Academics Archives - Page 2 of 10 - Social Media and Politics

#162: Negative Campaigning on Facebook in EU Elections, Cross-Platform Extremism, and Dissonant Public Spheres, with Prof. Ulrike Klinger

July 1, 2023

Prof. Ulrike Klinger, Professor for Digital Democracy at the European New School for Digital Studies at European University Viadrina, shares her latest research on negative campaigning on social media. We discuss some of the challenges in studying digital communication in the EU, as well as what explains a rise in negative campaigning across two European Parliament elections. Prof. Klinger also shares her research on the UN Global Compact for Migration, where extremist ideas from the Identitarian movement were picked up by the mainstream media. Lastly, we discuss Prof. Klinger’s suggestions for increasing researcher data access ahead of the Digital Services Act.

Here are links to the studies discussed in the episode:

Are Campaigns Getting Uglier, and Who Is to Blame? Negativity, Dramatization and Populism on Facebook in the 2014 and 2019 EP Election Campaigns (2023)

#159: Social Media, Democracy, and National Security, with Jenny Reich

March 18, 2023

Jenny Reich, Fellow at the Georgetown Law Center on National Security, discusses the Center’s recent report entitled Social Media: The Canary in the Coal Mine.

We dive into the potential security risks posed by digital technology developments as well as the report’s recommendations for addressing them at the levels of government, the tech industry, and civil society. The report brings together various stakeholders to shed insight on the core democratic values of the United States, the major threats posed by technological advancements, and first steps toward developing regulatory frameworks and civil society resilience to meet these threats in ways that safeguard democracy and American national security interests.

#157: Political Targeting, Strategic Communication, and Democracy, with Prof. Sanne Kruikemeier

January 21, 2023

Prof. Sanne Kruikemeier, Professor of Digital Media and Society at Wageningen University & Research, discusses her latest research on political targeting. We discuss how political targeting differs in EU and US contexts, how perceptions of targeting affect voters’ democratic perceptions, and what types of issues parties strategically communicate during election campaigns.

Here are the studies discussed in the episode:

Data-driven campaigning and democratic disruption: Evidence from six advanced democracies (2022)

Understanding the democratic role of perceived online political micro-targeting (2022)

(Tar)getting you: The use of online political targeted messages on Facebook (2022)

#154: Social Media, Citizen Journalism, and Activism in Africa, with Prof. Bruce Mutsvairo

December 11, 2022

Prof. Bruce Mutsvairo, Professor of Media and Politics at Utrecht University, shares his insights on the role of social media and politics on the African continent. We discuss digital activism across countries, how structures like data bundles might lead to surveillance, and the growing role of influencers as reporters of news.

The Special Issue call for citizen journalists is here (I’ll update the link as soon as it’s live!).

Here are the studies we discuss in the episode:

The Janus face of social media and democracy? Reflections on Africa (2020)

Is citizen journalism dead? An examination of recent developments in the field (2020)

#152: Cross-Platform Visual Campaigning on Social Media: Emotions in Political Candidates’ Facebook and Instagram Images

October 16, 2022

In this episode, it’s just me! I present a recently published study, co-authored with Rasmus Schmøkel and published in Political Communication, that analyzes US Presidential campaigns’ emotion expression across Facebook and Instagram.

I’ll explain the theoretical backdrop of the study, give an overview of the state-of-the-art on visual political communication, and communicate the study’s methods and key results. Hope you enjoy this one-on-one episode!

Here’s a link to the study (feel free to share around):

Cross-Platform Emotions in Social Media Political Campaigning: Comparing Candidates’ Facebook and Instagram Images in the 2020 US Election (2022)

#150: Swedish Elections 2022, Political Communication, and Social Media, with Dr. Nils Gustafsson

September 9, 2022

Dr. Nils Gustafsson, Senior Lecturer of Strategic Communication at Lund University, discusses the run-up to the 2022 Swedish Elections and then findings from his research. First, we chat about the main political issues that Swedes are voting on, as well as how political parties and party leaders are digital campaigning on social media. Then, Dr. Gustafsson shares findings from three of his research projects. We discuss how Facebook was viewed as a tool for participation when it first became widely adopted in Sweden, how rejection sensitivity might affect political expression online, and how media narratives about polarization in Swedish media have changed over time.

Here are links to the two published studies we discuss in the episode:

The Subtle Nature of Facebook Politics: Swedish Social Network Site Users and Political Participation (2012)

A Social Safety Net? Rejection Sensitivity and Political Opinion Sharing among Young People in Social Media (2018)

#149: Social Media, Information Markets, and the Attention Economy, with Prof. Vincent Hendricks

September 3, 2022

Prof. Vincent Hendricks, Professor of Formal Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, discusses his new book The Ministry of Truth: Big Tech’s Influence over Facts, Feelings, and Fictions.

Prof. Hendricks shares how social media are like investment banks in the attention economy, how information is packaged and sold, and what Big Tech’s growing influence on critical infrastructure means for politics and society.

#148: Machine Learning the Facebook URLs Dataset to Study News Credibility, with Dr. Tom Paskhalis

August 21, 2022

Dr. Tom Paskhalis, Assistant Professor in Political and Data Science at Trinity College Dublin, shares his research on applying machine learning to the Facebook URLs Dataset from Social Science One. The project develops a model to label whether a news domain is credible or not based on Facebook interactions data. We discuss the Facebook URLs dataset, what types of machine learning techniques were applied to it, and how the model performed across the US and EU countries.

#146: Social Media Influencers and Politics, Environmental Behavior, and Covid Misinformation, with Dr. Desirée Schmuck

June 19, 2022

Dr. Desirée Schmuck, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mass Communication at KU Leuven, shares her research on social media influencers and their effects on users’ political attitudes and behavior. We break down three of Dr. Schmuck’s studies. The first focuses on how exposure to political influencer content affects young social media users’ behavior, both in terms of formal electoral participation and environmental sustainability. The second examines how influencers might affect users’ perceived simplification of politics, and how that perception influences users’ political cynicism and interest. The third study is an experiment that seeks to understand how misinformation from lifestyle influencers could affect female social media users’ attitudes toward Covid and trust in public health information.

Here are links to the studies we discuss in the episode:

The Mobilizing Power of Influencers for Pro-Environmental Behavior Intentions and Political Participation (2022)

Politics–Simply Explained? How Influencers Affect Youth’s Perceived Simplification of Politics, Political Cynicism, and Political Interest (2022)

Responses to Social Media Influencers’ Misinformation about COVID-19: A Pre-Registered Multiple-Exposure Experiment (2022)