Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials
The 2020 presidential election saw election officials experience physical and social media threats, harassment, and animosity. Although little research exists regarding animosity toward US election officials, observers noted a sharp increase in 2020 in animosity toward US election officials. The har...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2025-05-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Political Science |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2025.1488363/full |
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| author | Sreemanti Dey Sreemanti Dey Daniel Ebanks Daniel Ebanks Sarah Hashash Sarah Hashash R. Michael Alvarez |
| author_facet | Sreemanti Dey Sreemanti Dey Daniel Ebanks Daniel Ebanks Sarah Hashash Sarah Hashash R. Michael Alvarez |
| author_sort | Sreemanti Dey |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The 2020 presidential election saw election officials experience physical and social media threats, harassment, and animosity. Although little research exists regarding animosity toward US election officials, observers noted a sharp increase in 2020 in animosity toward US election officials. The harassment of election officials hindered their work in administering a free and fair election and may have generated doubts about electoral integrity. Our study: (1) Proposes a unique measurement and modeling strategy applicable across many social media networks to study toxicity directed at officials, institutions, or groups; (2) Collects a novel dataset of social media conversations about election administration in the 2020 election; (3) Uses joint sentiment-topic modeling to identify toxicity from the reactions of the public and election officials, and uses dynamic vector autoregression models to determine the temporal structure of the toxic conversations directed at election officials; (4) Finds that the level of animosity toward election officials spikes immediately after the election, that hostile topics overall make up about a quarter of the discussion share during this period, increasing to about 60% following the election, and that hostile topics come from left- and right-wing partisans. Our article concludes by discussing how similar data collection and topic modeling approaches could be deployed in future elections to monitor trolling and harassment of election officials, and to mitigate similar threats to successful election administration globally. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-b732d24972df401ea368c39f2ac5ed87 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2673-3145 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-05-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Political Science |
| spelling | doaj-art-b732d24972df401ea368c39f2ac5ed872025-08-20T02:34:10ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Political Science2673-31452025-05-01710.3389/fpos.2025.14883631488363Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officialsSreemanti Dey0Sreemanti Dey1Daniel Ebanks2Daniel Ebanks3Sarah Hashash4Sarah Hashash5R. Michael Alvarez6Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United StatesDepartment of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United StatesDivision of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United StatesInstitute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United StatesDivision of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United StatesDepartment of Government, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, United StatesDivision of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United StatesThe 2020 presidential election saw election officials experience physical and social media threats, harassment, and animosity. Although little research exists regarding animosity toward US election officials, observers noted a sharp increase in 2020 in animosity toward US election officials. The harassment of election officials hindered their work in administering a free and fair election and may have generated doubts about electoral integrity. Our study: (1) Proposes a unique measurement and modeling strategy applicable across many social media networks to study toxicity directed at officials, institutions, or groups; (2) Collects a novel dataset of social media conversations about election administration in the 2020 election; (3) Uses joint sentiment-topic modeling to identify toxicity from the reactions of the public and election officials, and uses dynamic vector autoregression models to determine the temporal structure of the toxic conversations directed at election officials; (4) Finds that the level of animosity toward election officials spikes immediately after the election, that hostile topics overall make up about a quarter of the discussion share during this period, increasing to about 60% following the election, and that hostile topics come from left- and right-wing partisans. Our article concludes by discussing how similar data collection and topic modeling approaches could be deployed in future elections to monitor trolling and harassment of election officials, and to mitigate similar threats to successful election administration globally.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2025.1488363/fullelection officialstopic modelingsocial mediaelection administrationsentiment analysis |
| spellingShingle | Sreemanti Dey Sreemanti Dey Daniel Ebanks Daniel Ebanks Sarah Hashash Sarah Hashash R. Michael Alvarez Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials Frontiers in Political Science election officials topic modeling social media election administration sentiment analysis |
| title | Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials |
| title_full | Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials |
| title_fullStr | Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials |
| title_full_unstemmed | Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials |
| title_short | Detecting and measuring social media attacks on American election officials |
| title_sort | detecting and measuring social media attacks on american election officials |
| topic | election officials topic modeling social media election administration sentiment analysis |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2025.1488363/full |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT sreemantidey detectingandmeasuringsocialmediaattacksonamericanelectionofficials AT sreemantidey detectingandmeasuringsocialmediaattacksonamericanelectionofficials AT danielebanks detectingandmeasuringsocialmediaattacksonamericanelectionofficials AT danielebanks detectingandmeasuringsocialmediaattacksonamericanelectionofficials AT sarahhashash detectingandmeasuringsocialmediaattacksonamericanelectionofficials AT sarahhashash detectingandmeasuringsocialmediaattacksonamericanelectionofficials AT rmichaelalvarez detectingandmeasuringsocialmediaattacksonamericanelectionofficials |