Social Media and Politics

Megan Clasen, Partner at Gambit Strategies, shares her insights into digital political advertising for persuasion and mobilization. We discuss the role of social media ads relative to CTV and OTT advertising, as well as how political ads compete with corporate brands for inventory on these services. Megan also shares her experiences with Facebook's ad 'blackout' period during the 2020 campaign and how the Biden campaign responded to countering Trump's advertisements. ...And much more! 

The 7th Annual Social Media and Politics Podcast Year in Review! A Mega Episode with lots of knowledge bombs - you'll simply have to listen to hear them all!

Here is a gift of all the platform year in review reports: 

Facebook: Protecting People from Online Threats in 2022

Instagram: 2023 Instagram Trend Report

Google: Year in Search

TikTok: 1)  Year on TikTok: 2022, truly #ForYou
TikTok: 2) What's Next 2023 Trend Report

Pinterest: Pinterest Predicts 2022

Reddit: Reddit Recap 2022

Snapchat: Year End 2022

Pornhub: 2022 Year in Review

And the two clips played in the episode: 

SNL BeReal Skit

Zelensky Deepfake

See you in January for new episodes! 

Share your thoughts or questions @SMandPPodcast

Keep downloading,  listening, and learning! <3

Prof. Bruce Mutsvairo, Professor of Media and Politics at Utrecht University, shares his insights on the role of social media and politics on the African continent. We discuss digital activism across countries, how structures like data bundles might lead to surveillance, and the growing role of influencers as reporters of news. 

The Special Issue call for citizen journalists is here.

Here are the studies we discuss in the episode:

The Janus face of social media and democracy? Reflections on Africa (2020)

Is citizen journalism dead? An examination of recent developments in the field (2020)

Zac McCrary, Partner at Impact Research and host of the Pro Politics podcast, shares his insights on how American campaigns leverage polling and focus groups to craft a winning message. We discuss the upcoming 2022 US midterm elections, the (still) dominant role of television in political advertising, how social media fits into the picture, and how smart phones have changed polling into a multimodal endeavor. 

In this episode, it's just me! I present a recently published study, co-authored with Rasmus Schmøkel and published in Political Communication, that analyzes US Presidential campaigns' emotion expression across Facebook and Instagram. 

I'll explain the theoretical backdrop of the study, give an overview of the state-of-the-art on visual political communication, and communicate the study's methods and key results. Hope you enjoy this one-on-one episode! 

Here's a link to the study (feel free to share around): 

Cross-Platform Emotions in Social Media Political Campaigning: Comparing Candidates' Facebook and Instagram Images in the 2020 US Election (2022)
 

Aleszu Bajak, Senior Data Reporter at USA Today, discusses his reporting on social media and politics using computational methods. We talk about the types of data that data journalists are working with, how they acquire it (e.g., Freedom of Information Requests), and how they approach reporting results in a way that tells an engaging story. We also dive into some of Aleszu's recent reporting, such as Parler reactions to Donald Trump's speech on January 6th, inequalities in Covid vaccinations, and the polarization of Congressional political rhetoric on social media over time. 

Here are some links to the stories we discuss in the episode: 

'Hope' is out, 'Fight' is in: Does Tweeting Divide Congress, or Simply Echo its Divisions? 

When Trump Started his Speech before the Capital Riot, Talk on Parler turned to Civil War

How Critical Race Theory went from Conservative Battle Cry to Mainstream Powder Keg

And here's Aleszu's talk on tracking politics with data journalism - highly recommend! 

Dr. Nils Gustafsson, Senior Lecturer of Strategic Communication at Lund University, discusses the run-up to the 2022 Swedish Elections and then findings from his research. First, we chat about the main political issues that Swedes are voting on, as well as how political parties and party leaders are digital campaigning on social media. Then, Dr. Gustafsson shares findings from three of his research projects. We discuss how Facebook was viewed as a tool for participation when it first became widely adopted in Sweden, how rejection sensitivity might affect political expression online, and how media narratives about polarization in Swedish media have changed over time. 

Here are links to the two published studies we discuss in the episode: 

The Subtle Nature of Facebook Politics: Swedish Social Network Site Users and Political Participation (2012)

A Social Safety Net? Rejection Sensitivity and Political Opinion Sharing among Young People in Social Media (2018)

Prof. Vincent Hendricks, Professor of Formal Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, discusses his new book The Ministry of Truth: Big Tech's Influence over Facts, Feelings, and Fictions.

Prof. Hendricks shares how social media are like investment banks in the attention economy, how information is packaged and sold, and what Big Tech's growing influence on critical infrastructure means for politics and society. 

Dr. Tom Paskhalis, Assistant Professor in Political and Data Science at Trinity College Dublin, shares his research on applying machine learning to the Facebook URLs Dataset from Social Science One. The project develops a model to label whether a news domain is credible or not based on Facebook interactions data. We discuss the Facebook URLs dataset, what types of machine learning techniques were applied to it, and how the model performed across the US and EU countries. 

Shauna Siggelkow, Director of Digital Storytelling at Define American, discusses a new report on anti-immigration YouTube videos: 'Immigration will Destroy Us and Other Talking Points.'

We break down the report, which identifies a network of viral YouTube videos promoting narratives associated with the Great Replacement Theory. Shauna also shares findings from experiments that test how different genres, animation styles, and messengers can effectively communicate political issues. 

Check out the toolkit for communicating pro-immigration messages (and other types of political content) on digital and social media.

Dr. Desirée Schmuck, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mass Communication at KU Leuven, shares her research on social media influencers and their effects on users' political attitudes and behavior. We break down three of Dr. Schmuck's studies. The first focuses on how exposure to political influencer content affects young social media users' behavior, both in terms of formal electoral participation and environmental sustainability. The second examines how influencers might affect users' perceived simplification of politics, and how that perception influences users' political cynicism and interest. The third study is an experiment that seeks to understand how misinformation from lifestyle influencers could affect female social media users' attitudes toward covid and trust in public health information. 

Here are links to the studies we discuss in the episode: 

The Mobilizing Power of Influencers for Pro-Environmental Behavior Intentions and Political Participation (2022)

Politics–Simply Explained? How Influencers Affect Youth’s Perceived Simplification of Politics, Political Cynicism, and Political Interest (2022)

Responses to Social Media Influencers’ Misinformation about COVID-19: A Pre-Registered Multiple-Exposure Experiment (2022)

And if you're interested in political influencers, check out our episode on political influencers in the Biden 2020 campaign.

Eric Wilson, Managing Partner at Startup Caucus and Host of The Business of Politics Show, discusses political tech incubators and their emerging role in US digital campaigning. We chat about how the Republican and Democratic Party need different tech solutions for different campaigning styles, the need for start-up campaigning firms, and the potential impact of Web3 on future political campaigns. 

Here's the link to Eric's blog post on Web3. 

Subscribe to The Business of Politics Show! 

Prof. Lance Bennett, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Communication at the University of Washington, discusses the types of principled values that should guide platform regulation. We reflect on the disruptive ethos of tech companies and what that means for democracy. We also discuss theories of capitalism, recent changes in data privacy and third-party tracking, as well as the connection between digital technologies and protest parties. 

The article we discuss in the episode is Killing the Golden Goose: A Framework for Regulating Disruptive Technologies. 

Prof. Andrew Chadwick, Professor of Communication at Loughborough University, shares insights from his new public research report: Covid Vaccines and Online Personal Messaging: The Challenge of Challenging Everyday Misinformation. The report explores how British citizens use private social messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and in particular how they experience and engage with coronavirus misinformation across private group chats on these platforms. We discuss the hybrid character of this engagement, the role of qualitative research in project designs, and person-centered solutions to countering misinformation on private social media.

Prof. Anders Olof Larsson, Professor of Communication at Kristiania University College, shares his comparative social media research on party communication. We start out with a macro-level look at political parties' adoption of Facebook and Instagram across Europe, before focusing more specifically on Scandinavia. Prof. Larsson discusses the pros and cons of political merch contests in driving engagement, and how hashtag network structures have evolved over time on Facebook and Instagram in Norway. We also discuss post virality and Prof. Larsson's work comparing viral posts in Norway across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Here are the studies mentioned in the episode: 

Longitudinal studies of European party communication: 

Picture-perfect populism: Tracing the rise of European populist parties on Facebook (2022)

The rise of Instagram as a tool for political communication: A longitudinal study of European political parties and their followers (2021)

Studies using Norwegian data:

‘Win a sweater with the PM’S face on it’ – A longitudinal study of Norwegian party Facebook engagement strategies (2020)

‘Coherent clusters’ or ‘fuzzy zones’ – Understanding attention and structure in online political participation (2019)

Winning and losing on social media: Comparing viral political posts across platforms (2019)

Arjun Moorthy, co-founder and CEO of The Factual, discusses how machine learning and natural language processing can rank news for credibility. Arjun breaks down the criteria underpinning The Factual's rating system as well as how it tries to minimize bias. We talk about some of the pitfalls of optimizing news for engagement, as well as how anonymity in a different incentive structure affects discourse around discussing news. Towards the end of the episode, we discuss the current state of AI in the newsroom, and how automation might affect news consumption in the future. 

Check out the Unbiased Podcast!

And test out The Factual's engine at IsThisCredible.com

Prof. Joshua Tucker, Professor of Politics at NYU and Co-Director of the Center for Social Media and Politics, discusses social media's impact on the invasion of Ukraine. We talk about 'information theaters' of operation and how they differ across the West, Ukraine, Russia, and China. Prof. Tucker also shares his thoughts on Volodymyr Zelensky's teleconferencing, the Biden administration's pre-bunking strategy towards disinformation, multinational corporations' actions towards sanctions, and Vladimir Putin's isolation. And more! 

Here are links to prior episodes on Ukraine:

Volodymyr Zelensky's Social Media Strategy in the 2019 Ukraine Elections

Russian Disinformation and Social Media in Ukraine

Dr. Jenny Lindholm, University Teacher and Researcher in Political Science, Media, and Communication at Åbo Akademi University, discusses her research on visual political communication. First, we break down Dr. Lindholm's eye-tracking experiment on how party leaders' Instagram photos affect viewers' trait perceptions of leaders. The focus is on where viewers of these images give their visual attention, and whether that differs across public versus private photos as well as the gender of party leaders. Then, we discuss another study focusing on the emotion communication of the Finnish Prime Minister during coronavirus crisis communication in press conferences. 

