090/midterm-elections-turnout-world-war-two/.
Dimitrova, Daniela V., Adam Shehata, Jesper Strmbck, and Lars W. Nord. 2011.
The Effects of Digital Media on Political Knowledge and Participation in
Election Campaigns: Evidence From Panel Data. Communication Research,
November, 0093650211426004. doi:10.1177/0093650211426004.
Dimitrova, Daniela V., and Dianne Bystrom. 2013. The Effects of Social Media on
Political Participation and Candidate Image Evaluations in the 2012 Iowa
Caucuses. American Behavioral Scientist 57 (11): 156883.
doi:10.1177/0002764213489011.
Gil de Ziga, Homero. 2012. Social Media Use for News and Individuals Social
Capital, Civic Engagement and Political Participation. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 17 (3): 31936.
doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01574.x.
Gil de Ziga, Homero, Lauren Copeland, and Bruce Bimber. 2013. Political
Consumerism: Civic Engagement and the Social Media Connection. New
Media

&

Society,

June,

1461444813487960.

doi:10.1177/1461444813487960.
Gil de Ziga, Homero, Logan Molyneux, and Pei Zheng. 2014. Social Media,
Political Expression, and Political Participation: Panel Analysis of Lagged

and Concurrent Relationships. Journal of Communication 64 (4): 61234.

doi:10.1111/jcom.12103.
Johnson, T., Zhang, W., Bichard, S., & Seltzer, T. (2011). United we stand? Online
social network sites and civic engagement. In A Networked Self: Identity,
Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. Edited by Zizi Papacharissi,
185 207. New York: Routledge.
The Editorial Board. 2014. The Worst Voter Turnout in 72 Years. The New York
Times,

November

11.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72years.html.
Vitak, Jessica, Paul Zube, Andrew Smock, Caleb T. Carr, Nicole Ellison, and Cliff
Lampe. 2010. Its Complicated: Facebook Users Political Participation in
the 2008 Election. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 14
(3): 10714. doi:10.1089/cyber.2009.0226.
Xenos, Michael, Ariadne Vromen, and Brian D. Loader. 2014. The Great Equalizer?
Patterns of Social Media Use and Youth Political Engagement in Three
Advanced Democracies. Information, Communication & Society 17 (2):
15167. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2013.871318.
Yamamoto, Masahiro, Matthew J. Kushin, and Francis Dalisay. 2013. Social Media
and Mobiles as Political Mobilization Forces for Young Adults: Examining
the Moderating Role of Online Political Expression in Political Participation.

New Media & Society, December, 1461444813518390.

doi:10.1177/1461444813518390.