Social Media and Politics – Details, episodes & analysis

Kindred Motes, Founder and Managing Partner at KM Strategies Group (KMSG), shares his advocacy work  to counter the online reach of Project 2025. Working with the  Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, KMSG launched a paid campaign on Google Search before Project 2025 became mainstream. Kindred shares how TikTok played a role in catalyzing Project 2025 as a political issue, as well as some of the challenges that nonprofits face in running digital ad campaigns. We also discuss the benefits and trade-offs of social media for advocacy work, and end with some practical tips for how nonprofits can effectively communicate in today's fragmented media landscape. 

Prof. Sebastian Stier, Scientific Director of Computational Social Science at GESIS and Professor of CSS at the University of Mannheim, discusses how web tracking data can inform social science questions.  We discuss the data structure of web browsing data, how it is collected, and the types of incentives used to recruit participants. Prof. Stier also shares his insights and research integrating web browsing data with survey data, as well as how LLMs are opening up new methodological avenues in simulated data.

Here are the resources mentioned in the episode: 

Analysis of Web Browsing Data: A Guide (2023)

Integrating Survey Data and Digital Trace Data: Key Issues in Developing an Emerging Field (2020)

Post Post-Broadcast Democracy? News Exposure in the Age of Online Intermediaries (2022)

The two R packages: webtrackR and adaR

Dr. Mia-Marie Hammarlin, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Lund University, shares her research on vaccine hesitancy in Sweden. We discuss the major themes of coronavirus vaccine skepticism on the Swedish online forum Flashback, as well as Dr. Hammarlin's ethnographic research meeting with vaccine hesitant communities. 

Here are links to Dr. Hammarlin's research mentioned in the episode:

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Matters of Life and Death (2023)

I bonded with COVID vaccine sceptics over saunas and Mother Earth rituals (2023)

And check out HT-samtal, a podcast on humanities research from Lund! 

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.

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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