Here are the two studies we discuss in the episode:

See Me, Like Me! Exploring Viewers’ Visual Attention to and Trait Perceptions of Party Leaders on Instagram (2021)

Emotionell räddning? Visuell kriskommunikation under coronakrisens inledande skede – fallet Finland (2021)

Dr. Jakob Ohme, Senior Researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute, discusses his research on mobile news consumption. Dr. Ohme breaks down how exposure to political news on a smartphone might differ from a desktop, and he breaks down results from a recent eye-tracking study exploring the topic. We also discuss how smartphones can be used for data collection, through Dr. Ohme's research using a smartphone media diary as well as data from the iOS Screen Time function. 

The studies discussed in the episode are: 

Mobile News Learning: Investigating Political Knowledge Gains in a Social Media Newsfeed with Mobile Eye Tracking (2021)

Mobile Data Donations: Assessing Self-report Accuracy and Sample Biases with the iOS Screen Time Function (2020)

Mobile but Not Mobilized? Differential Gains from Mobile News Consumption for Citizens’ Political Knowledge and Campaign Participation (2020)

Here we go! A deep dive into the year's latest trends in social media and politics, as well as predictions for the future. We cover various platforms' year in review recaps, Telegram and Belarus, Facebook's change to Meta and the Silicon Valley "Founder", artificial intelligence and the virtual politician, Web 3 and Parler, and the enduring role of newsletters. 

Here's the platform year in review stats and bonus links for the episode: 

Facebook Threat Report

Google Year in Search

Tiktok Cultural Phenomenons

Pinterest Predicts

Reddit Recap

Snap Lens on the Year

Twitter #OnlyOnTwitter

Article with chart on social media's impact on democracy

The greatest newsletter of all-time 

See you in January for new episodes! <3

 

Dr. Curd Knüpfer (Assistant Professor) and Mike Cowburn (PhD Candidate), from the JFK Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, discuss their research on right-wing alternative media. We start out by discussing what right-wing alternative media are, and how they are transnationally linked across Western democracies. Then, we explore Mike and Curd's ongoing work into how Members of Congress' social media engagement with these sites may be predictors of political positionality. We also look at how Republican Members of Congress' use of the fake news label also relates to their political ideology. 

The (published) studies discussed in the episode are: 

Beyond Breitbart: Comparing Right-Wing Digital News Infrastructures in Six Western Democracies

Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States

Legislator Adoption of the Fake News Label: Ideological Differences in Republican Representative Use on Twitter

Juri Schnöller, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Cosmonauts & Kings, discusses the latest trends in German digital political communication. We chat about the role of digital political consultants in Germany, the important role of messenger apps like Signal and Telegram, and how social media influencers are impacting coronavirus communication. We also compare how features of the German electoral rules, political culture, and media system work to shape German digital campaigning. 

Extra links: 

Public Arena Playbook: Juri's Handbook for Digital Political Communication

Civical: A Social Media Management Software for Politics

Dr. Tamar Mitts, Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, shares her research on ISIS radicalization and it's relationship to social isolation, anti-Muslim sentiment, and counter-extremism programs. We discuss Dr. Mitts' Twitter dataset that uses spatial algorithms to identify ISIS sympathizers' locations and machine learning to identify pro-ISIS sentiment. Toward the end of the episode, we discuss how computer vision tools such as Amazon's Rekognition API can be used to detect violent imagery in ISIS propaganda. 

Here are the studies we discuss in the episode: 

From Isolation to Radicalization: Anti-Muslim Hostility and Support for ISIS in the West  (2019)

Countering Violent Extremism and Radical Rhetoric (2021)

Studying the Impact of ISIS Propaganda Campaigns (Forthcoming)

Dr. Mirya Holman, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, shares her latest research on how politicians depict mask wearing through their social media images. We discuss how computer vision can be used to detect masks in images, as well as what factors correlate with politicians' depicting masks. Later in the episode, we discuss another recent study by Dr. Holman, where emotions in the facial expressions and vocal pitch of German politicians were analyzed during election debates. 

Here's a link to that study: 

Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions during Televised Debates (2021)

And here's a link to Mirya Holman's Aggressive Winning Scholars (#MHAWS) Newsletter! 

Professor Chris Bail, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Duke University, discusses his latest book Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing. Professor Bail shares findings from three studies on political polarization covering field-experiments, qualitative interviews, and lab experiments. We discuss how social media contributes to a distorted reality in how extremists and moderates discuss politics online, and how this prism fosters a sense false polarization. We also chat about measures that individuals and social media platforms could take to reduce online political polarization. 

Here are supplementary links to two studies discussed in the episode: 

Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media can Increase Political Polarization (2019)

Political Sectarianism in America (2020)

Tatenda Musapatike, Founder and CEO of the Voter Formation Project, shares her insights on using social media to mobilize non-white voters. In her prior role at Acronym, Tatenda led the Expand the Electorate project, which used digital ads to register and mobilize Black and Latinx voters in 8 target states. In this episode, we discuss the results of Tatenda's work in the 2020 US election, the racial biases in data and targeting technologies, and how gender differences between Black voters might be overcome in future electoral cycles. 

Here's the case study from the Expand the Electorate project and more detailed white paper (requires email sign-up) - definitely worth a read! 

Baroness Beeban Kidron, Chair of the 5Rights Foundation, guests to discuss the recently launched Twisted Toys campaign. We chat about the role of awareness campaigns for tech advocacy, how policymakers respond to children's data protection issues, and the creative design process behind the Twisted Toys campaign.

Check out Twisted Toys here!

Andrew Frawley, former Director of Marketing at Yang2020, shares his experience running marketing and digital strategy for Andrew Yang's 2020 campaign. Andrew discusses the role of social media for outsider campaigns, challenges in establishing growth on social media, and the role of podcasts for political campaigns. We also discuss campaign slogans, differences between outsider and mainstream campaigns, and Facebook groups as organizing hubs. 

Check out Andrew's website for more experiences from the campaign! 

Dr. Michael D. Cohen, CEO of Cohen Research Group and Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, discusses his new book Modern Political Campaigns: How Professionalism, Technology, and Speed Have Revolutionized Elections. 

We talk about how communication technologies have shifted political campaigns from being party-centered to candidate-centered. We also discuss various aspects of political campaigns covered in the book, such as: how political campaigns conduct opposition research, the role of data and analytics in the modern campaign, and the value social media can provide to a political campaign.  

Buy Modern Political Campaigns here and use code RLFANDF30 for 30% off! 

Tom Moylan, Communication Strategist at the Directorate-General for Communication at the European Commission, shares his personal reflections on EU digital communication. We discuss the value that social media can bring in communicating the European Union to citizens, as well as how EU institutions have evolved their communication strategy over time. Tom also shares his experiences as a speechwriter in EU trade policy, and how speech writing compares with social media communication. We also discuss current trends in EU institutional communication, and what lessons might be learned from coronavirus pandemic moving forward. 

Be sure to subscribe to Tom's newsletter: Speaking Moylanguage! 

Jeffrey Alexander, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, discusses his cultural sociology approach to political performance and cultural icons. We start out with the concept of fusion, and how political actors work to achieve it through the elements of political performance. Then, we turn to a discussion of objects, affordances, and the power of political icons. 

Here's some extra reading on the topics we cover in the episode: 

Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance Between Ritual and Strategy (2004)

The Performativity of Objects (2020)

Dr. Jean-Christophe Plantin, Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, explains the concept of media infrastructures. 

We discuss Dr. Plantin's research on digital platforms, infrastructures, and how tech giants like Facebook and Google increasingly blend those two concepts. We also discuss the infrastructure of WeChat, and get into Dr. Plantin's ongoing work into the concept of programmable infrastructures - which explores how the hardware of the tech industry is becoming increasingly disagreggated and modular. 

Check out Dr. Plantin's recent talk at Sciences Po for more details on programmable infrastructures. 

And the articles we discuss in the episode: 

Digital Media Infrastructures: Pipes, Platforms, and Politics (2018)

Infrastructure Studies Meet Platform Studies in the Age of Google and Facebook (2018)

WeChat as Infrastructure: The Techno-Nationalist Shaping of Chinese Digital Platforms (2019)

Ieva Česnulaitytė, Policy Analyst at the OECD, discusses her and her colleagues’ research on representative deliberative processes. We break down some of the key models of deliberative processes, when they tend to be used, and how their success can be measured. 

We also discuss how the coronavirus pandemic has moved deliberative processes online. As social distancing limits the ability for citizens to attend in-person events, how are deliberative processes being carried out? 

Here's the report we discuss in the episode - Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave. 

And the op-ed in Nature discussing online deliberation during the pandemic. 

Madeline V. Twomey, President at Rufus and Mane, discusses how social media influencers can benefit political campaigns (and vice versa). Madeline forged digital influencer partnerships for Joe Biden's presidential campaign and inauguration. She shares her experiences working with influencer programs and her thoughts on best practices moving forward.

We talk about the value that influencers can provide to campaigns, how their working relationship looks like in practice, and how storytelling can help non-political influencers break into politics

Here's Madeline's Medium post discussing her 10 lessons from the Biden campaign. 

Check out the latest newsletter, if you're curious about what's coming next on the pod!

Dr. Tamara A. Small, Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Guelph, discusses her research on social media and politics in Canada. We start out with her latest edited volume Digital Politics in Canada: Promises and Realities (2020, University of Toronto Press). 

We then dive into Dr. Small's research on Canadian party leaders'  use of Twitter, citizens' sharing of memes about Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, and how Canadian courts use social media. We also cover how journalists live-tweet about court cases, and the Canadian courts' struggle to adapt during Covid-19. 

Here's the full list of studies discused in the episode: 

Digital Politics in Canada: Promises and Realities (2020)

What the Hashtag? A Content Analysis of Canadian Politics on Twitter (2011)

Online Negativity in Canada: Do Canadian Party Leaders Attack on Twitter? (2018)

Trolling Stephen Harper: Internet Memes as Online Activism (2019)

“Justin Trudeau – I Don’t Know Her”: An Analysis of Leadership Memes of Justin Trudeau (2020)

Tweet Justice: The Canadian Court’s Use of Social Media (2020)

Play-by-Play Justice: Tweeting Criminal Trials in the Digital Age (2020)

Trial by Zoom? The Response to COVID-19 by Canada's Courts (2020)

Martin Hilbert, Professor of Communication at UC-Davis, discusses his research on algorithms and polarization. Prof. Hilbert introduces information theory and how it can be applied to studying the transfer of emotions via algorithms. We break down some of Prof. Hilbert's recent studies, as well as his current thinking around detaching from social algorithms.

