Advances in Decision Sciences (ADS)

Fake News and Indifference to Truth: Dissecting Tweets and State of the Union Addresses by Presidents Obama and Trump

Fake News and Indifference to Truth: Dissecting Tweets and State of the Union Addresses by Presidents Obama and Trump

Title

FAKE NEWS AND INDIFFERENCE TO TRUTH:DISSECTING TWEETS AND STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESSES BY PRESIDENTS OBAMA AND TRUMP

Authors

Abstract

State of the Union Addresses (SOUA) by two recent US Presidents, PresidentObama (2016) and President Trump (2018), and a series of recent of tweets by
President Trump, are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the
messages contained, the degree to which they differ, and their potential implications for the national mood and state of the economy. President Trump’s 2018
SOUA and his sample tweets are identified as being more positive in sentiment
than President Obama’s 2016 SOUA. This is confirmed by bootstrapped t tests
and non-parametric sign tests on components of the respective sentiment scores.
The issue of whether overly positive pronouncements amount to self-promotion,
rather than intrinsic merit or sentiment, is a topic for future research.

Keywords

Sentiment Analysis, Polarity, Bootstrapped t tests, Sign tests

Classification-JEL

A1, C88, C44, Z0

Pages

180-203

https://doi.org/10.47654/v22y2018i1p180-203

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