What Experts Say 1

William Powers, the author of the article "Who is Influensing the Elections 2016", made a great analysis of how social media is involved in US presidential elections 2016. He constructed the article in the way that a person without political knowledge could easily become familiar with what is happening in US politics. William Powers starts with a question: "What is influence?" and shows from what sources public gets information. Moreover, he explains how the social media's involvement has changed the candidates' strategy. The most interesting part of this article is the rank of the influencial people of US presidential elections 2016. There one can find former presidents, social activists, religious figures and many other influencers. The author also describes this analysis project, which is quite interesting: "...our group has built an election analytics machine called The Electome. Funded in part by a grant from the Knight Foundation, the project aims to further public understanding of how politics and news are changing in the digital age, and to show how campaign journalism can move beyond the traditional “horse race” coverage." 
Please find the link below and check this article out.

https://medium.com/mit-media-lab/who-s-influencing-election-2016-8bed68ddecc3#.cnyxopat2