The studies discussed in the episode:

Behavioral Experiments With Social Algorithms: An Information Theoretic Approach to Input-Output Conversions

Do Search Algorithms Endanger Democracy? An Experimental Investigation of Algorithm Effects on Political Polarization

Communicating with Algorithms: A Transfer Entropy Analysis of Emotions-based Escapes from Online Echo Chambers

Prof. Hilbert's seven part Medium series on Social Media Distancing. 

Nick Ahamed, Director of Analytics at Priorities USA, shares his research on the effectiveness of digital ads for increasing voter turnout and support for Democrats. We discuss the field and survey experiments that Priorities USA has been running to find the optimal messaging strategies, targeting approaches, and treatment lengths for political social media ads during elections. 

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten joins for the 5th Annual Social Media and Politics Year in Review! 

We answer listener questions and present six gifts, each representing big events that shaped social media and politics this year. 

25:18 - Platform Year in Review Reports
53:08 - Platforms and Activism (Belarus and Thailand)
1:16:26 - Political Ad Effectiveness
1:38:00 - Platform Regulation (Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act)
2:02:31 - Tweets from the Dead
2:17:00 - Platform Fragmentation

Here's a list of each platform's year in review reports: 

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Reddit, Reddit UK, Reddit Moderators, Pornhub Debate Night

Other supplementary material:

Acronym's 'Haha Ratio'

Priorities USA's "Wreck" Ad

Digital Services Act

Margarethe Vestager on the Digital Services Act

Study Modelling Dead Social Media Accounts

Tufts Research on Youth and Political Engagement

Pew Research on Social Media and Persuasion

 

Sofia Diogo Mateus, Audience Development Editor at Politico Europe, discusses the role of social media in online political journalism. We talk about the importance of audience development, the tools used to assist in online publishing and measuring engagement, and the benefits and pitfalls of user generated content (UGC). We also discuss Sofia's work as Head of Facebook at Deutsche Welle, strategies around content moderation, and the value of reporting political news for international audiences. 

Click here to view the Social Media Producer job posting at Politico Europe. 

And here to sign up to Tom Moylan's newsletter! 

Dr. Patricía Rossini, Derby Fellow in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, discusses her latest research on informal political talk online. We break down differences between incivility and intolerance in online discussions, as well as misinformation sharing across Facebook and WhatsApp. 

The two studies we discuss in the episode are: 

1. Beyond Incivility: Understanding Patterns of Uncivil and Intolerant Discourse in Online Political Talk
2. Dysfunctional Information Sharing on WhatsApp and Facebook: The Role of Political Talk, Cross-Cutting Exposure and Social Corrections

Dr. Terri Towner, Professor of Political Science at Oakland University, discusses her research on political campaigning and information on Instagram. We also give first impressions from the last presidential debate between Trump and Biden, and break down some poll results about citizens' social media use during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Here are the two studies we discuss in the episode: 

The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season

Instagramming Issues: Agenda Setting During the 2016 Presidential Campaign

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. 

Sinan Aral, David Austin Professor of Management at MIT and Director of MIT's Initiative on the Digital Economy, discusses his new book "The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health—and How We Must Adapt."

Prof. Aral breaks down key theoretical concepts from the book, which outlines some of the fundamental mechanisms for how social media platforms operate. We also discuss the science behind these concepts and their implications for elections, politics, and society. 

Dr. André Haller (University of Applied Sciences Kufstein Tyrol) and Simon Kruschinski (University of Mainz) share their research into data-driven political campaigning in Germany. We discuss the key political, legal, and cultural factors that influence German politicians digital campaigning, differences in organic posts versus paid advertisements, and how social media platforms have been used by fringe political actors.

Here's the research paper we discuss in the episode: Restrictions on Data-Driven Political Micro-targeting in Germany.

Vanessa Molter, Graduate Research Assistant at the Stanford Internet Observatory, breaks down her new report: "Telling China's Story: The Chinese Communist Party's Campaign to Shape Global Narratives." 

We discuss what researchers currently know about China's influence operations on social media, how they compare with Russia's disinformation strategies, and dive into the report's three case studies: the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the 2020 Taiwanese presidential elections, and the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Dr. Solomon Messing, Chief Scientist at ACRONYM and Affiliated Researcher at Georgetown University, shares his insights on data science across academia, the tech industry, and political campaigning space. We discuss how computational social science methods have changed over time, and how system architectures can be built to protect social media users' privacy. We also chat about current trends that Dr. Messing is observing at ACRONYM relating to the persuasiveness and cost of political ads on social media. 

Here's the paper we discuss on differential privacy, and the Facebook URLs Dataset Codebook. 

Dr. Andreas Jungherr, Assistant Professor for Social Science Data Collection and Analysis at the University of Konstanz, guests to discuss his latest book, "Retooling Politics: How Digital Media are Shaping Democracy." 

We chat about the state of social media research in political science and political communication, and what we currently know about echo chambers, polarization, and election prediction. We also discuss how digital media is shaping political campaigning and the role it might play for campaigns in the future. 

Ned Howey, CEO of Tectonica, discusses the international firm's approach to digital organizing for progressive campaigns. We focus on how Tectonica's digital solutions integrate with NationBuilder, some key principles of website design, and how to engage supporters with an authentic strategy and tone. 

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. 

Dr. Brahim Zarouali, Assistant Professor in Persuasive Communication at the University of Amsterdam, discusses his research on social media political ads and their effectiveness on different personality types (introverts and extroverts). We break down the findings from two experiments, which try and replicate the psychometric targeting techniques of firms like Cambridge Analytica  by appealing to users' psychological traits and emotions. We also discuss the de-polarization potential of chatbots, based on a study Dr. Zarouali conducted that presents participants with pro- or anti-attitudinal news on immigration. 

Maria and Ian are co-founders of Blue Wave Voiceover, a collective of professional voiceover actors lending their voices to Democratic campaigns. We discuss the role of voices in political ads, the back-end of reading political copy, and some of the differences between commercial and political voiceovers. We also demo the script reading process with real political ads, and change their tone to showcase what voiceover actors can do! 

Here's the final version of the ads we discuss in the episode: 

Mike Bloomberg | Ellen Lipton

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:

1. See Something, Say Something: Correction of Global Health Misinformation on Social Media
2. I Do Not Believe You: How Providing a Source Corrects Health Misperceptions on Social Media
3. A 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: 

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

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

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.

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.

Prof. 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.

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.

Professor 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 Volodymyr 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.

Adam Meldrum, Founding and Managing Partner at Ad Victory, guests to discuss the cutting-edge trends in American digital campaigning. We look at some best practices and innovations from the 2018 Midterm Elections around ad buys, booking inventory, OTT campaigns, and Facebook Messenger chatbots. And of course, how social media fits into the modern political campaign apparatus.

Dr. Alice Marwick, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, guests to discuss the findings of her research report: Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online.

Dr. Marwick breaks down how far-right groups use the internet and social media to promote their ideologies. We also talk about radicalization, conspiracy theories, and differences in online activity between the far-right and far-left.

Check out the report here.

And don't forget to sign up for the Social Media and Politics newsletter!

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.

Kateryna Kruk, Analyst at StopFake and Special Fellow at the European Values Think-Tank, discusses the development and strategies of Russian disinformation in Ukraine. Kateryna shares her experiences using Twitter to promote awareness about the Euromaidan protests, and we dig deeper into the role social media played in the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution. We then discuss how Russian used digital media to spread disinformation around the annexation of Crimea and armed conflict in Donbass. Kateryna also shares her insights into how to use social media for government communication, based on her work with the Ukrainian Parliament. Other topics include deep fakes and disinformation ahead of the 2019 Ukrainian Presidential elections.

Dr. Homero Gil de Zúñiga, Professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna, guests to discuss the "News Finds Me Perception" and the role of social media in it. Citizens who believe that the news will simply find them are heavy users of social media, and Dr. Gil de Zúñiga's research shows that this negatively impacts political interest and political knowledge. In the episode, we parse out the effects and implications of News Finds Me for democracy.

The two articles discussed in the episode are:

1. News Finds Me Perception and Democracy

2. Multi-Platform News Use and Political Participation Across Age Groups

Dr. Paul Reilly, Senior Lecturer in Social Media and Digital Society at the University of Sheffield, shares his research on the role of social media in protests in Northern Ireland. We first discuss the "Irish Border Question" in relation to Brexit, and then hone in on two demonstrations in Northern Ireland. The discussion highlights how much of the contemporary political debates around Facebook and Twitter (e.g., disinformation, propaganda, and user privacy) have roots much earlier than the 2016 US election.

The two articles covered in the episode are:

1. Researching protest on Facebook: developing an ethical stance for the study of Northern Irish flag protest pages

2. Tweeting for peace? Twitter and the Ardoyne parade dispute in Belfast, July 2014

Marta Albertini, Digital Strategist at GPLUS, joins the podcast to share her experiences in digital campaigning across private and public sectors. We discuss differences in using social media in a B2B environment versus an institutional one, some of the challenges in running pan-European campaigns, and how generational differences matter when communicating policy online. Marta also shares her insights on what's changed in the (social) media landscape between the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament Elections.

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Senior Lecturer in European Studies at Lund University, joins host Michael Bossetta for the 3rd Annual Social Media and Politics Year in Review!

We each present three "gifts": nuggets of knowledge that look back to the key trends in social media and politics in 2018 or what to expect in 2019. We discuss politicians as influencers, most shared items on social media, artificial intelligence, clickbait, and much more!

Here are some extra resources from the episode.

Facebook Livestream

Platform Year in Reviews:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Pornhub

Nike "Dream Crazy" Commercial

Pizza Hut "Lines" Commercial

Alex Stubb v. Manfred Weber Campaign

Laurel v. Yanny: Trump Edition

Now This video poking fun at Congress

Marco Ricorda, Social Media Manager for the European Parliament's President, joins the podcast to discuss livestreaming from the Parliament during last week's terrorist attack in Strasbourg. From there, we discuss the state of digital campaigning in European politics, the role of data and data analysis for social media campaigns, and the upcoming 2019 European Parliament elections.

Check out the EuroPCom Podcast!
Here's Marco's Medium post discussed in the episode.

Dr. Jakob Svensson, Associate Professor in Media and Communication at Malmö University, guests to share his research on the logics that drive digital media. We discuss how algorithms and datafication are shaped by developers, and the types of biases that can occur as a result. We also talk about the political implications of artificial intelligence.

