Ratio-ing with Liz Cheney
Yesterday, I was intrigued by the concept of Ratio-ing, using the ratio of likes to comments to quickly understand reaction to a Facebook post. My first look didn’t find any examples where comments were higher than likes and reactions. Today, therefore, I checked Liz Cheney’s Facebook feed, and found multiple incidents where the reactions (like, love, care, haha, wow, sad, angry) were fewer than the comments.
Six out of her ten most recent posts had more comments than reactions. Four of these were about Republicans and the presidential election results Big Lie is Good for China (1 : 1.07), Biden’s pipeline deal is a gift to Russians (1 : 1.28), Republicans should embrace the Constitution (1 : 1.17), and Republicans should stand for truth (1 : 1.03). The other two had higher comments to posts and were negative about Palestine, Against Democratic Party response to Israel (1 : 1.68) and Hamas has to be defeated (1: 1.29). Interestingly, when Congresswoman Cheney just expressed support for Israel (rather than being against Palestine), comments were not more than reactions: Israel should defend herself (1 : 0.83) and I stand with Israel (1 : 0.75). Two other posts on other topics — a visit to a high school (1 : 0.58) and a general statement on bad behavior in Congress (1 : 0.88) also didn’t get more comments than posts.
According to Pulsar’s blog, “On Twitter, a clear indication that specific post has attracted the ire of a fanbase is ‘ratio-ing’, in which comments outnumber likes.” My question is whether the same can be true of Facebook posts. To understand what was happening, I also read the comments on the most recent post, “Former President Trump’s claim that our electoral system can’t function and that democracy has failed spreads the dangerous rhetoric of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The details show that although 48% of the comments were negative, 42% were positive. The more recent comments were more positive. Had I only looked at the first 50 comments, this would have been reversed. Some comments were difficult to interpret, so I marked them ambiguous, and one comment was on a different topic.
The most recent poll I could find about the Wyoming race was a Weekend Poll by KGAB on May 8, 2021. It should 25% for Liz Cheney, and 39% for Anthony Bouchard, who has since had a major scandal break. This poll just asks people on the site to select the candidate they might vote for, and although the site said it would release the results, I was only able to see them by voting in the poll.
I continue to be intrigued by this notion of ratio-ing as a way to quickly see if someone is supported. My next step may be to do some historical digging before the election in November. That way I can test the predictive power of social media comments and ratio-ing.
