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

该项目将建立在YouGov收集的英国选举研究（iBES）现有的2015年互联网模块的基础上，该模块合并了调查和观察社交媒体数据。主要目标是方法上的，重点是评价每一个数据来源作为政治态度和行为的衡量标准的有效性和可靠性。调查研究是社会科学家在分析人类行为和态度时广泛使用的一种收集数据的长期方法。从个人新闻源和网络中提取的社交媒体数据提供了一种替代但更无组织的方法来收集大量数据以解决相同的问题。这两种方法都有代表性和偏见的问题。将两者结合起来意味着，我们现在有可能通过分析人们（在互联网上）做什么和他们说什么来更好地了解他们。有没有比调查更好的方法来研究态度和政治偏好？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，我们能找到关于政治行为的新见解吗？使用这种“观察数据”可以让我们通过研究报告和实际政治偏好和在线活动之间的不匹配来提高调查的可靠性。该博士将匹配调查受访者的在线活动;他们访问的网站，以及他们的社交媒体数据以及调查响应（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.