United Kingdom

#115: Bad News, Social Media, and Digital Campaigning in Britain, with Dr. Mark Pack

Dr. Mark Pack, President of the Liberal Democrats, guests to discuss his new book: “Bad News: What the Headlines Don’t Tell Us.

 

We talk about some of the flaws of election campaign coverage and how to be better consumers of news using social media. Dr. Pack also shares his insights on digital campaigning in Britain, where he ran digital operations for the LibDems in the 2001 and 2005 general elections. 

#108: Black Lives Matter Social Media Narratives outside the US, with James MacGregor

James MacGregor, Managing Director at Bakamo Public, discusses the main narratives in social media conversations around Black Lives Matter in the UK, Turkey, and Hungary. We break down how key themes from the US protests are translated into these different national contexts, as well as how the online debate has evolved since the protests started. 

#102: House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee, with Lord David Puttnam and Dr. Kate Dommett

Lord David Puttnam and Dr. Kate Dommett guest to discuss the work on the British House of Lords select committee “Democracy and Digital Technologies.”

The
committee seeks to investigate the pros and cons of digital
technologies around six key areas: transparency in political campaigns;
privacy and anonymity; misinformation; the effects of digital technology
on public discourse; how technology can facilitate democracy; and the
development of effective digital literacy. 

We discuss the
motivations behind forming the committee, the status of the inquiry so
far, as well as get into a broader discussion about policy
recommendations for the potential regulation of digital and social media
companies in the UK and elsewhere in the European Union. 

For links mentioned during the episode, check out: 

The website of the committee, and follow their latest updates on Twitter @HLDemoDigital

Dr. Dommett’s study “Data-driven Political Campaigns in Practice” in Internet Policy Review. 

#72: Digital Political Campaigning in Britain, with Dr. Rachel Gibson

Dr. Rachel Gibson, Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester, discusses British political parties’ digital campaigning from websites to social media. We take a longitudinal dive into the development of digital campaigning in the UK, and compare it to campaigning practices in the US. Then, we examine how citizens’ political participation is evolving through their use of digital communication technologies.

#56: Facebook Ad Targeting in the 2017 British General Election, with Dr. Nick Anstead

Dr. Nick Anstead, Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the LSE, guests to discuss his new research on British parties’ Facebook ad targeting during the 2017 election. Using a data from the Chrome browser created by Who Targets Me, Dr. Anstead and his team compare the content, tone, personalization, and calls to action used in these ads. We discuss the findings of that study, as well as outline three challenges for academics studying Facebook ad targeting moving forward: the epistemological, the conceptual, and the systematic.

Read the full study 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.

#25: The 2017 British Elections on Social Media, with Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten

Host Michael Bossetta and Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten discuss parties and citizens used social media to campaign in the 2017 UK General Elections, where Theresa May’s gamble to call a snap election backfired on her Conservative Party. We break down the election results and their implications for Brexit. We also look at how Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat were used by the major parties and their supporters during the campaign.