Young adults are talking most about Stephen Harper and the economy when they discuss the federal election campaign on Facebook, new data from the social media company shows.

More than three quarters of those aged 18-24 who discussed federal party leaders mentioned Stephen Harper, while 41 per cent mentioned Justin Trudeau, 24 per cent mentioned Thomas Mulcair and 10 per cent mentioned Elizabeth May. Four per cent mentioned Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe.

The data gleaned is from conversations about the federal election on Facebook that occurred between Aug. 2 and Oct. 4.

Kevin Chan, Facebook Canada’s head of public policy says Harper’s status as an incumbent prime minister, as well as the fact that he’s run two live question and answer sessions on Facebook during the campaign, explain the amount of attention paid to him on the social media network.

“He is a very savvy user of Facebook and he is the incumbent prime minister, with 10 years-worth of policies and positions for people to discuss.”

But Chan says Facebook “isn’t measuring (user) sentiment in any way.”

“We don’t know if these are positive or negative comments in conversation about Mr. Harper, we just know that he is of all the leaders, the most popular leader on Facebook in terms of discussion.”

One of Harper’s Facebook question and answer periods dealt with questions about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Trudeau broadcast his party’s platform announcement this week live on Facebook.

Mulcair was the first party leader to come to Facebook’s offices in Toronto and conduct a live question and answer session with users earlier in the campaign.

Facebook says close to four million Canadian users of all ages have mentioned the election since June 1, generating more than 23 million interactions, including posts, likes, comments or shares of content other than political advertising, regarding the campaign.

Trudeau leads the party leaders when it comes to Facebook likes, with 345,000. Stephen Harper follows with 234,000, while Mulcair has 99,000 likes and May has 75,000.

When it comes to the issues young voters are talking about most, the economy leads the way with 59 per cent of Facebook users talking about it. Next are social issues with 37 per cent of politically engaged young people mentioning it on Facebook.

Foreign policy was mentioned in 32 per cent of political interactions on the site, compared to 30 per cent for environment/ energy issues, 25 per cent for governance issues, 20 per cent for government benefits and 17 per cent for intelligence/terrorism/surveillance issues.

To group political Facebook comments and posts into categories, Facebook used a list of keywords. For instance, a comment or post about tax-free savings accounts would be put in the economic issues category, while a post about pipelines would fall into the environmental issues category.

All data collected is aggregated and stripped of any information that would link it to the user who posted it.

The social media company also measured which words are most commonly used in conjunction with each federal party leader’s name between Aug. 2 and Oct. 4.

Using only interactions generated by Facebook users aged 18 to 24, most word pairs had little to do with the economy, the most discussed issue:

On Sept. 28, the day of the Munk Debate on foreign policy, Facebook users of all ages mentioned these word pairs most often:

Stephen Harper: Human Rights
Justin Trudeau: Canadian Citizenship
Tom Mulcair: Muslim Canadians
Elizabeth May: Islamic State
Gilles Duceppe: paradis fiscaux (Tax havens)