Social Media Discussion of Presidential Candidates Is Largely Negative

This chart shows the degree to which the pre-election coverage/discussion of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in traditional and social media has been positive or negative.

In the past months the U.S. presidential election has been omnipresent in traditional as well as in social media. Endless news stories, commentaries and polling results have been published and every move of the candidates has been scrutinized and thoroughly discussed across social media channels.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism analyzed thousands of news stories and millions of public tweets and Facebook posts regarding their general tone. The study finds that the pre-election discussion of the candidates on Facebook and Twitter has been overwhelmingly negative, while mainstream media has naturally been more balanced in its coverage. The majority of stories in the mainstream media were neutral in tone, but among those that weren’t the share of negatively toned stories far exceeded the share of positive coverage.