Citizen Trust in the United States Government: Twitter Analytics Measuring Trust in Government Sentiments

Recent tensions and widening division in the United States (U.S.) political arena have sewn doubt in the U.S. government and democracy itself, at a time when rapid technology advances clearly ought to aid the spread of democracy. However, there has been little progress in the use of technology to increase democratic participation in the U.S. The purpose of this research is the exploratory study of how social media analytics can inform, predict, or alter trust in government sentiments which thereby inform democratic participation by studying 49,964,168 Twitter posts (tweets) from January 1, 2014 - June 13, 2019. Extant literature pertaining to E-Government research is reviewed and a theoretical framework is presented as basis for the methodology. The findings shed insight towards the workings of public trust sentiments and current events and/or governmental actions. Additionally, discussions of results pose questions for testing and evaluation in future research.