Elections are the main instrument of democracy. Citizens decide which entity or entities (a political party or a particular politician) should represent them. Traditionally, preelection polls have been used to learn about trends and likely election outcomes. Predicting an election outcome based on user activity on Twitter has been shown to be a cheap alternative. While past research has focused on election prediction in the developed world (where its use is debatable), in this paper we provide a comprehensive argument for the use of Twitter-based election forecasting in the developing world. For our use case of Indonesia’s presidential elections 2014, the most basic Twitter-predictor outperforms the majority of traditional polls, while the best performing predictor outperforms all traditional polls on the national level. @en

Health campaigns that aim to raise awareness and subsequently raise funds for research and treatment are commonplace. While many local campaigns exist, very few attract the attention of a global audience. One of those global campaigns is Movember, an annual campaign during the month of November, that is directed at men’s health with special foci on cancer & mental health. Health campaigns routinely use social media portals to capture people’s attention. Recently, researchers began to consider to what extent social media is effective in raising the awareness of health campaigns. In this paper we expand on those works by conducting an investigation across four different countries, while not only restricting ourselves to the impact on awareness but also on fund-raising. To that end, we analyze the 2013 Movember Twitter campaigns in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. @en