The two studies referenced in the episode are:

Study 1 (2015): The Emergence of Network Media Logic in Political Communication: A Theoretical Approach

Study 2 (2018): The End of Media Logics? On Algorithms and Agency

Dr. Dan Mercea, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at City University of London, and Dr. Shawn Walker, Assistant Professor in Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College at Arizona State University, guests to discuss the current state of social media research in an environment where researcher are "Locked Out" of access to platform APIs. We also talk about how social media is used in protest movements, particularly Dr. Walker's work on Occupy Wall Street and Dr. Mercea's work on transnational serial activists.

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.

Below are links to the studies we discussed in the episode:

Study 1: The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News

Study 2: The Public Accountability of Social Platforms: Lessons from a Study on Bots and Trolls in the Brexit Campaign

Naseem Makiya, founder and CEO of Outvote, guests to discuss the peer-to-peer texting technologies available to Democrats ahead of the 2018 Midterm Elections. We break down the features of Outvote and what sets it apart from other P2P platforms. In particular, we focus on the "Swing District" feature, a focus on contacting friends, and the use of emojis to signify a friend's previous voting history. We also talk about the results generated from the platform during the primaries, and the P2P landscape for political campaigning now as well as in the future.

Ruurd Oosterwoud, co-founder of DROG, guests to discuss inoculation techniques against disinformation on social media platforms. Ruurd shares the several initiatives DROG has been working on to educate the public about fake news and disinformation: the Bad News Game, student workshops to increase media literacy about disinformation, and a one day event to create the "biggest Dutch troll army" ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections.

Dr. Galen Stocking, Computational Social Scientist at Pew Research Center, discusses political polarization and how it relates to social media use. We take a deep dive into how Pew Research Center measures polarization empirically, how polarization has changed over time, and how widening partisan gaps relate to citizens' traditional and social media habits. Dr. Stocking also discusses the role of computational methods in survey research, using one of his recent studies on media sources shared on Twitter during immigration debates as a case. We also talk about Reddit, which has a relatively low user base in the United States compared to other social media platforms. Yet, Dr. Stocking's research has uncovered that Reddit users are highly active in consuming news on the site.

Pew Research Center sources cited in the episode:

Graphic Illustration of Political Polarization 1994-2017

Political Polarization and Media Habits (2014)

Sources Shared on Twitter: A Case Study of Immigration (2018)

News Use across Social Media (2018)

Dr. Stocking's study on Reddit (2016)

Bruce Schneier, Chief Technology Officer at IBM Resilient, guests to discuss his new book, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World. We discuss how the Internet of Things opens up new possibilities for catastrophes, how social media companies and governments follow a model of surveillance capitalism, and how the Internet can be made more secure moving forward.

Søren Pedersen, a Danish software developer working for Extra Bladet, joins the podcast to discuss his project uspolads.com. Søren used web scraping technology to build a website that presents data from the Facebook political ad archive ahead of the 2018 US midterm elections. We talk about Søren's motivations in building uspolads, as well as discuss some his previous work using Facebook and Twitter data to reveal insights about politics and tech addiction.

You can check out the Facebook Ad Archive here.

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Senior Lecturer in European Studies at Lund University, guests to discuss the 2018 Swedish Elections and social media's role in the political campaigning leading up to the election. We break down the election results and talk about what it means for Sweden as well as the European Union.

Here are the links to the studies discussed in the episode:

Moe & Larsson's 2014 study on Swedish politicians' Facebook use

Jakob Svensson's study on Swedish campaigning between elections

Kragh & Åsberg's study on Russian disinformation via Facebook in Sweden

ComProp's study of "junk news" during the Swedish election

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!

Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, joins the podcast to discuss his new book "Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy" (Oxford University Press). We discuss the impact of Facebook, Google, and other tech platforms on politics and society. We also examine the ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, how their technologies are used around the globe, and look ahead to why smart speakers are increasingly becoming the battleground for FANG companies.

Here's the link to Thomas' Medium post on RumbleUp.

And while you're surfing web, sign up for the SMandPPodcast Newsletter!

Thomas Peters, CEO of uCampaign and RumbleUp, returns to the podcast to discuss his company's new peer-to-peer texting platform: RumbleUp! Thomas shares his insights into how P2P texting (SMS and MMS) can be used by political campaigns to increase GOTV initiatives, polling, and fundraising. We talk about the differences between P2P texting and email, as well as some of the recent success RumbleUp has had in promoting Republican candidates. This includes a recent local primary election in Alabama, as well as drumming up support for Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

Dr. Deen Freelon, Associate Professor in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses how researchers collect and analyze social media data to study politics. We talk about Facebook's recent API shut-down, the new Social Science One initiative, differences between Python and R programming languages, and one of his recent reports analyzing how minority communities engage with news on Twitter.

Anson Kaye, Partner at GMMB, discusses how a political advertisement for a campaign is crafted from concept to implementation. Anson has designed paid media for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid, and he shares his insights into how the rise of social media platforms has influenced his work. We also look ahead into how the advertising landscape might look like in the 2018 U.S. Congressional midterm elections.

Matt Compton, Director of Advocacy and Engagement at Blue State Digital, discusses how email programs are used for political campaigns and advocacy. Matt also shares his experience in working in digital communications for the Obama White House and the Democratic National Committee. We look ahead to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections and discuss trends in how the Democratic Party is using social media to campaign.

Rameez Tase, Vice President of Audience Development and Insights at Axios, discusses news publishing in a digital environment dominated by Facebook and Google. Rameez outlines the challenges and opportunities of being a digitally native news outlet, how Axios crafts content to fit contemporary news consumption patterns, and how the organization uses native advertising to sustain a business model in a crowded media environment.

Matt Schruers, Vice President of Law and Policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), discusses the work that CCIA does as a link between the tech industry and legislators. The CCIA represents the interests of large tech firms such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix. We chat about the tech industry's position on GDPR, ePrivacy, and other regulations; the role of competition in tech; and how regulation might affect the Internet of Things.

Dr. Arun Vishwanath, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Buffalo, shares his expertise on how social media are used to conduct cyberattacks. We discuss the three key tactics that state-sponsored actors use to undermine trust in American democracy: spear phishing, trolling, and disinformation. We delve into Dr. Vishwanath's research exploring what factors predict users' likelihood to accept a false friend request on Facebook, what implications these types of attacks have for national security, as well discuss what governments are trying to do to stop them.

Brendan Tobin, Head of Growth at Ecanvasser, discusses how the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will affect political campaigning in the European Union. We talk about what GDPR is, how it will be enforced by legislators, and what the implications of this new regulation are for democracy. Given the multi-level governance structure of the EU, it will take some time to see how GDPR will influence how campaigns engage with companies like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube. Subscribe to the Social Media and Politics Podcast to keep up to date with all the latest developments in the social media space!

Sign up for the Social Media and Politics Newsletter here!

Tom Lillywhite, founder of Wilder Digital and the digital campaigning tool 'Pack', joins the podcast to discuss how political campaigns and organizations can mobilize supporters to increase organic reach on social media. We discuss how crowdsourcing ardent supporters can increase organic reach on Facebook and Twitter, as well as how Pack is currently being used for advocacy groups and the Camden Labour Party.

Subscribe to the upcoming Social Media and Politics Newsletter!

Craig Dwyer, co-founder of the Transparent Referendum Initiative, discusses targeted Facebook advertising ahead of the Irish constitutional referendum on abortion on May 25th. The TRI collects "dark" Facebook posts and is building an openly accessible database of targeted political ads. We discuss some of the major issues surrounding the referendum, the difficulties in discerning when a Facebook ad is "political," and targeted political advertising on other platforms like Google and Youtube.

Link to ForaChange.

The Medium post mentioned in the episode that shows how difficult it is to see who is paying for Facebook ads.

Don't forget to sign up for the free Axios newsletter, and tag your best and worst examples of government social media posts with #SMandPwins and #SMandPfails on Twitter!

Simon Day, co-founder of Apptivism, discusses how chatbots are used to increase civic engagement. By interacting with a chatbot on Facebook Messenger, citizens can give their opinion on policies from their computers or smartphones. Policymakers can then analyze the data from chatbot interactions to better shape policy. Simon breaks down how these chatbots work and describes how Apptivism is helping governments use this new technology.

Hey! Don't forget to sign up for the free Axios newsletter, and tag your best and worst examples of government social media posts with #SMandPwins and #SMandPfails on Twitter ;)

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.

Help us out by signing up to the free Axios newsletter to get your daily dose of tech and politics!

Hanneke Bruinsma, local politician for the green party GroenLinks in the Netherlands, joins the show to discuss how her party is using social media in the upcoming Dutch municipal elections. We discuss how GroenLinks party members in the Overbetuwe municipality are using Facebook and Twitter to campaign, and in particular we focus on WhatsApp as a new medium to encourage activism - or "Apptivism" - among local residents.

James Moulding, co-founder of Games for the Many, joins the podcast to discuss the success of Corbyn Run, and online political game that went viral during the 2017 British elections. We discuss the development of the game, the role of social media in promoting it, and the potential for online games to spur political engagement in youth.

You can play the game here.

...And, help us land a special guest for Episode 50 by signing up for the free Axios Newsletter!

Give a small gift to the podcast by signing up for the Axios newsletter - it's free!

Here are the year in review reports from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Assistant Professor in European Studies and Lund University, returns to the podcast to recap the biggest moments and trends in social media and politics from 2017. We discuss social media's transnationalization potential, the most shared content this year on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as phishing cyberattacks and chatbots. See you in 2018!

Please sign up for the Axios Newsletter and help promote the pod!

Dr. Daniel Kreiss, Associate Professor at the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, joins the podcast to discuss the role of data, social media, and technology in contemporary electoral campaigning. We discuss Dr. Kreiss' recent book, Prototype Politics, and dig into how Republicans and Democrats have built up their data infrastructures over time. We talk about the relationships between campaigns and representatives at tech firms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, Russian intervention in US democracy, and whether regulation from governments is needed in this space moving forward.

Please sign up for the Axios Newsletter to help promote the podcast!

Check out the CAST IT podcast, hosted by Dr. Husfeldt.

Dr. Husfeldt's talk on algorithms mentioned in the episode.

Dr. Thore Husfeldt, Associate Professor in computer science at IT University of Copenhagen and Professor in computer science and Lund University, is an algorithms theorist who joins the show to discuss the implications of algorithms for politics and society. We discuss how the algorithms of Facebook and Google have developed over time, how machine learning works, the upcoming European Data Protection Regulation, and what all this means for democracy, politics, and society.

