Academics

#100: Content Moderation and the Politics of Social Media Platforms, with Dr. Tarleton Gillespie

February 16, 2020 Academics


Dr. Tarleton Gillespie, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Associate Professor of Communication at Cornell University, guests for our 100th episode!


We revisit Dr. Gillespie’s 2010 study “The Politics of Platforms” as well as discuss his latest book: “Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media.”


We discuss how social media companies strategically position themselves through discourse, the early adoption of social media by advertisers and political campaigns, and how content moderation shapes our interactions with platforms and politics.

#99: Information Gerrymandering on Social Networks, with Dr. Alexander Stewart

January 27, 2020 Academics


Dr. Alexander Stewart, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Houston, guests to discuss his research on “information gerrymandering,” recently published in Nature. The study uses a voter game, mathematical modelling, social media data, and legislative data to examine how information asymmetries in social networks impact collective decision-making processes. We break down the study, and the implications of its findings for democracy.


Read the full study, and check out the video showing information gerrymandering in action!

#97: 2019 Year In Review, with Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten

December 29, 2019 Academics


The 2019 Year in Review! Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten and Dr. Michael Bossetta break down the top trends and developments of this year and look forward to the decade ahead. We talk about the posts that garnered the most engagement on platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Pornhub (no Facebook this year), look into the growing importance of TikTok, and chat about digital taxation, Epstein, and so much more.


Watch the video recording, including visual examples here!

#95: Political Advertising on Facebook and Television, with Prof. Travis Ridout

November 25, 2019 Academics


Prof. Travis Ridout, Distinguished Professor of Government and Politics at Washington State University, guests to discuss a new study examining American campaigns’ political advertising on Facebook and television in the 2018 US midterm elections. We break down some of the key differences between the two media in terms of who is more likely to use Facebook advertising, when and where online ads are most likely to occur, and how the topics and tone of ads across the two media differ.


Read the full study here!

#93: Political Self-Expression on Social Media, with Dr. Dan Lane

October 26, 2019 Academics


Dr. Dan Lane, Assistant Professor of Communication at UC Santa Barbara, guests to discuss his research on how political self-expression influences citizens’ perceptions of their political selves as citizens. We also talk about how certain design features of social media seem to affect youth political expression, and how different acts of self-expression can influence political self concepts to varying degrees.


Here are the three studies we discussed in the episode:

  1. Social Media Expression and the Political Self
  2. Civic Laboratories: Youth Political Expression in Anonymous, Ephemeral, Geo-Bounded Social Media
  3. Social Media Design for Youth Political Expression: Testing the Roles of Identifiability and Geo-boundedness

#92: Protest, Participation, and Cross-Cutting Exposure on Social Media, with Dr. Sebastian Valenzuela

October 6, 2019 Academics


Dr. Sebastian Valenzuela, Associate Professor of Communication at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, guests to discuss two studies on how social media impact political participation.


The first study demonstrates how both Facebook and Twitter contribute to protest participation, but they do so through different pathways that relate to strong and weak tie social networks.The second study is a meta-analysis of existing research, and it explores whether exposure to cross-cutting information affects political participation.


Both studies are published in Political Communication, and you can read them here:


1) Ties, Likes, and Tweets: Using Strong and Weak Ties to Explain Differences in Protest Participation Across Facebook and Twitter Use


2) A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Cross-Cutting Exposure on Political Participation

#89: Fake News, Disinformation, and Social Media Campaigning in Norway, with Dr. Bente Kalsnes

August 25, 2019 Academics


Dr. Bente Kalsnes, Associate Professor of Communication at Kristiania University College, guests to discuss her new book “Fake News: Lies, Disinformation, and Propaganda in the Digital Public Sphere.” We also break down politicians’ social media campaigning in Norway, how this campaigning is changing ahead of the 2019 local elections, and look at some early Norwegian social media sites that predated Facebook

#87: Natural Language Processing with Social Media Data, with Dr. Leon Derczynski

July 28, 2019 Academics


Dr. Leon Derczynski, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the IT University of Copenhagen, guests to discuss how natural language processing and computational linguistics can be applied to social media data.

We break down several of Dr. Derczynski’s EU-funded research projects, from detecting the informativeness of tweets in crisis communication to assessing the veracity of claims through comment patterns on Twitter and Reddit.

Dr. Derczynski also shares his thoughts on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deepfake detection.

#86: The Platform Society, Public Values, and Politics, with Dr. José van Dijck

July 13, 2019 Academics


Dr. José van Dijck, Distinguished Professor in Media and Society at Utrecht University, guests to discuss her latest book, The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World (Oxford University Press).

We break down key concepts from the book, including Platform Societies and Platform Power. We discuss the importance of public values in the Platform Society, and how these values might differ across the United States, the European Union, and China.

Dr. van Dijck also shares her thoughts on how platforms can be reverse engineered in ways that promote the public good.

#81: European Parliament Elections 2019: Results and Breakdown, with Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten

May 29, 2019 Academics


Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Assistant Professor of European Studies at Lund University, guests to discuss a live breakdown of the 2019 EU election.

We talk about the election results, the European Parliament’s digital campaign, and what it all means for Europe.


Here’s the 2019 European Parliament’s promo video: Choose your Future.


And the 2014 video: Act. React. Impact.