A Big Social Media Data Study of the 2017 German Federal Election Based on Social Set Analysis of Political Party Facebook Pages with SoSeVi

We present a big social media data study that comprises of 1 million individuals who interact with Facebook pages of the seven major political parties CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Greens, Die Linke and AfD during the 2017 German federal election. Our study uses the Social Set Analysis (SSA) approach, which is based on the sociology of associations, mathematics of set theory, and advanced visual analytics of event studies. We illustrate the capabilities of SSA through the most recent version of our Social Set Analysis (SoSeVi) tool, which enables us to deep dive into Facebook activity concerning the election. We explore a significant gender-based difference between female and male interactions with political party Facebook pages. Furthermore, we perform a multi-faceted analysis of social media interactions using gender detection, user segmentation and retention analysis, and visualize our findings. In conclusion, we discuss the analytical approach of social set analysis and conclude with a discussion of the benefits of set theoretical approaches based on the social philosophical approach of associational sociology.