Three million Canadian Facebook users have discussed the upcoming federal election since June 1, with Stephen Harper dominating chatter among users discussing the party leaders, according to data collected by the social networking company.
Since Aug. 2, between 60 to 80 per cent of all posts on Facebook discussing the party leaders have mentioned Harper in some way, whereas only 20 to 40 per cent of posts have mentioned Justin Trudeau or Thomas Mulcair:
But in Quebec, it’s an altogether different and more fluid situation, with Facebook users in the province mentioning all three major party leaders in roughly equal measure in recent weeks:
When it comes to the issues in this campaign, Facebook users have discussed the economy most often, but switched to favour governance issues such as the future of the Senate for a short period in mid-Aug. and foreign policy in early Sept. The switch to foreign policy discussion coincided with the publication of pictures of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian Kurdish boy who drowned in the Aegean Sea while trying to travel to Greece with his family. His father told media outlets that their desired final destination was Canada.
Facebook has also developed “heat maps” which track where in Canada their users are talking about a particular issue. For refugees, posts are concentrated in Alberta, the Ottawa area and parts of Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia:
For the issue of climate change, posts are predictably concentrated in the resource-rich provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta:
