Ratioing the President: An exploration of public engagement with Obama and Trump on Twitter

Understand

The past decade has witnessed a marked increase in the use of social media by politicians, most notably exemplified by the 45th President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump.

• On Twitter, POTUS messages consistently attract high levels of engagement as measured by likes, retweets, and replies.
• Here, we quantify the balance of these activities, also known as "ratios", and study their dynamics as a proxy for collective political engagement in response to presidential communications.
• We find that raw activity counts increase during the period leading up to the 2016 election, accompanied by a regime change in the ratio of retweets-to-replies connected to the transition between campaigning and governing.