About the Social Media and Politics Podcast:

Social Media and Politics is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy.

Social Media and Politics is hosted by Michael Bossetta, political scientist at the University of Copenhagen. Feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episodes are welcome to [email protected].

Ciphas, an anonymous web blogger who writes about the dark web, joins the podcast to discuss what types of social networks are on the dark web. We discuss what type of social media are on the Tor browser, as well as why they might not be as popular as social networks on the clearnet. We also share experiences about being on the dark web, as well as where political discussions might be taking place.

You can check out Ciphas blog as well as his reviews on various dark web services.

Johan Farkas, Lecturer and Researcher at the IT University of Copenhagen, joins the show to discuss his research on "cloaked Facebook pages" that spread propaganda through false identities. We talk about how cloaked Facebook pages have been used in Denmark to spread hate speech about Muslims, how a Facebook group of activists formed to combat these accounts by reporting them to Facebook, and what Facebook's response to the reports actually was. We also get into fake news and post-truth democracy in the age of social media, and why these terms might not best describe the current media environment.

Sergei Samoilenko, co-founder of the Character Assassination and Reputation Politics (CARP) Research Lab at George Mason University, shares his insights on how social media is used as a tool for defamation and crisis communication. We also discuss the state of the internet and social media in Russia, bots and trolls, and the Ukranian crisis.

Check out their report: Character Assassination in Theory and Practice.

Don't miss Tom Moylan's review of the podcast, and please take 5 minutes for the audience survey!

Please take 5 minutes to take the Audience Survey!

And while you're at it, check out our episode on Podcast of the Day!

Dr. Nico Carpentier, Professor at the Department of Informatics and Media at Uppsala University, guests on the podcast this week to discuss media, participation, and conflict in Cyprus. We discuss deliberative versus participatory democracy, as well as Dr. Carpentier's new book, "The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation".

Kenneth Hampton, former Chief of Police in Tchula, Mississippi, joins the podcast to discuss his style of law enforcement, which draws heavily on the use of Facebook. Kenneth discusses how he's used Facebook successfully to curb crime, the controversy he faced surrounding his social media use, and how important his Facebook community is to his job.

You can check out Kenneth's Facebook pages, New Southern Justice and Tchula Police Department.

The article from the Guardian featured in the intro can be found here.

Karolina Dam, founder of the NGO Sons and Daughters of the World, joins the podcast this week to tell the story of her son, Lukas. Lukas is a Danish citizen who became radicalized in Copenhagen, fled to Syria, and joined ISIS. We discuss how Facebook groups are used to recruit potential terrorists, the role that social media can play in deradicalization, and the types of communication that take place between a foreign fighter and his mother.

Dr. Scott Wright, Senior Lecturer in Political Communication at the University of Melbourne, joins the pod to discuss what citizens' everyday political talk on social media and other online forums means for democracy. D.r Wright shares findings from his research that the design of online forms, and the level of moderation on them, have a demonstrable impact on the quality of democratic debate that occurs within these online, 'Third Spaces.' Tune in to find out more!

You can follow Dr. Wright on Twitter @Scott_Wright1

Gab is an upstart social network with over 200,000 users that does not censor its users' content. Utsav Sanduja, Gab's Chief Communications Officer and Global Affairs Director, joins the podcast to discuss what this social media is all about and addresses some of the recent controversies surrounding it. We discuss how Twitter and Facebook have been censoring users' content, the role of Gab in supporting free speech online, and what Gab's position is on bots and fake news. Utsav also talks about the choices made in developing the site's features, what's next for the Gab, and the social network's ambitions to go foster a global community.

Dr. Joel Penney, Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, discusses his new book *The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age*. The book explores how everyday citizens actively assist in the promotion of political messages through their social media activity, following logics of viral marketing to enact persuasion at a peer-to-peer level.

Dr. Penney shares his research on the Bernie Sanders campaign and the role that citizens played on social media, and Facebook in particular, to help the campaign get out its message through official and unofficial channels.

Purchase a copy of The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age on Amazon here.

Follow Dr. Penney on Twitter @professorpenney.

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.

The Social Media and Politics Podcast is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy.

Connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast & Facebook: Social Media and Politics Podcast

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.

You can follow Sam on Twitter @wrklsshrd.

The Social Media and Politics Podcast is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy.

Connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast & Facebook: Social Media and Politics Podcast

Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor in Sociology at MacEwan University, joins the show to share insights from her research on how social media is impacting citizens' engagement in civic and political life. Dr. Boulianne discusses the findings of her meta-analysis studies, comparing the results of existing research in order to better uncover how social media is affecting citizens engagement with politics. You can follow her on Twitter @DrBoulianne.

Check out Dr. Boulianne's full research paper that we discuss in the podcast: "Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe".

Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Michael Bossetta: Welcome to Episode 26 of the Social Media Politics Podcast, bringing you expert insights into how social media is changing the political game. I'm your host, Michael Bossetta, political scientist at the University of Copenhagen. You can follow us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast, and also our Facebook Page: Social Media and Politics Podcast.

[00:00:48] Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm going to be interviewing Dr. Shelley Boulianne, who is an Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University in Canada. And as we alluded to a little bit in our previous episode, looking at social media use in the British elections, as academics we tend to really focus in on one aspect of social media and politics. We'll look at one platform for one specific case or one specific protest. And what's cool about Dr. Boulianne's work is she's been looking at, in some cases hundreds of studies, and looking at the findings of those and then seeing what are the similarities and differences between those studies. And what really do we know about the effects of social media on for example: people's likelihood to vote, or people's likelihood to engage in activism or community involvement?

[00:02:40] My guest today is Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor in Sociology at MacEwan University. Dr. Boulianne is an expert on how digital media influences civic engagement and political participation and joins us via Skype from Edmonton Canada. Dr. Boulianne, Thanks so much for taking the time out and welcome to The Social Media and Politics Podcast thank you very much for inviting me. So as I mentioned, in your research you're interested in the influence of digital media on civic and political engagement. Could you lay out these concepts for our listeners? What exactly is civic and political engagement?

[00:03:12] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Sure. My working definition of civic and political engagement includes activities designed to influence government activities designed to improve community life and activities designed to express one's views about civic and political issues. So the type of activities that tend to link up with these studies are activities such as: voting, participating in boycotts, protesting in the streets volunteering in the community, talking politics, and then donating to political campaigns, charities, political causes.

[00:03:43] Michael Bossetta: And is it actions from only citizens or are there other actors that can engage in these type of activities?

[00:03:51] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well the research that I'm trying to summarize or is largely focused on surveys of citizens.

[00:03:57] Michael Bossetta: And speaking of that research you've done a number of really great what's called meta-analyses, looking at how social and digital media influence these type of engagement. So can you describe what a meta-analysis is and kind of how you go about conducting one?

[00:04:13] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Sure. A meta-analysis is a systematic analysis of existing research on a topic. Specifically, I like to call it a quantitative analysis of quantitative studies on a topic. It's largely used in the medical and health sciences, and it's often used to summarize a large body of experiments on a particular topic. So I and others have adapted meta-analysis techniques to try to summarise survey research on specific topics. So like other meta-analyses I search for manuscripts through academic databases. I also use Google Scholar to find sources. And finally I consult the reference lists of relevant works to identify relevant research.

[00:04:53] Michael: Ah ha, so You look at a study and then who else has cited that study to sort of broaden that net.

[00:04:58] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Sure, and then which sources have that study cited. So we're always building on each other's academic research and so I go forward and backwards with the citation lists. Who have they cited? And who is citing this reference, using Google Scholar and other similar software.

[00:05:15] Michael Bossetta: And then how do you go about it from there? So you have this this huge pool of studies. I mean do you go through and read each one individually or do you look at only there their findings and results?

[00:05:26] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: So my focus within that area of research is on survey research. I mean there is a lot of studies on social media engagement that are rich descriptions about specific election campaigns or protest events, and so that type of literature is really hard to summarize because it uses very different methodology. And I have it on my To-Do list to try to write some sort of comprehensive lit review of those types of research projects. But for a meta-analysis it really is meant to be a quantitative review. And so my research is largely focused on survey research. So with these latest studies that I've done have actually hired students to go through studies and figure out whether they use survey research and whether they test the relationship between social media use and engagement.

[00:06:15] Michael Bossetta: Interesting. So do they actually scout the research as well or is it you who do scouts the research and then passes it down to them and has that kind of filter out what's relevant and what's not?

[00:06:26] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: I would say it's a combination of things. I do like to send them to the academic databases to do searches based on keywords and to consult within the academic databases. And then in terms of Google Scholar we're all sort of hooked in to that, you know to find updates on things that we've queried about or we find updates on what's been cited in this area of research. And so we get those regular updates. So it's a lot of back and forth with my research assistants. Sometimes you find the same study on the same day and we're sending it to each other saying look there's a new study. So I guess a it's team effort in terms of finding those studies.

[00:07:05] Michael Bossetta: Right. And what's the... It's an interesting method for me because it's not that you're, you know, going out and conducting surveys yourself. Even though you do that and other research. But what's the benefit of this meta-analysis method, versus using survey data from a specific election or going out and conducting your own?

[00:07:25] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well, definitely. I mean, any single survey is going to have its limitations. We can only ask so many questions. And then of course our sample size will be very much limited by budget. And so I argue the benefit of a meta-analysis is that it basically takes all of these surveys, all of the people who have responded to these surveys, all those survey questions that have been asked within these surveys, and compiling all of that data together in one data set to try to summarize what is the big picture around the relationship between social media and engagement.

[00:07:57] Michael Bossetta: And so let's get into that in a little bit. In 2015, you published an analysis of 36 studies that looked at how social media influences political participation. And so my first question is why did you choose to focus on that topic specifically? What's interesting about the connection between social media and participation?

[00:08:20] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well, that paper came about in a rather odd way. I was invited to speak at the 2014 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. I hadn't planned to do a meta-analysis, but one of the conference organizers read my 2009 piece around internet use and engagement, and she wanted me to give an update on the findings. And so what we had agreed upon and what we could do and the timelines that we had, I decided to focus very narrowly on social networking sites and what this new research on social networking sites was saying about engagement and that's how I got back into I guess the meta-analysis business. I was invited to update my findings, and I decided to do that very narrow focused.

[00:09:03] Michael Bossetta: And what was the timeframe of those studies that you were looking at?

