Social Media And Politics

Dr. Leticia Bode, Associate Professor at Georgetown University, discusses her research on social media and health misinformation correction. We break down several experiments that test the effectiveness of digital misinformation correction in the context of the Zika virus. We also talk about what the findings might mean for public health organizations' social media strategy in times of crisis. Towards the end, we also look at some of Dr. Bode's ongoing research investigating the coronavirus conversation on Twitter. The studies we discuss in this episode are:See Something, Say Something: Correction of Global Health Misinformation on Social MediaI Do Not Believe You: How Providing a Source Corrects Health Misperceptions on Social MediaA First Look at COVID-19 Information and Misinformation Sharing on Twitter

Stefan Smith, former Online Engagement Director at Pete for America, discusses the role of social media in digital organizing and campaigning during the 2020 Democratic Primaries. We break down two of Stefan's grassroots initiatives -- the Digital Captains program and Digital Door Knocking program -- and how they contributed to the overall campaign. We also talk about the political viability of Pinterest and Reddit, alongside more traditional platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Dr. Ben Epstein, Associate Professor of Political Science at DePaul University, guests to discuss the role of history in understanding contemporary political communication.We take a deep dive in Dr. Epstein's book The Only Constant is Change: Technology, Political Communication, and Innovation over Time, published by Oxford University Press.Dr. Epstein explains how the development of newspapers, the radio, and Internet fundamentally changed political communication practices for political campagins, social movements, and interest groups. We then discuss how television and social media were novel technologies for their time, but did not fundamentally establish new political communication orders. 

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. 

Craig Stadler, Founder and CEO of Petey Vid, guests to discuss the video search engine landscape and his alternative to the dominance of Google and YouTube: Petey Vid. Petey Vid offers users video content from 60+ different sources while not tracking users’ search history or IP addresses. We break down Craig’s motivations behind starting Petey Vid, how it’s search architecture is structured, and what separates it from YouTube.

Dr. Tarleton Gillespie, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Associate Professor of Communication at Cornell University, guests for our 100th episode!We revisit Dr. Gillespie's 2010 study "The Politics of Platforms" as well as discuss his latest book: "Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media."We discuss how social media companies strategically position themselves through discourse, the early adoption of social media by advertisers and political campaigns, and how content moderation shapes our interactions with platforms and politics. 

Dr. Alexander Stewart, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Houston, guests to discuss his research on "information gerrymandering," recently published in Nature. The study uses a voter game, mathematical modelling, social media data, and legislative data to examine how information asymmetries in social networks impact collective decision-making processes. We break down the study, and the implications of its findings for democracy. Read the full study, and check out the video showing information gerrymandering in action! 

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 Steve discuss the Parliament's strategy before the elections on the EuroPCom podcast!

The 2019 Year in Review! We 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. Tune in!

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. 

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! 

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.