Brexit
#63: Brexit Botnets and Hyperpartisan News Sharing on Twitter, with Dr. Marco Bastos
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:
#43: Mobile Apps for Political Campaigns and Advocacy, with Thomas Peters
Thomas Peters, founder and CEO of uCampaign, discusses how mobile apps can be powerful tools to drive engagement for political campaigns and advocacy groups. uCampaign has developed apps for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and the Brexit Leave campaign, and Thomas shares his insights into why smartphones are key channels for contemporary civic engagement. We discuss how the app integrates with Facebook, Twitter, and Google, what types of data are collected, and how gamification is used to encourage activism.
#28: The UK’s New Digital Left: Paid Social, Civic Tech, and Mobilizing the Youth Vote, with Samir Patel
Samir Patel, Managing Director at Blue State Digital London, guests this week to discuss how the recent success of the Labour Party in the 2017 British elections was aided by a huge push in digital by the British Left. We discuss the role that Facebook data targeting played in the election – not just from Labour but also advocacy groups. Samir also explains how social media was used to mobilize the British youth vote, how citizens built their own digital tools to campaign (i.e. civic tech), and some transnational differences (and similarities) between campaigning in the United States, United Kingdom, and other parts of the European Union. We also talk about how Brexit and the upcoming negotiations may affect data privacy laws and campaign regulations.
The article that I mention in the introduction can be found on Blue State Digital’s website here.
#27: Who’s Targeting You? Facebook Dark Ads in the British Election Campaign, with Sam Jeffers
In this episode, Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me, joins the podcast to discuss how sponsored Facebook ads were used by political parties in the 2017 British General Election. Who Targets Me is a project collecting targeted Facebook ads via a Google Chrome extension, and its aim is to shed light on who’s posting political dark ads as well as who’s being targeted. We discuss the project and what the initial data shows from GE2017.
#18: Dark Social Media like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat: What do they mean for Politics and Marketing?, with Paul Hurley
Paul Hurley, digital marketing expert and founder of Frictionless Social, guests this week to discuss how Dark Social networks may be influencing politics. Paul discusses how platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and others can be used by politicians and political campaigns, and we talk about how these networks may have effected the outcome of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. Paul highlights how communication in Dark Social networks tends to be more honest, among close friends or those with a shared interest, and may build strong communities of users that can mobilize politically.