A Quantitative Text Analysis onMobilization of the Electorate by Islamist Parties During the 2018 Iraqi Parliamentary Election

This chapter aims to analyse the electoral mobilization by major political parties during the Iraqi parliamentary election held in May 2018 based on a quantitative text analysis, especially focusing on tones and strategies that these parties utilized for mobilization. Picking up four main parties as example, this chapter analysed mobilization tone using text data extracted from social network platform such as Facebook and Twitter and created data set for analysis. After conducting dictionary analysis that count frequency and weight the vocabularies as well as the semi-supervised model of machine learning called Latent Sematic Scaling (LSS)‚ this chapter concludes that the mobilization tone and its strategy differ from party to party depending majorly on the contributions each party made during the period under the IS influence. In essence, those who made great contributions to the military operation against the IS (such as the Fatah and Victory Alliance) were more likely to mobilize the voters based on their contribution to the IS operation‚ whereas those who played a crucial role in the social movement during the post-IS era (such as the Sadrist and Wataniya) were more likely to mobilize the voters based on their reformist contribution.