Record Details


Field	Value

Title	Replication Data for: Political Coalitions and Social Media: Evidence from Pakistan

Identifier	https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SEXUZU

Creator	Mitts, Tamar Mir, Asfandyar Staniland, Paul

Publisher	Harvard Dataverse

Description	Social media is frequently an arena of intense competition among major political actors across the world. We argue that a fruitful way of understanding this competition is as coalitions among key actors and their networks of followers. These coalitions can both advance a shared political message and target mutual rivals. Importantly, coalitions can be tacit or explicit, and they do not necessarily depend on direct state manipulation or repression, though they often do. This makes a coalitional framework particularly valuable for studying complex political environments with online actors blending cooperation and competition. Empirically, we show the value of the approach with novel data collection and analysis of Twitter and Facebook content from 2018-19 Pakistan, with a focus on the dynamics leading up to and after the controversial 2018 general election. We map out networks of narrative alignment and conflict on Pakistani social media, providing important insights into the relationships among the major political parties, military, media, and dissidents. Future research can explore the causes and effects of powerful social media coalitions.

Subject	Social Sciences Social Media, Pakistan, Coalitions

Contributor	Mitts, Tamar

ICAR Research Data Repository for Knowledge Management