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Social media platforms are valuable tools for political campaigns. In this study, we analyze a dataset representing over 22 thousand Facebook posts by candidates and over 48 million comments to understand the nature of online discourse. Specifically, we study the interaction between political candidates and the public during the 2016 presidential elections in the United States. We outline a novel method to classify commentators into four groups: strong supporters, supporters, dissenters, and strong dissenters. Comments by each group on policy-related topics are analyzed using sentiment analysis. Finally, we discuss avenues for future research to study the dynamics of social media platforms and political campaigns.
The future sustainability of cities is contingent on economic resilience. Yet, urban resilience is still not well understood, as cities are frequently disrupted by shocks, such as natural disasters, economic recessions, or changes in government policies. These shocks can significantly alter a city’s economic structure. Yet the term economic structure is often used metaphorically and is often not understood sufficiently by those having to implement policies. Here, we operationalized the concept of economic structure as a weighted network of interdependent industry sectors. For 938 U.S. urban areas, we then quantified the magnitude of change in the areas’ economic structures over time, focusing on changes associated with the 2007–2009 global recession. The result is a novel method of analyzing urban change over time as well as a typology of U.S. urban systems based on how their economic structures responded to the recession. We further compared those urban types to changes in economic performance during the recession to explore each structural type’s adaptive capacity. Results suggest cities that undergo constant but measured change are better positioned to weather the impacts of economic shocks.
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