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http://dx.doi.org/10.5392/IJoC.2021.17.4.052

Rethinking the US Presidential Election: Feminism and Big Data  

CHUNG, Sae Won (Division of International and Area Studies, Pukyong National University)
PARK, Han Woo (Department of Media and Communication, Yeungnam University)
Publication Information
International Journal of Contents / v.17, no.4, 2021 , pp. 52-61 More about this Journal
Abstract
The 2020 US Presidential Election was a highly-anticipated moment for our global society. During the election period, the most intriguing issue was who would be the winner-Trump or Biden? Among the possible main themes of the 2020 election, from the COVID-19 pandemic to racism, this study focused on feminism ('women') as a main component of Biden's victory. To explore the character of Biden's supporters, this paper focused on internet spaces as a source of public opinion. To guide the data analysis, this study employed four indices from empirical studies on Big Data analytics: issue salience, attention diversity, emotional mentioning, and semantic cohesion. The main finding of this study was that the representative keyword 'women' appeared more prevalently within content related to Biden than Trump, and the keyword pairs indicated that female voters were the main reason for Trump's failure but the root cause of Biden's victory. The results of this study indicated the role of the internet as a forum for public opinion and a fountain of political knowledge, which requires more rigorous investigation by researchers.
Keywords
US Presidential Election; Issue Salience; Attention Diversity; Emotional Mentioning; Semantic Cohesion;
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