Social Media and Politics

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...

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...

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...

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 ins...

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 soci...

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...

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:...

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 p...

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 researchin...

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 vo...

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...

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...

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 forwar...

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 Twitt...

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...

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...

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 thei...

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,...

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 mi...

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. Congress...

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 medi...

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...

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 co...

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' likeli...

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 inf...