Does social media use increase voter participation in UK General Elections?

该项目将建立在YouGov收集的2015年英国选举研究(IBES)现有互联网模块的基础上，该模块融合了调查和观察性社交媒体数据。主要目标将是方法论性质的，重点是评估每个数据来源的有效性和稳健性，以此作为衡量政治态度和行为的标准。调查研究是一种长期收集数据的方法，社会科学家在分析人类行为和态度时广泛使用这种方法。社交媒体数据来自个人的新闻提要和网络，为解决同样的问题提供了一种收集大量数据的替代但更无结构的方法。这两种方法都存在代表性和偏见的问题。将两者结合起来，意味着我们现在有潜力通过分析人们(在互联网上)的所作所为和他们所说的话来更好地理解他们。有没有比调查更好的方式来研究人们的态度和政治偏好？我们能通过研究他们使用的网站、他们发送的推文和他们写的帖子，找到关于政治行为的新见解吗？利用这些“观察性数据”，我们可以通过研究在线报道的政治偏好和实际活动之间的不匹配，来提高调查的可靠性。这一博士学位将匹配受访者的在线活动、他们访问的网站、他们的社交媒体数据以及调查回应(包括但不限于英国选举研究)，以调查在线活动与YouGov社会调查答案之间的联系。

This project would build on the existing 2015 internet module of the British Election Study (iBES) collected by YouGov that merges survey and observational social media data. The primary goal would be methodological in nature, and focus on evaluating the validity and robustness of each data source as a measure of political attitudes and behaviour. Survey research is a long-standing method for collecting data that is widely used by social scientists in their analyses of human behaviour and attitudes. Social media data, drawn from individuals' news feeds and networks offers an alternative but more unstructured method of collecting large quantities of data to address the same questions. Both methods are subject to problems of representation and bias. Combining the two means that we now have the potential to understand people far better by analysing both what they do (on the internet) with what they say. Are there better ways to study attitudes and political preferences than through surveys? Can we find out new insights about political behaviour by studying the websites they use, the tweets they send and the posts they write? Using this "observational data" may allow us to improve on the reliability of surveys by studying mismatches between reported and actual political preferences and activities online. This PhD would match survey respondents' online activities; the websites they visit, and their social media data alongside survey responses (including but not limited to the British Election Study) to investigate the link between online activity and answers to YouGov social surveys.