[00:09:07] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Those, because I focused on social networking sites, I would say I have just maybe one or two studies that was in 2007, possibly one in 2006. But the bulk of the research was collected in 2008 through the 2013 time period. And then of course the paper was published in 2015. So there's always a little bit of a time lag between when the paper the meta-analysis gets published and then when the data has been collected in these other sources.

[00:09:37] Michael Bossetta: Yeah it's interesting. 2008 is kind of an early adoption period. I think especially for scientists that are that are looking at this, so you have the nice, uh, catching the beginning there. So what did you find? Was there, you know, some common findings that came out by looking at all these 36 different studies? Or was it really a kind of grab bag of different findings?

[00:09:58] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well I mean, my intent with that piece was really to just give a quick update on what was happening with that research on social networking sites and engagement. So I had a rather narrow focus or a narrow intent with that research. Which was just to give an insight into what was happening. And so that piece really focused on what types of social media uses matter for what types of engagement. And also to address the broader question that was going around, which was: Is social media having a negative effect on engagement? Because that is basically what the concern was at that time when I was writing. And so my objective was to address that point. Is it having a negative effect? And I think pretty conclusively said that it's not. I mean, most of the studies we're coming up with positive effects are seeing a positive relationship between social networking site usage and engagement in civic and political life.

[00:10:53] Michael Bossetta: And what exactly does that mean? A "positive effect." We have some students listening to the show who may not be so caught up in their effects research. What is it that that increases that participation or has that positive effect?

[00:11:06] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: So I think that that piece really highlighted two different aspects of social media use that we're having positive effects. One is that social media was building people's social networks. So, you know, we go to social media or social networking sites, we're finding friends, we're building up those networks, and we know from research from the 1950s that building your networks increases the likelihood that you get asked to participate in civic and political life. It increases the chances that you will in fact participate in civic and political life. And so what I think that 2015 piece illustrated is that this is happening online now. It's happening through these social networking sites. People are joining groups, they're building their friendship networks, and these networks are becoming mobilized. So people are more likely to be engaged in civic and political life. And then the people that are engaged in civic and political life are also using social media to talk about their activities. And so we see that sort of dual process happening, based on that research.

[00:12:08] Michael Bossetta: And, was it so much that the networks corresponded to one's offline network, or? Because there's been some talk about social media enabling people who had known each other previously to kind of seek out and form networks around similar issues or what we're calling "issue publics." Is that the type of networks you're talking about? Or is it more about mobilizing your friends who you already know.

[00:12:33] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yeah I think that this is where the research needs to get into more of the nuances. What type of networks do you create in your social networking sites? And I think part of the question is whether or not your social networks are different across different platforms. So we know quite a bit about Facebook research. Because still, the large majority of this research is done focusing on Facebook. And so, the networks we create and maintain on Facebook are very much different than other platforms where we might interact with people that we don't know as well. We have weak ties too. So I'm glad to see that the research is actually moving in this direction of finding out what types of networks are we creating and maintaining in these social networking sites. Because I think that the different types of networks are going to have different outcomes in terms of whether or not we become more engaged in civic and political life. But again, my research is responding to what's out there. And I think that there needs to be more research on the nuances of what types of networks we're creating in these spaces.

[00:13:36] Michael Bossetta: Right. Because that might be a little bit difficult to get out with with survey data or the predominant survey approach needs to be updated. But I want to ask you about one of the difficulties that you noted in that paper, which was that the different research designs and methods can make it a bit difficult to compare the results of these studies. So can you go into that a little bit in terms of where the difficulties in comparing these studies it sometimes might be very different even though they're asking the same questions?

[00:14:04] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Right. Well I would say that the majority of the studies use cross-sectional research designs, which is basically you interview a group of people and you look at what they said about media use, and what they said about engagement, and then try to make some sort of assessment of: is there a relationship? And so, for those studies it is much easier and straightforward to try to summarize the results and to say look these two things, these responses to the media use questions and responses to the engagement question, are sort of going in the same direction. And the direction usually is, the more you use social media, the more that your reporting higher are levels of engagement in civic and political life. So these are rather straightforward to deal with them the analysis techniques are pretty standard. And so this was quite easy for me to do in terms of summarizing. What gets complicated is the longitudinal designs. And I would argue the value of the longitudinal design, despite the complexity that it introduces, is that there is great value in the longitudinal design. So the designs that we're seeing, they track people over time to see if there's changes in their levels of engagement, and whether these changes can be related to changes in social media use. And so it's a much stronger set of data to try to think that there's a causal relationship - that on is causing the other. But the problem is there's a much more complexity in these types of designs. They tend to be limited in terms of their sample size. They tend to use student samples because they're the easiest ones to track over a period of time. And so these complexities of the sampling approach, the complexities in the analysis approach, that makes them very hard to summarize the result.

[00:15:46] Michael Bossetta: Yeah, and I would think that it's a little bit difficult today, where you have, as you're saying there's a lot of focus on college students, using Facebook when Facebook first came out. But now what we see is some, you know, 15 and unders don't have Facebook. They might be just on Instagram, and then older people are starting to come on Facebook, and there's tons of new platforms to cope on. So I think it's, it will be difficult in the future to kind of disentangle that over time because of all these external factors that are in the social media landscape.

[00:16:21] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Right. And just to add to that the more platforms, I mean, this will be great. I can respond to the differences by platform once there's research out there, when there are multiple studies out there looking at different platforms. But I guess the problem is that, if they are using multiple platforms, how do we figure out: So this is you know an Instagram effect, and this is Facebook effect, and this is a Twitter effect? That makes it very hard because a lot of these people are using multiple platforms.

[00:16:48] Michael Bossetta: And do you think there's, by looking at self reported survey data, I mean do you think there's a need for more studies looking at the actual metrics of social media? Or, is there a way that you can incorporate that, or complement that, by survey data? Because you know, one of the problems with surveys is that people say they do something, and maybe it's inaccurate what they're actually doing. So what are your thoughts on that?

[00:17:10] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well I absolutely love the idea of mixed methods research. My own research you mentioned, I do surveys. Well, I do surveys, and then I supplement the survey data with other sources. So for example, the projects that I'm working on right now looks at social media use. So many of these same survey questions that I've seen used in other studies, I look at social media use measures. I look at engagement measures, and I'm looking at it around a particular event, which was charitable donations in relation to a wildfire that my province had last year. And what we're doing is we're using the survey data, and we can establish that there's a connection there. That there's a correlation, or a relationship. The more you use social media to find out news about this event, the more likely you were to donate to the Red Cross and other similar organizations. But what we did, that I think should be done more often, is we looked at what was happening on Twitter. What was the Twitter discourse around that time period? And what you're seeing to supplement what the survey data was saying. What you're seeing is these messages of "help out," "donate." You know, "these people are suffering." You know, "we need to do something." Those sort of calls to action were evident in the Twitter data. So we use the combination of sources, and I think that that's really where research should be done. I know that this is done often in book format, where you see survey data supplemented with social media analytics, but I'd like to see more done in the article length because I really do think that surveys are only so good for making that theoretical connection between two variables that there really needs to be details about what is the content that is circulating.

[00:18:53] Michael Bossetta: Right. So it's not necessarily so much that people are just using social media and then happen to organically donate to this cause, but that there are actually certain things going on on the platform, like asking people to donate, that would then elicit more of that response.

[00:19:09] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Exactly.

[00:19:10] Michael Bossetta: OK. So, let's fast forward to today maybe focusing on the 36 studies that analysis is not doing proper justice to a more recent work where you've looked at 150 different studies on social media and participation. And what what changes did you observe if any between looking at 36 studies in a more updated list of 150?

[00:19:31] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Right. So, one of the things that I saw right away when I started looking at this literature is that what people are focused on in terms of social media use has changed. There is a lot more studies that look at the use of social media for political expression or for discussing political issues. And so there was enough of those studies that have focused on this that I can really look at that particular finding, and look at whether it had outcomes on people's offline engagement in civic and political life. So that was one thing that was new with this area. Again, these meta-analysis have to evolve based on what the research is producing, and the research was producing some consistent findings around this idea of political expression on social media and offline forms of engagement.

[00:20:20] Michael Bossetta: Ah ha. And I've been looking at a few of these studies where they'll say, for example, that those who are more likely to tweet during a political event are more likely to go out and vote, or go out and canvass, or campaign. And I'm wondering, I mean, does that have anything to do with that the people being surveyed or already politically interstate? Or, how do you disentangle that from the causal mechanism of social media to go out and do something? I mean is that something that's clear from from this 150 study meta-analysis?

[00:20:56] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: I think, again, this is where the value of a longitudinal design comes in, because we can account for things like are they already politically interested. We can ask that question and try to account for, you know, is it political interest that it's causing both does observing these political events through a second screening and whatnot, and also causing engagement in political life? I mean, we can try to do that, and try to untangle that process using the cross-sectional data, but really the value is in longitudinal studies or experimental studies. If there were studies looking at changes in behavior, then we could untangle the causal process. I don't think that we're there yet. I mean the longitudinal studies that we have really aren't able to untangle that process just quite yet in terms of what is causing what.

[00:21:49] Michael Bossetta: And are there any other differences that you observe between... So in the 2015 study you found this positive effect on social media and participation. And then, in the updated version, is it similar positive effect?. You know, I'm thinking about these echo chambers and this kind of reinforcement idea. Did you find evidence for that or was it still a generally positive trend?

[00:22:14] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: So I definitely still find that positive trend. I guess the reason that I set out to do the second piece is that one of the questions that I couldn't properly address were that 2015 paper is the magnitude of the relationship. And so I look at, yes, there's positive effects, but only half of them were statistically significant. And I know researchers are always concerned about, is it significant? So the question I ask with this new study is: Are the effect sizes substantive? Is it really a game changer that social media use is going to cause changes in things like voter turnout? Is social media use going to change someone's decision about whether to participate in a street protest, or whether to volunteer in their community? And so I needed to look at the sizes, to look at that magnitude of the relationship. So that was really the primary objective in starting out the second piece on this meta-analysis of social media trying to get at: what is the magnitude of the relationship? And in particular, the discourse isn't debating anymore whether there's a positive effect, it's debating whether or not there's a substantial effect. And so that there's a debate about whether the effects are revolutionary. And so that's the title that I have for this paper, is trying to assess whether or not the effects at least when we're talking about citizens engagement in civic and political life, are these are facts revolutionary? Are they game changers?

