RAPID: “This project is focused on building a data resource for scholars from social media data collection surrounding upcoming elections in polarized, democratizing, and otherwise relatively unstable contexts. The research team is purposively sampling election contexts of candidate social media data collection that meet objective criteria based on their level of democracy, polarization, stability, and cyber infrastructure.

Across all of these contexts, the research team is compiling social media candidate data, including candidate (public) social media accounts, publicly available candidate background characteristics, and other variables capturing the national, election, and seat(s) context. In three of these contexts, the research team is executing a survey among voters, collecting data on voters’ ability to access candidates’ online messages, voters’ attitudes towards candidates’ social media activity, the extent to which candidates mobilize offline political activity (including election violence) through digital networks, how commonly and effectively politicians spread disinformation using online platforms, and voters’ perceptions of the security and stability of political cyberspace in their context.

The research team is developing training in the form of a webinar series for graduate students in political science, public policy, and cybersecurity to encourage multi-disciplinary research using the data.”