Episodes - Social Media and Politics

#195: When AI Systems Meet Democratic Governance, with Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders

January 31, 2026

Bruce Schneier and Dr. Nathan Sanders discuss Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship (MIT Press).

Bruce and Nathan share how AI becomes viable for governments when the speed, scale, scope, and sophistication of computational systems surpasses human capacity. We also discuss the relationship between AI and the Internet of Things, how AI interacts with lobbying and legislation, and how values can be construed in an automated context. Current examples of AI implementation are shared from political campaigning, public administration, and civil society.

#193: Publicity Politicians, Public Opinion, and the Birth of Media Politics, with Dr. Betto van Waarden

January 2, 2026

Dr. Betto van Waarden, Assistant Professor of History at Maastricht University, discusses his new book Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire.

We begin by charting the technological developments of the 19th century and how it influenced the speed and scale of news production. Then, we discuss the rise of public opinion and how it affected the media’s role in the political system. We spend the rest of the episode discussing publicity politicians, the transnational media system, and how many of the political dynamics we see today can be traced to the Age of Empire.

#191: Digitally Organizing People Power: Inside Solidarity Tech, with Ivan Pardo

December 8, 2025

Ivan Pardo, Founder of Solidarity Tech, shares how tech can solve organizing bottlenecks for political campaigns. We discuss how Solidarity Tech was used for digital organizing in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York and Catherine Connelly’s presidential win in Ireland. Beyond tech functionality, we discuss how CRM platforms can give campaigns a human touch, how tech integrates with the culture of a campaign, and the potential downsides of gamification for volunteer organizing.

You can read more about Solidarity Tech’s origins and functionality here.

#190: Temporal Validity, Knowledge Decay, and the Meta 2020 Election Research Partnership, with Dr. Kevin Munger

November 30, 2025

Dr. Kevin Munger, Assistant Professor and Chair of Computational Social Science in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute, discusses the concept of temporal validity in social media research. Dr. Munger breaks down why thinking about time is an important component of meta-science, particularly when it comes to evaluating the methodologies of social media research.

We also discuss the Meta 2020 Election Research partnership, new pathways in social media research, the logic of quantitative description, and the challenges of political communication in the current grant funding and interdisciplinary landscape of political research.

Here are the two articles we discuss in the episode:

Temporal Validity as Meta-Science (2023)

What Did We Learn about Political Communication from the Meta2020 Partnership? (2024)

And links to Dr. Munger’s latest books:

The YouTube Apparatus (2024)

The Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture (2022)

#189: Crafting Political Storytelling with Qualitative Methods and AI, with Frank A. Spring

November 14, 2025

Frank A. Spring, founding partner at Altum Insight and managing partner of Undaunted Ventures, shares how qualitative methods can understand the stories voters tell themselves about politics. Frank discusses his work using AI-moderated interviews (AIMI) and digital ethnography to analyze citizens’ understanding of democracy, and how these insights can be used to inform political storytelling.

We also discuss generalizability from this type data, the importance of cultural context, and the ethics of stories’ relationship to facts.

#188: Teaching Political Communication: A Database, Game, and Assignment

November 1, 2025

In this episode, I share some initiatives to help in improving the teaching and learning of political communication.

#187: Election Forecasting, Prediction Markets, and Gamification, with Prof. Matthew Wall and Dr. Louis Bromfield

October 18, 2025

Professor Matthew Wall and Dr. Louis Bromfield, both at the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and International Relations at Swansea University, discuss election forecasting. We cover different types of political forecasting, such as polls and prediction models, and dive into prediction markets like Polymarket. We then discuss the concept of the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ and what attributes make a good forecaster, before turning to how betting market odds, forecasting platforms, and gamification can be used in research.

Resources:

Horse Race Politics Podcast on YouTube and Spotify
Horse Race Politics Platform
Professor Wall’s study on the 2007 Irish Elections
Dr. Bromfield’s Doctoral Thesis

#186: Content Moderation with Out-of-Court Dispute Settlement Bodies, with Thomas Hughes

October 4, 2025

Thomas Hughes, CEO of Appeals Centre Europe, explains out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (ODS bodies) and the role they play in the Digital Services Act.

We discuss Appeals Centre Europe’s first Transparency Report, which provides an initial glimpse into how Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are handling requests from ODS bodies. We cover some top line descriptives from the Centre’s first year: how many disputes were submitted, from which platform, and what types of content they were about. We also talk about ‘signposting’ and how the platforms are communicating their digital rights to users.