[00:23:38] Michael Bossetta: And, have you gotten to that final verdict at this point or are you still working through the data?

[00:23:44] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: I would say that there's certain aspects where we can see that there's revolutionary effects. And the aspect that I think is most evident is around the political expression on social media. We see it in the survey data and I think that the analytics of social media data is showing that same pattern. And so I see that there's something possibly revolutionary in there. And the other dimension, or the other really that I'm analysing this data, is to try to understand how the effects differ across different political contexts. Because I think that's part of the answer of whether these effects are revolutionary, depends on where we're talking about these effects occurring. So social media affects in a media rich environment, or in a system where there's a free press, I mean social media effects are going to compete with other media effects. Whereas we see in the meta data, when you look at systems where there's a lack of a free press, we see a much larger relationship. And again it's social media that's filling in a huge gap in terms of information needs, and it's causing a larger effect in terms of peoples' engagement in civic and political life.

[00:24:53] Michael Bossetta: So, that might be something like a country where they don't have a free press, maybe an authoritarian regime, but social media sort of has this potential to create awareness about something that may spill over into a protest that's organized on social media.

[00:25:09] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yes, absolutely. And I would say that it's evident in systems where there's not a free press or the authoritarian regimes. But also there's a strong relationship in terms of systems where there's a transition in democracy or there's a partly free press. So, you know, it's developing a democratic system but it's still in those developmental stages. And you see strong effects there as well.

[00:25:31] Michael Bossetta: So kind of dovetailing on that, and it's kind of a loaded question, but based on having looked at all of this data, what's your assessment in terms of the potential for these social media in terms of impacting the quality democracy? Are they positive or negative for democracy? Or is it, you know, the argument that they're neutral and it's how you use them?

[00:25:53] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well, I guess my first reaction to that question is that we need to look beyond democracy and the role of social media beyond democratic systems, because as I mentioned the effects are quite substantial when we're looking at other types of political systems. And so asking about whether it's good for democracy, you know, that's sort of a different answer because it is good for citizen participation in all types of political systems. And the question of: Is it good for the quality of democracy? I guess that sort of depends on what you think is good for democracy, and I think more citizen participation is a good thing for democracy. So in that line, or on that note I would say that social media is having a positive influence on democracy as well as non- democratic states.

[00:26:40] Michael Bossetta: Good answer. And just wrapping up, can you give us a teaser about where your research is heading at the moment? So you mentioned a study about wildfires and the effect of social media participation on that. Anything else we should look out for?

[00:26:56] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yes, along the lines of the meta-analysis. I have decided to revisit the 2009 study that I had published around internet use and engagement. And so I have a database there of over 300 studies...

[00:27:09] Michael Bossetta: Jeez...

[00:27:09] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Yes, I'm still collecting the studies. For that one in particular I want to answer the question what this new research about whether the 2016 period is distinctive. Whether the U.S. election in 2016 will produce different outcomes in terms of citizen engagement. But I'm also looking more around the world and there's a lot of Western democracies having elections in 2017, and so I have this database, and I have some ideas about what's happening in the database. But I'm really looking at these these brand new studies to add to the question of are we seeing something dramatically shift in terms of media and its role in citizens engagement. So that's one of the objectives that I have over the next few months. The other one is to look at the effects and how they're distinctive for youth. Because I think this has been a reoccurring theme with my meta-analyses to say that youth are distinctive, the effects are possibly larger for youth. And so I've decided to tackle that question: how does social media and digital media, how does it have a different affect for youth compared to other age groups?

[00:28:17] Michael Bossetta: Very interesting, very relevant, and a huge knot to untangle though. So, best of luck with that, I'll be looking very much forward to reading the final results. And Dr. Boulianne thanks so much for coming on the show. Appreciate your time.

[00:28:31] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: All right, thank you very much Michael.

[00:28:33] Michael Bossetta: I've just been speaking with Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University. You can follow her on Twitter @drboulianne.

[00:28:46] All right, that's a wrap for this episode of The Social Media and Politics podcast. Hope you enjoyed the show, and thanks so much for tuning in. Next week we'll be speaking with Sam Jeffers co-founder of the group Who Targets Me, and a former executive director at Blue State Digital.

[00:29:02] Feel free to connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast podcast. Direct any questions, feedback, suggestions for future episodes that way. If you want to be a hero leave a review on Apple Podcasts and help us game those algorithms. We're climbing thanks to you guys. Keep downloading. Keep sharing. Keep learning. I'm your host, Michael Bossetta, signing off from off in Copenhagen. See you next time.

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.

The Social Media and Politics Podcast is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy.

Connect with us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast & Facebook: Social Media and Politics Podcast

This episode has been featured in the Financial Times.

Matthew Oczkowski, Head of Product at Cambridge Analytica, joins the show to discuss his experience heading digital strategy for the Scott Walker primary campaign and Donald Trump general election. We discuss how the candidates used Snapchat and other social media, the differences between primary and general election campaigning in terms of digital strategy and marketing, and we also discuss how microtargeting works in practice. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattOczkowski.

The following shownotes are taken from a blog post about the podcast by American Majority, written by Nick McIntyre.

"2016 was the first year in which we saw candidates really start to use Snapchat as a platform for not only reaching voters with unique content, but also for limited information-capturing purposes. Snapchat is a social media platform that allows users to send/post photos and videos that disappear after a short period of time. This platform is especially popular amongst younger generations who use Snapchat as a more private social experience than Facebook or Twitter and can enjoy it with their peers only. The private and mobile aspect of Snapchat poses a challenge for political campaigns, who often rely on Google searches to drive traffic to their websites and other social media platforms.

Governor Scott Walker, an avid social media user, enjoyed using Snapchat in his brief presidential campaign to reach voters with different content than other platforms. Oczkowski noted that Walker was extremely authentic, and posted content “like your father” would, as opposed to artistic graphics and edited work. Voters valued authenticity highly in this last election, and Snapchat is a good visual platform for “raw” content. Likewise, the Trump campaign used Snapchat to show behind-the-scenes shots of campaign rallies to portray to magnitude of the “MAGA” movement.

Oczkowski used the term “platform agnostic” to describe his preferences on social media for campaigns. All this means is that campaigns will go to whichever platform the voters are on, and message to the demographic appropriately. In Snapchat’s case, this means reaching college age students and those under 35 – a demographic that conservatives have struggled to reach (and convince to vote) at times. New media is giving campaigns a way to capture information as well. One of the advantages of using Snapchat’s advertising feature is that it’s the only straightforward way to measure metrics from Snapchat, due to its private nature. By placing ads on Snapchat, you can track how many people you are reaching, and also give users the option to swipe up and submit their email addresses to the campaign. According to Oczkowski, both Walker and Trump collected tens and hundreds of thousands of emails from Snapchat alone. As Snapchat continues to implement revenue sources into the platform (like Facebook did), it will be interesting to see how they further incorporate advertising into the user experience. It poses an opportunity for future campaigns if offered better targeting and information-capturing, in addition to being a unique content platform.

On Targeting
Microtargeting has been a part of campaigns for a long time, and even digital microtargeting has been around for close to a decade. However, as more information regarding individuals and their preferences have become available on the open market, tech integration has become more widespread. In 2012, Harper Reed and his team at Obama For America even developed an in-house platform called Narwhal, which integrated voter data from all of their digital information pieces. Companies now possess thousands of data points on individual voters, and campaigns purchase this information so that they can target their message to an individual voter more effectively. While this doesn’t replace the value of door-knocking and live voter contacts, it does give campaigns another avenue to message on certain issues. To paraphrase Oczkowski, gone are the days of “madmen” style advertising, where men would identify an issue or product and sit in a room to come up with an ad targeting a wide sect of the population. On information privacy, Oczkowski, a self-proclaimed libertarian-leaning conservative, noted that most citizens will choose convenience over privacy. The steps necessary to protect some personal information isn’t worth the cost for most consumers. Because U.S. data law is among the least-restrictive in the world, companies can legally collect and sell most basic consumer info.

One of the most interesting insights about Trump’s microtargeting was his travel schedule, which was based on algorithms and messaging. Many pundits critiqued Trump’s hectic rally schedule, but it was actually targeted. There was a “Cities to Visit” calculator that ranked possible destinations based on the density of persuadable voters and those with a high percentage of core supporters so that value at rallies would be maximized. This put Trump in areas like the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and states Ohio and Florida. It often put him in suburbs instead of large cities – a strategy some decried but proved effective in multiple Rust Belt states.

“Tech can’t fix bad candidates”
Above all, a good campaign must combine good messaging with data. “Tech can’t fix bad candidates”, as Oczkowski pointed out. Hillary Clinton ran into this problem. The Clinton campaign tried to copy Obama’s team instead of coming up with a messaging strategy unique to Hillary Clinton. Regardless of how good your tech is, it won’t inspire people to vote for you if the message doesn’t resonate – it is merely gasoline for the fire. Trump had a campaign message that persuaded the right voters that he needed to win the electoral college.

The future for campaign targeting and social media is ever-changing. Facebook and Google still dominate the digital ad scene. Trump spent more on Facebook ads than any other digital platform. In addition, TV and traditional advertising still play a large role because it is still a way to reach high-propensity voters. As more of the electorate consumes news online, data collection and targeting will become even more important. Oczkowski is among a new generation of political operatives who specialize in data. “Nerds rule the world” has never been more true on campaigns, where traditionalist political consultants are being replaced by individuals who can prove their worth through actual metrics that lead to more votes directly. This market is still relatively new for everyone, and the campaigns that innovate and message most effectively will win elections, regardless of the platforms used."

Eric Wilson, Digital Director for the Marco Rubio for President campaign, guests on the podcast to discuss how the Rubio campaign used social media in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. We focus on Snapchat and discuss how the platform was used to reach voters, how the campaign crafted Snapchat stories, and where Snapchat fit into the campaign's overall social media strategy. Eric also discusses how Snapchat was used to promote a 'Vote Early Day' initiative that set off media coverage and tweets from Donald Trump on Twitter, as well as how a Snapchat lens was used in the Australia federal elections the same year. You can follow Eric on Twitter, @EricWilson, and check out his weekly newsletter: www.learntestoptomize.com.

Dr. Alan Rosenblatt, Director for Digital Research at Lake Research Partners and Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy at Turner4D, shares his insights into how politicians have historically used the internet to campaign, going back to the first campaign website. We discuss how social media influences campaigns and advocacy, the current state of opinion polling, and the 2016 U.S. elections between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Dr. Antoine Bevort, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at le Cnam, gives his take on what a Marine Le Pen or Emmanuel Macron victory in the French elections would mean for France. We discuss Dr. Bevort's research into how social media can be a predictor for public opinion, and we also touch upon how bots and fake accounts fit into the sociology theory of social capital.

