This document analyzes the top hashtags and word pairs used in reference to Hillary Clinton on social media from April 11-17, 2015. It finds that #WhyImNotVotingForHillary became a top trending topic and was used over 128,000 times in that period, showing an effort to hijack the pro-Clinton #Hillary2016 hashtag. It also determines that word pairs alone cannot accurately determine sentiment without context, as pairs like "vote" and "Hillary" were used negatively at times.

1. Effects of Social Media in
Political Campaigns
RANI TABOREK-POTTER

2. Top Ten Hashtags in Reference to
Hillary Clinton
 #hillary
 #tcot
 #whyimnotvotingforhillary
 #hillary2016
 #hillaryclinton
 #wakeupamerica
 #pjnet
 #hillarysdonors
 #benghazi
 #ohhillno

3. #WhyImNotVotingForHillary
 Doesn’t appear to have been used at all until April 11th 2015.
 Was for a time one of the top trending topics on Twitter.
 Has been used more than 128,000 times between April 11th and April 16th.

4. #WhyImNotVotingForHillary and
#Hillary2016
 #Hillary2016 was used more than
199,000 times between April 11th and
April 17th.
 #WhyImNotVotingForHillary was used in
conjunction with #Hillary2016 more than
10,000 times.
 Shows an effort from non-supporters to
hijack the #Hillary2016 hashtag.

5. Top Ten Word Pairs Used in Reference
to Hillary Clinton
 hillary,clinton
 hillary,clinton's
 hillary,ready
 dreams,made
 ready,dreams
 chipotle,manager
 vote,hillary
 records,show
 manager,hillary
 same,sex

6. Can Sentiment Be Determined?
 Word pairings that appear at first to be
positive are found to in some cases be used
in a negative tweet.
 This means that overall sentiment cannot
me correctly determined by the nature of
language alone.
 Word pairing Vote and Hillary appears to be
positive, but the example shows it can easily
be negative.

7. Positive, Negative, or Neutral?
 Word pairing Chipotle and Manger
appears to be a neutral combination, but
this tweet shows it is negative.
 The context of the #ChipotleGate story
shows mixed sentiment