Episodes

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

December 11, 2022 Academics

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)

#153: Data-driven Campaigning with Polling and Focus Groups in American Politics, with Zac McCrary

October 29, 2022 Digital Strategists

Zac McCrary, Partner at Impact Research and host of the Pro Politics podcast, shares his insights on how American campaigns leverage polling and focus groups to craft a winning message. We discuss the upcoming 2022 US midterm elections, the (still) dominant role of television in political advertising, how social media fits into the picture, and how smart phones have changed polling into a multimodal endeavor. 

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

October 16, 2022 Academics

 

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 Academics

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 Academics

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 Academics

 

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. 

#147: Anti-immigration YouTube Videos: Tactics and Narratives, with Shauna Siggelkow

August 7, 2022 Civil Society

Shauna Siggelkow, Director of Digital Storytelling at Define American, discusses a new report on anti-immigration YouTube videos: ‘Immigration will Destroy Us and Other Talking Points.’


We break down the report, which identifies a network of viral YouTube videos promoting narratives associated with the Great Replacement Theory. Shauna also shares findings from experiments that test how different genres, animation styles, and messengers can effectively communicate political issues.


Check out the toolkit for communicating pro-immigration messages (and other types of political content) on digital and social media.

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

June 19, 2022 Academics

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)

#145: Political Tech Incubators in American Digital Campaigning, with Eric Wilson

May 29, 2022 Digital Strategists

Eric Wilson, Managing Partner at Startup Caucus and Host of The Business of Politics Show, discusses political tech incubators and their emerging role in US digital campaigning. We chat about how the Republican and Democratic Party need different tech solutions for different campaigning styles, the need for start-up campaigning firms, and the potential impact of Web3 on future political campaigns.

 

Here’s the link to Eric’s blog post on Web3.

 

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