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-section 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.

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This paper presents a novel concept for a low-mass, 50-m 2 -deployable, P-band dual polarization antenna that can measure terrestrial biomass levels from a spacecraft in a low Earth orbit. A monolithic array of feed and radiating patches is bonded to a transversally curved structure consisting of two Kevlar sheets. The first sheet supports the array and the other sheet supports a ground plane. The two sheets are connected by a compliant Kevlar core that allows the whole structure to be folded elastically and to spring back to its original, undamaged shape. Test pieces have been made to demonstrate both the radio frequency and mechanical aspects of the design, particularly the radio frequency performance before and after folding the structure. It is concluded that the proposed design concept has high potential for large, low-frequency antennas for low-cost missions.

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