Social Media And Politics

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.

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: Social Media Expression and the Political Self Civic Laboratories: Youth Political Expression in Anonymous, Ephemeral, Geo-Bounded Social Media Social Media Design for Youth Political Expression: Testing the Roles of Identifiability and Geo-boundedness

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 Use2) A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Cross-Cutting Exposure on Political Participation

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!

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.

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

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: NPC Infowars Winner State of the Union Biden Meme Acosta Meme And, a link to my paper on political campaigns' use of computer games!

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.

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.

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. Alexandra also shares her work for Donald Tusk's personal social media account, and in particular Instagram. We talk about the differences between institutional and personal communication at the Council, as well as how the two work together.

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. Find out more about Authentic Campaigns here!

Kata Füge, Social Media Analyst at Bakamo Social, discusses Bakamo's latest study charting citizens' online discussions about immigration across Europe. We break down the main findings of the study, the main narratives used by EU citizens to discuss migration in online spaces, as well as the methodology behind it. Click here to see the study's interactive dashboard, and find out what narratives about migration are popular in your country!

Dino Amenduni, Political Strategist and Partner at Proforma, guests to discuss his work campaigning for Partito Democratico (PD) in Italy. We talk about the role of social media in digital campaigning for Italian politics, the enduring importance of television, and differences between local, national, and European elections.

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Assistant Professor of European Studies at Lund University, guests to discuss a live breakdown of the EU election results. We talk about the election results, the European Parliament's digital campaign, and what it all means for Europe. Here's the 2019 European Parliament's promo video: Choose your Future. And the 2014 video: Act. React. Impact.

Dr. Ben O'Loughlin, Professor of International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, guests to discuss how diplomats use strategic narratives in managing international relations. We break down the concept of strategic narrative, which includes paying attention to the media environment. Dr. O'Loughlin explains the relationship between narrative and digital media, while providing examples from the 2015 Iran Deal and ongoing discussions around nuclear policy.

Dr. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Professor of Information Studies at Syracuse University, guests to share her research on American presidential campaigns and their digital media use since 1996. We discuss her award-winning book, Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age, as well as its upcoming second edition, which includes a chapter on the 2016 election. Dr. Stromer-Galley breaks down how American campaigns' digital strategy has changed over time, how it hasn't, and what these practices reflect about democracy.

Brian Lyle, Vice President of Digital Strategy at On Message, Inc., and AAPC 2019 Digital Strategist of the Year, guests to discuss his Pollie award-winning work during the 2018 US Midterms. We discuss On Message's approach to political campaigning - advertising, organic growth, and fundraising - and the role of digital media in each. We also break down differences in campaigning between challengers and incumbents, discover what makes a good campaign website, and talk about new forms of advertising like OTT and P2P texting.

Mikhail Fedorov, Chief Digital Strategist for Vladimir Zelensky, joins the podcast to discuss digital campaigning ahead of the 2019 Ukrainian Presidential Elections. We discuss how Zelensky, the election's frontrunner, is using tools like Facebook, YouTube, and Telegram to grow a support base and coordinate volunteers' canvassing efforts. We also talk about bots, trolls, and fake news in Ukraine ahead of the election, and how the Zelensky campaign is working to avoid information pollution on their online channels. Be sure to check out the podcast's Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube channels!

Bill Ottman, Founder and CEO of Minds, discusses how decentralized social media platforms may be the response to privacy concerns surrounding big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. We talk about Minds' peer-to-peer cryptocurrency model, how blockchain technology is used on the platform, and online censorship.

Ray Serrato, Social Media Analyst at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, discusses how social media data is used in the context of human rights violations. Ray breaks down the attacks against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, and we discuss the role of social media in these attacks. Lastly, we talk about what the closing down of social media APIs means for future human rights work.