Thursday, February 13

 

2:30–5:00 p.m.

WIDS @ Penn Workshop

Join us at Amy Gutmann Hall for an engaging kick-off workshop as part of the Women in Data Science (WiDS) @ Penn Conference. Titled “Data to Discovery: Exploring AI with a Patent Case Study, ChatGPT, and Generative Models,” this session will be led by Linda Zhao and Xinyu Xie from the University of Pennsylvania.

Friday, February 14

 

8:30–9:00 a.m.

Check In + Grab-and-Go Breakfast

9:00–9:15 a.m.

Welcoming Remarks

9:15–10:05 a.m.

Keynote Address

10:05–10:35 a.m.

Academic Talk with Q&A

10:35–10:50 a.m.

Break

10:50–11:20 a.m.

Academic Talk with Q&A

11:20–11:35 a.m.

RHETORIC AND RECEPTION: Driving Factors of Engagement in Trump and Biden’s Tweets

At its core, American democracy values the voices of the people and encourages civic participation. While previously, politics and presidents felt removed from citizens’ lives, the internet has made the relationship between presidents and their constituents far closer. Now, many presidents frequently use X (formerly Twitter) to answer questions, define policies, and share ideas.

Regarding the events of January 6, many have speculated that presidential communication through X fueled this violence. Thus, we aim to investigate how Biden and Trump’s tweets from 2020 until the insurrection differ in rhetoric and change over time, and how these characteristics affect user support.

We focus on Twitter because it is one of the sole platforms where presidents write original content and frequently communicate with the online community. We retrieve tweets from Biden and Trump with information about the raw text, time published, number of likes, and number of tweets. To quantify support, we use likes, which primarily convey support. To identify characteristics, we perform sentiment analysis and mine for emotion type, intensity, positivity, negativity, toxicity, and violence through a variety of models such as BERT, VADER, Detoxify, and Grievance Dictionary. Ultimately, after conducting a comparative analysis, we decide to use OpenAI’s moderation endpoint to mine for similar category scores. By comparing Tweet characteristics and tracking them over time, we can see what types of tweets garner the most engagement.

Our research will improve our understanding of factors that drive engagement. While Biden and Trump will not run against each other in future elections, the highly charged political environment of 2020 is still present today. Based on conclusions from our research, future candidates can tailor their social media strategies to better connect with voters, and social media platforms can consciously regulate political content to create a healthy environment for democratic discourse.

11:35–11:50 a.m.

UPenn Lightning Talk with Q&A 

11:50 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

Lunch

12:30 – 1:00 p.m.

Breakout Discussion & Lunch

1:05–1:45 p.m.

Panel

1:45–2:00 p.m.

UPenn Student Lightning Talk with Q&A

2:00–2:15 p.m.

UPenn Student Lightning Talk with Q&A

2:15–2:50 p.m.

Academic Talk with Q&A

2:50–3:00 p.m.

Closing Remarks