Understanding key engagement drivers for blockchain based voting

Abstract

Social media has seen a fast-growing adaption in the last one decade, driven by the increasing internet and smartphone penetration. Social Media has even become a source of information for many people, coming from accounts of their friends, renowned personalities and official accounts of various government and non-government organizations. Twitter, which is one such platform, is of interest for us because any recent happening of interest quickly gains traction on it. In this study, we plan to study the narrative around using blockchain for voting on Twitter around the 2020 US elections. The 2020 US election is a topic of interest due to various issues like allegations and counter-allegations between the Democrat and Republican parties which also gave rise to various theories, including voter fraud due to the postal ballot introduced in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic. We have tried to uncover the broad data trends using extensive exploratory analysis, and then carried out predictive modelling to identify the indicators which drive engagement around voting and blockchain. Using these findings, key policy implications have been recommended.