  New leaders in democratic countries typically enjoy high approval ratings
immediately after taking office. This phenomenon is called the honeymoon effect
and is regarded as a significant political phenomenon; however, its mechanism
remains underexplored. Therefore, this study examines how social media users
respond to changes in political leadership in order to better understand the
honeymoon effect in politics. In particular, we constructed a 15-year Twitter
dataset on eight change timings of Japanese prime ministers consisting of 6.6M
tweets and analyzed them in terms of sentiments, topics, and users. We found
that, while not always, social media tend to show a honeymoon effect at the
change timings of prime minister. The study also revealed that sentiment about
prime ministers differed by topic, indicating that public expectations vary
from one prime minister to another. Furthermore, the user base was largely
replaced before and after the change in the prime minister, and their sentiment
was also significantly different. The implications of this study would be
beneficial for administrative management.