You can find out more about Dr. Bevort and his research at www.antoinebevort.blogspot.com

Daniel Fazekas, founder of Bakamo Social, discusses the findings of his recent research into the French social media landscape leading up to the 2017 French presidential election. We discuss what types of news sources French citizens are sharing, Russian influence on the elections through social media, and the polarization of news consumption patterns among the public. You can download a copy of the study, 'French Election Social Media Landscape', by visiting www.bakamosocial.com

You can also follow Daniel on Twitter @fazekasdani

Matthias Luefkens, Managing Director of Digital Strategy for EMEA countries at Burson-Marsteller, comes on the podcast to discuss his 'World Leaders on Instagram 2017' Twiplomacy study, which examines the ways governments and heads of state are using Instagram. We discuss some of the findings of the study, including who has the most followers and drives the most engagement, and we also chat about how politicians and institutions are using the Instagram Live Stories feature in the early stage of adoption. Matthias places world leaders' use of Instagram in context by also sharing insights from his research on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Periscope, and Vine. You can find all these studies at www.Twiplomacy.com

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.

Yomi Kazeem, a Lagos-based writer of politics, entrepreneurship, and sports business, joins the podcast to share his insights on social media's impact on politics in Nigeria. We discuss the role of social media in the latest 2015 Nigerian elections, and how Twitter was used by citizens to guard against government manipulation of the vote. Yomi also brings up the topic of dual sim cards, elaborates on NIgeria's data infrastructure, and explains how political leaders have a love/hate relationship with social media.

You can follow Yomi on Twitter and Instagram @TheYomiKazeem.

Preston Picus, an educator and coach who challenged Nancy Pelosi in California’s 12th Congressional District, guests to discuss the role that social media played in his running his grassroots, progressive campaign. Mr. Picus highlights some of the disadvantages facing an average citizen running for office against an established politician, shares his experiences using Facebook for digital advertising, and gives his take on why Twitter is less effective than Facebook for campaigning. We also discuss how the Bernie Sanders had similar struggles against the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, in obtaining the Democratic nomination for the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections.

You can follow Preston's still active campaign site on Facebook at Preston Picus for Congress.

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten guest hosts this episode and speaks with Mugur, an activist involved with running the Facebook page 'Corruption Kills', which helped carry out the largest protest in Romania since the fall of the Soviet Union. Dr. Segesten and Mugur discuss the role of social media in mobilizing and coordinating the protests, which were in response to an ordinance aimed at limiting the penalties for corruption by government officials. They discuss how the Facebook page was used as a medium for broadcasting fact-checked information to counter fake news, as well as a communication platform where citizens could coordinate activities in support of the protests.

Dr. Kristof Jacobs, Assistant Professor at Radboud University, joins the podcast ahead of the upcoming Dutch national elections to share his research on how political parties and strategists in the Netherlands use social media to campaign. We discuss the major role that Twitter plays in Dutch politics but also how parties are adopting newer social media platforms, like Instagram and Snapchat. We also talk about the difference between individual politicians’ social media use versus party communication more broadly. Dr. Jacobs outlines the major themes of this election, the Dutch attitudes towards fake news, Geert Wilder’s social media use, and the media’s coverage of the campaign.

You can follow Kristof on Twitter @KristofJacobs1, and read more about his research in the book "Social Media, Parties, and Politics Inequalities."

Emma Randecker from the Swedish Institute discusses how the organization responded to Donald Trump's 'Last Night in Sweden' comment, which sparked a media frenzy on both traditional and social media. Emma outlines how SI launched a fact checking campaign on Facebook and tried to clear up some misconceptions about immigration and refugees in Sweden. We also discuss the Curators of Sweden project, which gives selected Swedes control of the @Sweden Twitter account for one week, and how the Curator in charge of the account reacted to Trump's comments. Emma also shares her insights about how SI uses social media for digital marketing and how they conceptualize branding a nation.

You can check out the Swedish Institute's webpage at www.sweden.se, and follow them on twitter @Swedense.

Matt Gielen, founder of Little Monster Media Co and former Director of Audience Development at Frederator, joins the podcast to share is research and insights about how the YouTube algorithm works. Matt explains some of the factors that YouTube's algorithm takes into account when suggesting content to users, and we discuss the implications this filtering might have on public opinion and political campaigning during elections. Other topics touched upon are YouTube monetization, digital advertising, the importance of being authentic on YouTube to build an audience, and the future of live video streaming on social media like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Dr. Heath Brown, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the City University of New York Graduate Center, joins the show to share his research on the political activity of nonprofit organizations serving immigrants and their communities. We discuss how these immigrant serving NGO's use - or shy away from - political action and the role that social media plays in their communication strategy. Dr. Brown highlights that the low resources of these NGO's, the diversity of their communities, and perceptions of authenticity as key factors motivating their social media adoption and strategy. You can read more about Dr. Brown's research on this topic in his new book, Immigrants and Electoral Politics: Nonprofit Organizing in a Time of Demographic Change.

This episode is all about bots on social media with guest Samuel Woolley, Director of Research of the Computational Propaganda Project at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. We discuss exactly how users make bots, and the ways they are deployed on Facebook and Twitter to influence politics through, for example, spreading fake news or disrupting protests. Sam explains how bots are difficult to trace, since they are often geotagged in misleading locations or used for digital marketing. We also talk about bots in the latest 2016 US Presidential campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as well look forward a bit into how bots might evolve in the future.

You can follow Sam on Twitter @Samuelwoolley, and check out the Computational Propaganda Project at www.politicalbots.org.

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Dr. Luigi Curini, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Milan, discusses how big data from social networks can be used to estimate public opinion about ISIS and terrorism. Dr. Curini shares his research using Twitter data to uncover how the Arabic community discusses the Islamic State on social media. He and his colleagues find that closing down Twitter accounts of ISIS supporters may lead to them becoming foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, and that Islam is a major factor in generating both positive and negative sentiment about ISIS. We also discuss Dr. Curini's upcoming book, Politics and Big Data: Nowcasting and Forecasting Elections with Social Media, which looks at how social media data can be used by researchers to more accurately predict election outcomes than traditional polling methods.

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Assistant Professor of European Studies at Lund University, and host Michael Bossetta discuss some of the hottest topics and controversies surrounding social media and politics from 2016. This year in review, Christmas episode tackles some of the key challenges facing policy makers and contemporary societies, from the explosion of political bots on Twitter to the spreading of fake news on Facebook. The two discuss how Snapchat was used as a digital marketing tool during the 2016 United States Presidential election, as well as what Donald Trump’s Twitter use might mean for future diplomacy. Other topics include the impact of live video streaming on social media for protest movements like Black Lives Matter and whether new social media platforms can compete alongside traditional giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You can follow Dr. Segesten on Twitter @anamariadutceac and check out her latest publication, "A Typology of Political Participation Online: How Citizens used Twitter to Mobilize During the 2015 British General Elections", in the journal of Information, Communication & Society (DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1252413).

Emilie Demant, social media coordinator for Venstres Ungdom, shares her insights into how a Danish political youth organization is using social media to engage young voters with politics. We discuss how Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter are each used differently to communicate politics with young Danes, as well as what types of user-generated content Emilie receives when managing these social media accounts. Emilie highlights the visual element of social media by stressing that memes, GIFs, and videos drive the most engagement on social media, and here digital marketing and graphic design play a key role. We also discuss the differences between a youth political organization and the parent political party, Venstre, and what that means for their social media use. Although exhibiting different rules of political communication on social media (especially on Snapchat), interestingly, both Venstre and Venstres Ungdom work together to strategically share content across their Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter social networks.

You can find out more about Venstres Ungdom at www.vu.dk

Chasen Campbell, VP of Client Strategy at Harris Media, shares his knowledge about how major US politicians use social media for digital campaigning. We discuss how political campaigns use big data to micro-target voters on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as what it's like to run a digital marketing campaign for politicians with big budgets. Chasen also weighs in on how new social media platforms, like Snapchat and Periscope, stack up to giants like Facebook and Google. We also discuss what works and what doesn't in driving engagement online, and Chasen emphasizes that short, easy to understand, and entertaining messages are key to capturing voters' attention.

Find out more about Chasen and Harris Media at www.harrismediallc.com

Emily Longworth, spokesperson for the Hillary for Prison movement, shares how the grassroots organization is using Instagram to promote its message during the 2016 US presidential elections. We discuss what type of conversations take place on their Instagram account's comment fields, the role of hashtags to the account's success, and bringing a bit of humor into politics.

Jason Kitcat, an e-voting expert and avid digital rights campaigner, shares his experience as an official election observer during Estonia's 2013 municipal elections. Estonia is the first country in the word to introduce e-voting nationwide, and Jason points out some of the pitfalls he and his team observed during their election observation. We discuss whether e-voting is a viable alternative to traditional voting, and whether large social media providers like Facebook can (or cannot) help make e-voting safer.

In late 2015, the Swedish government imposed border controls to stem the influx of migrants to Sweden from the refugee crisis. A small group of regional politicians in Southern Sweden set up a Facebook page, Öresundsrevolutionen, to protest the border controls. In this episode Niels Paarup-Petersen, a regional politician from the Center Party, shares his insight into how and why the movement to protest the border controls is taking place on Facebook. We discuss Öresundsrevolutionen's communication strategy on Facebook, the role social media plays in advocating its message, and how the movement is using Facebook to place pressure on the Swedish government to repeal the border controls.

Dr. Cristian Vaccari, one of the world's leading social media and political communication researchers, shares his insights about what "dual screening" during political events means for democracy and political participation. We discuss exactly what dual screening is, as well as Dr. Vaccari's recent prize-winning research finding that citizens who use Twitter during political debates are more likely to participate in politics during (and after) elections. Other topics covered in this episode are the role of social media in affecting citizens' exposure to news, why researchers are overly focused on Twitter, and what implications social media has for democracy in the digital age.

Karolina Wozniak, social media coordinator for the European Parliament, shares how and why the European Parliament is using Snapchat to engage youth in EU politics. Listen in as we discuss where Snapchat fits into the Parliament's overall social media strategy, the levels and types of citizen engagement, geofilters, and the costs of running a Snapchat account for a government institution (you'll be surprised!).