Episodes

#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

#88: Making Memes to Support Donald Trump, with Carpe Donktum

August 11, 2019 Civil Society


Carpe Donktum, the pseudonym for a citizen who makes memes to support Donald Trump, guests to discuss his work. We talk about some of the memes that the President has retweeted on Twitter, as well as differences in meme making cultures across Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan.

Here are the memes discussed in the episode:

State of the Union
Biden Meme
Acosta Meme

And, a link to my paper on political campaigns’ use of computer games!

#87: Natural Language Processing with Social Media Data, with Dr. Leon Derczynski

July 28, 2019 Academics


Dr. Leon Derczynski, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the IT University of Copenhagen, guests to discuss how natural language processing and computational linguistics can be applied to social media data.

We break down several of Dr. Derczynski’s EU-funded research projects, from detecting the informativeness of tweets in crisis communication to assessing the veracity of claims through comment patterns on Twitter and Reddit.

Dr. Derczynski also shares his thoughts on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deepfake detection.

#86: The Platform Society, Public Values, and Politics, with Dr. José van Dijck

July 13, 2019 Academics


Dr. José van Dijck, Distinguished Professor in Media and Society at Utrecht University, guests to discuss her latest book, The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World (Oxford University Press).

We break down key concepts from the book, including Platform Societies and Platform Power. We discuss the importance of public values in the Platform Society, and how these values might differ across the United States, the European Union, and China.

Dr. van Dijck also shares her thoughts on how platforms can be reverse engineered in ways that promote the public good.

#85: Strategic Communication at the Council of the European Union, with Alexandra Ekkelenkamp

June 30, 2019 Digital Strategists


Alexandra Ekkelenkamp, Advisor to the Director of Media and Communications at the Council of the European Union, discusses how the EU Council uses social media for strategic communication.

Alexandra shares her insights about how social media campaigns reflect the Council’s work, how that creates authenticity, and how to incorporate local versus European narratives when communicating to the EU public.

#84: Authentic Campaigns, Social Media, and Politics, with Loren Merchan and Jonathan Barnes

June 16, 2019 Digital Strategists


Loren Merchan and Jonathan Barnes guest to discuss the concept of authenticity and authentic campaigns in US elections. We break down the concept of authenticity, and discuss how digital and social media can be leveraged to make a candidate seem more authentic during a campaign.

Read more about Authentic Campaigns here!