Episodes

#101: Video Search Engines and Petey Vid as an Alternative to Google Video Search, with Craig Stadler

March 1, 2020 Civil Society


Craig Stadler, Founder and CEO of Petey Vid, guests to discuss the video search engine landscape and his alternative to the dominance of Google and YouTube: Petey Vid. Petey Vid offers users video content from 60+ different sources while not tracking users’ search history or IP addresses. We break down Craig’s motivations behind starting Petey Vid, how it’s search architecture is structured, and what separates it from YouTube.

#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!

#98: Political Mobilization in the 2019 EU Election Campaign, with Stephen Clark

January 11, 2020 Digital Strategists


Stephen Clark, Director for Liaison Offices at the European Parliament, guests to discuss his role coordinating the Parliament’s election campaign in the 2019 European Elections. We discuss the Parliament’s social media strategy, its focus on mobilizing citizens through the “ground game,” and the reaction to the Parliament’s campaign video “Choose your Future.”


Listen to the Steve discuss the Parliament’s strategy before the elections on the EuroPCom podcast!

#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!

#96: Pro-Trump Social Networks: The Donald on Reddit and TheDonald.win

December 3, 2019 Civil Society


A moderator of Reddit’s The Donald guests to discuss the notorious subreddit community, and the new pro-Trump online forum: TheDonald.win.

We discuss the role of memes in these online forums, how memes are used for redpilling, and the steps Reddit has taken to limit the reach of pro-Trump social networks.

#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!

#94: Warren’s Meme Team, with Misha Leybovich

November 17, 2019 Civil Society


Misha Leybovich, Organizer for Warren’s Meme Team, guests to discuss how memetic templates can be used for grassroots political campaigning. We break down the plan for Warren’s Meme Team, its focus on augmented reality (AR) lenses, and what the response to the initiative has been like so far.


Read the full plan 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