Episodes

#66: Crisis Communication, Social Media, and European Political Campaigning, with Marco Ricorda

December 16, 2018 Digital Strategists

Marco Ricorda, Social Media Manager for the European Parliament’s President, joins the podcast to discuss livestreaming from the Parliament during last week’s terrorist attack in Strasbourg. From there, we discuss the state of digital campaigning in European politics, the role of data and data analysis for social media campaigns, and the upcoming 2019 European Parliament elections.

Check out the EuroPCom Podcast!
Here’s Marco’s Medium post discussed in the episode.

#65: The Logics of Datafication, Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence, with Dr. Jakob Svensson

November 25, 2018 Academics

Dr. Jakob Svensson, Associate Professor in Media and Communication at Malmö University, guests to share his research on the logics that drive how digital media operate. We discuss how algorithms and datafication are shaped by developers, and the types of biases that can occur as a result. We also talk about the political implications of artificial intelligence.

The two studies referenced in the episode are:

Study 1 (2015): The Emergence of Network Media Logic in Political Communication: A Theoretical Approach

Study 2 (2018): The End of Media Logics? On Algorithms and Agency

#64: Platform API Lockouts, Occupy Wall Street, and Transnational Activism, with Dr. Dan Mercea and Dr. Shawn Walker

November 17, 2018 Academics

Dr. Dan Mercea, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at City University of London, and Dr. Shawn Walker, Assistant Professor in Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College at Arizona State University, guests to discuss the current state of social media research in an environment where researcher are “Locked Out” of access to platform APIs. We also talk about how social media is used in protest movements, particularly Dr. Walker’s work on Occupy Wall Street and Dr. Mercea’s work on transnational serial activists.

#63: Brexit Botnets and Hyperpartisan News Sharing on Twitter, with Dr. Marco Bastos

November 4, 2018 Academics

Dr. Marco Bastos, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at City University of London, discusses his research on Twitter bots and botnets in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. We talk about how to identify bots on Twitter, what these bots were sharing, and how the content they share on social media relates to the activity of human users. Later in the episode, we discuss the ethics behind researching bots and whether recent automated account crackdowns by Facebook and Twitter will improve political debates on social media.

The studies we discussed in the episode are:

The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News

The Public Accountability of Social Platforms: Lessons from a Study on Bots and Trolls in the Brexit Campaign

#62: P2P Texting for Democrats in the 2018 Midterm Elections, with Naseem Makiya

October 28, 2018 Digital Strategists

Naseem Makiya, founder and CEO of Outvote, guests to discuss the peer-to-peer texting technologies available to Democrats ahead of the 2018 Midterm Elections. We break down the features of Outvote and what sets it apart from other P2P platforms. In particular, we focus on the “Swing District” feature, a focus on contacting friends, and the use of emojis to signify a friend’s previous voting history. We also talk about the results generated from the platform during the primaries, and the P2P landscape for political campaigning now as well as in the future.

#61: Inoculating Fake News and Disinformation on Social Media, with Ruurd Oosterwoud

October 21, 2018 Civil Society

Ruurd Oosterwoud, co-founder of DROG, guests to discuss inoculation techniques against disinformation on social media platforms. Ruurd shares the several initiatives DROG has been working on to educate the public about fake news and disinformation: the Bad News Game, student workshops to increase media literacy, and a one day event to create the “biggest Dutch troll army” ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections.

#60: Political Polarization, Social Media, and News Use in the United States, with Dr. Galen Stocking

October 14, 2018 Academics

Dr. Galen Stocking, Computational Social Scientist at Pew Research Center, discusses political polarization and how it relates to social media use. We take a deep dive into how Pew Research Center measures polarization empirically, how polarization has changed over time, and how widening partisan gaps relate to citizens’ traditional and social media habits. Dr. Stocking also discusses the role of computational methods in survey research, using one of his recent studies on media sources shared on Twitter during immigration debates as a case. We also talk about Reddit, which has a relatively low user base in the United States compared to other social media platforms. Yet, Dr. Stocking’s research has uncovered that Reddit users are highly active in consuming news on the site.

Pew Research Center sources cited in the episode:

Graphic Illustration of Political Polarization 1994-2017

Political Polarization and Media Habits (2014)

Sources Shared on Twitter: A Case Study of Immigration (2018)

News Use across Social Media (2018)

Dr. Stocking’s study on Reddit (2016)

#59: Cybersecurity, the Internet of Things, and Social Media, with Bruce Schneier

September 30, 2018 Civil Society

Bruce Schneier, Chief Technology Officer at IBM Resilient, guests to discuss his new book, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World. We discuss how the Internet of Things (IoT) opens up new possibilities for catastrophes, how social media companies and governments follow a model of surveillance capitalism, and how the Internet can be made more secure moving forward.

#58: Facebook’s Political Ad Archive and Web Scraping to Improve It, with Søren Pedersen

September 16, 2018 Civil Society

Søren Pedersen, a Danish software developer working for Extra Bladet, joins the podcast to discuss his project uspolads.com. Søren used web scraping technology to build a website that presents data from the Facebook political ad archive ahead of the 2018 US midterm elections. We talk about Søren’s motivations in building uspolads, as well as discuss some his previous work using Facebook and Twitter data to reveal insights about politics and tech addiction.

Click here to check out the official Facebook Ad Archive.

#57: The 2018 Swedish Elections and Social Media, with Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten

September 10, 2018 Academics

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Senior Lecturer in European Studies at Lund University, guests to discuss the 2018 Swedish Elections and social media’s role in it. We break down the election results and talk about what it means for Sweden as well as the European Union.

Here are the links to the studies discussed in the episode:

Moe & Larsson’s 2014 study on Swedish politicians’ Facebook use

Jakob Svensson’s study on Swedish campaigning between elections

Kragh & Åsberg’s study on Russian disinformation via Facebook in Sweden

ComProp’s study of “junk news” during the Swedish election