Episodes

#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

#91: Data Science Tools for the 2020 Census, with Chris Dick

September 22, 2019 Digital Strategists


Chris Dick, Director of Applied Data Science at Civis Analytics, guests to discuss how data science approaches are being used to increase participation in the 2020 US Census.


We talk about some of the political and financial challenges facing the census, what types of data are being used models of hard-to-count communities, and how different types of messaging can either increase or decrease Census response rates.


Learn more about the Civis Census Intelligence Center here!

#90: Tracking Attention on Social Media for the 2020 Democratic Primaries, with Neal Rothschild

September 8, 2019 Digital Strategists


Neal Rothschild, Associate Director of Growth at Axios, guests to discuss the Axios-NewsWhip 2020 Attention Tracker. The attention tracker monitors candidate and issue mentions across Facebook and Twitter, and we talk about how the technology is used in Axios’s reporting of the 2020 Democratic Primaries.

#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