Archived

This content is available here for research, reference, and/or recordkeeping.

Date Available

7-13-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College

Graduate School

Department/School/Program

Political Science

Faculty

Michael Zillis

Faculty

Bridgett King

Faculty

Maggie Macdonald

Abstract

After the 2020 election the U.S. democratic process was challenged by Republican challengers many of which were office holders including the president. Many of these criticisms were shared and perpetuated in online spaces What encourages elites to post on social media about election denialism? This paper attempts to partially answer the question by performing an analysis on Facebook posts made by 1,154 congressional candidates between 2023 and 2024 using a dictionary search method to flag posts for election denialism. I propose a theory that suggests the combination of political, financial, and media attention given to battleground states encourages candidates in those states to differentiate and appear as more extreme than candidates in other states. I use OLS and logit to determine whether a relationship exists between residence in a battleground state and posting about election denialism on the platform. Overall, findings are limited and only a slight significance between district competitiveness and likelihood to post about election denialism. I suggest that it is likely limitations to platform and dictionary key terms limited the results and these methods should be refined in future research.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.347

Archival?

Archival

Download

Share

COinS