Politicians & the public: The analysis of political communication in social media

Nowadays, social media has a pivotal role in political communication. Politicians, parties, and the public engage in social networks like Twitter or Facebook. This panel focuses on election campaigns and policy-making process in social media. How do politicians use social media during elections? How can we identify the public opinion of voters through the application of text-mining in social media? The US presidential election in 2016, possess big discussions and critics about the general social media usage in the context of election campaigns. Considering the case of Cambridge Analytica, information leakage, privacy issues, and trust also play an essential role as well. In respect of truthfulness, how can we encourage more robust and wide-reaching sharing of trustworthy material, such as scholarly research? Besides politicians, the public comes more and more into the focus as a political stakeholder in social media. How does the public engage in policy-making? Electronic-petitioning serves as a medium to mobilize support and interest of the public. The panel provides the possibility for speaker and participants to exchange both, information as well as methodological approaches of political communication in social media. Copyright © 2018 by Association for Information Science and Technology