SharedToday Measures and Methodology
Transparent, bias-free metric capturing real political momentum through virality, engagement depth, and sentiment within verified supporter networks
SharedToday Score (STS)
Calculated only from the posts of each candidate and that candidate’s core supporter group across Facebook (Pages, Public Groups, Personal Profiles) and X (formerly Twitter).
- Virality (×8): Shares / retweets per post — strength of message diffusion.
- Per-post engagement (×2): Average reactions / likes per post — breadth of reach.
- Per-post comments (×4): Average comments per post — depth and dialogue intensity.
- Net positive engagement (×2): Positive − negative interactions — tone quality.
- Total engagement: Denominator used for normalization.
SharedToday Composite Score (STC)
Used for head-to-head candidate comparison, blending overall energy (STS) with positivity:
Core-Supporter–Only Framework
- SharedToday focuses strictly on core supporter ecosystems for each candidate.
- A page, group, or profile is added only after manual QC confirming:
- High posting frequency about the candidate.
- Clear thematic or nominal link to the candidate / party.
- Active posting history within the past 3 months.
- Automation inclusion: Supporter pages using scheduled or automated posting are not filtered out. Within a candidate’s verified ecosystem, such automation reflects organized campaigning and thus represents legitimate mobilization.
- Because SharedToday analyzes only core networks, external “cooked-up” virality or bot amplification outside those groups naturally remains out of scope — yielding a cleaner, bias-resistant comparison.
Why These KPIs and Weights Strengthen the Score
KPI | Weight | Analytical Strength |
Virality (Per-post Amplification) | ×8 | Measures spread power — how effectively a message propagates through the network. Positive messages typically sustain broader reach than negative spikes, making virality the most predictive dimension of narrative traction. |
Per-post Comments | ×4 | Captures depth of discourse and deliberative engagement. Comments signal cognitive involvement and mobilization potential, not mere visibility. |
Per-post Engagement (Likes/Reacts) | ×2 | Reflects breadth of resonance across the base. Provides a baseline measure of how widely content resonates without overweighting raw volume. |
Net Positive Engagement | ×2 | Indicates sentiment health — distinguishing enthusiasm from outrage-driven attention. Prevents penalizing candidates with high but hostile visibility. |
Normalization + Composite Blend | 0.6 STS / 0.4 Net Positive % | Ensures fair scaling and balances quantity (momentum) with quality (tone), reducing volatility and enabling cross-candidate comparison. |
Collectively, these parameters capture spread (virality) + breadth (engagement) + depth (comments) + valence (sentiment) — creating a stable, multi-dimensional measure of political engagement strength.
Methods Note (Transparency & Reproducibility)
Platform Coverage: Facebook (Pages, Public Groups, Personal Profiles) and X (formerly Twitter).
Core-Supporter Identification: Pages/groups/profiles manually QC’d for high posting frequency, clear candidate alignment, and activity within 3 months.
Manual Verification: Maintained through rolling QC cycles to ensure ongoing authenticity.
Automation Policy: Automation-assisted pages are included when part of the verified ecosystem. Since the analysis is confined to core supporters, such automation reflects legitimate amplification rather than manipulation.
Data Integrity: External astroturfing and opportunistic spikes are excluded by design due to the closed-ecosystem approach.
Update Cycle: Daily data ingestion with rolling averages to smooth out short-term anomalies.
Interpretation Guide:
- High STS = Strong engagement intensity and viral capacity within the core base.
- High STC = Strong engagement combined with positive sentiment — an indicator of durable supporter energy.
Comparison with Other Scoring Frameworks
Framework | Focus | How SharedToday Differs |
Klout Score (legacy 1–100) | Generic, cross-platform “influence” metric; opaque and non-political. | SharedToday is domain-specific (political), transparent (explicit formula), sentiment-aware, and limited to verified supporter networks for fair comparisons. |
Share-of-Voice + Sentiment Trackers | Broad mentions + sentiment ratio; prone to noise and bots. | SharedToday restricts to vetted supporter pages / profiles, weights virality + comment depth + net positivity, and inherently filters external noise. |
Academic Election Models (Social Media Volume + Sentiment) | Use raw mention + sentiment to correlate with results; often inconsistent. | SharedToday formalizes a multi-KPI composite across spread, breadth, depth, and tone, anchored to core-group activity, ensuring replicability and interpretability. |
Why SharedToday’s Method Is Superior
- Transparent Formula: All weights & logic publicly defined — unlike opaque influence scores.
- Noise Control: Analysis restricted to manually verified supporter ecosystems.
- Inclusion Fairness: Automation within genuine networks treated equally across candidates.
- Balanced Metric: Integrates reach, engagement, and sentiment into a unified index.
- Consistency & QC: Manual verification + activity recency checks ensure authentic data.
- Comparability: STC’s normalization allows direct, bias-minimized candidate ranking.
Summary
SharedToday Score (STS) quantifies the energy and viral capacity within a candidate’s authentic digital base.
SharedToday Composite Score (STC) translates that energy into a sentiment-weighted popularity index, enabling fair, context-specific comparisons across candidates.
Together they form a transparent, reproducible, and bias-resistant analytical framework that captures the true digital pulse of political support—setting SharedToday apart from legacy sentiment trackers and generic influence metrics.