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PODCAST

Social Media and Politics

Michael Bossetta

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 digital strategists 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 Lund University. Check out the podcast"s official website:

government social sciences

All Episodes

00:51:58

Data Journalism to Report Social Media and Politics,...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/10/01

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

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00:45:46

Swedish Elections 2022, Political Communication, and...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/09/11

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

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00:44:35

Social Media, Information Markets, and the Attention...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/09/04

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.

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00:42:42

Machine Learning the Facebook URLs Dataset to Study...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/08/21

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.

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00:45:10

Anti-Immigration YouTube Videos: Tactics and...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/08/07

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

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00:43:44

Social Media Influencers and Politics, Environmental...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/06/19

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'

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00:33:35

Political Tech Incubators in American Digital...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/05/29

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!

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00:42:38

Technology Disruption, Democracy, and Principled...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/05/15

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

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00:58:18

Challenging Covid Vaccine Misinformation on Private...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/05/01

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

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00:43:35

Comparing Digital Political Communication across...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/04/24

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

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00:56:42

Rating News Credibility with Algorithms, with Arjun...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/04/17

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

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00:39:38

Social Media and the War in Ukraine, with Prof....

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/03/27

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

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00:43:20

Political Leader Evaluations on Instagram and...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/02/27

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

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00:53:32

Mobile News Consumption: How Smartphone News Exposure...

Social Media and Politics ·

2022/02/13

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

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03:31:36

2021 Year in Review! Social Media and Politics, with...

Social Media and Politics ·

2021/12/22

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 ReportGoogle Year in SearchTiktok Cultural

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00:36:38

Right-Wing Alternative Media and Republican Party...

Social Media and Politics ·

2021/11/28

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

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00:40:05

Digital Political Communication and Social Media...

Social Media and Politics ·

2021/11/14

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

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00:39:36

ISIS Radicalization, Counter-Extremism, and Visual...

Social Media and Politics ·

2021/10/24

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

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00:41:00

Covid Mask Wearing in Politicians' Social Media...

Social Media and Politics ·

2021/10/10

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

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00:43:23

Social Media and Political Polarization in the United...

Social Media and Politics ·

2021/09/26

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

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191 results

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