Ryan Davis, Co-Founder of People First, discusses how "micro-influencers" or "micro-creators" are being used in political campaigns. We discuss the benefits of using micro-influencers for engagement, as well as how they can be used to target specific blocks of voters. Ryan also shares how these creators can inform the political strategy of campaigns through panels and focus groups, and how the comments to creators' content can reveal themes and sentiments important for the campaign. 

Here's a list of resources on micro-influencers written by Ryan and People First: 

White paper on micro-influencers 

2024 election guide on micro-influencers

In-and-outs of influencer outreach

An overview of influencer trends

Dr. Eviane Leidig, Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at Tilburg University, discusses her book "The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization." 

We break down the role of social media for the alt-right movement, and how platforms like Instagram and YouTube work to mainstream extremist views. These insights come from Dr. Leidig's research conducting digital ethnography on women influencers prominent on the American Right. 

Rhiannon Ruff, Wikipedia Expert and Founding Partner at Lumino, discusses how politicians and brands can effectively manage their Wikipedia presence. We discuss why Wikipedia is important for Google Search and AI like ChatGPT, and how the tone, norms, and editors of Wikipedia make editing your own page difficult. Rhi shares her tips on how to manage a Wikipedia page in the right way, and why that's crucial for politicians and political parties. 

Here's a list of links discussed in the episode:

Rhi's book on Wikipedia and Crisis Communications

Rhi's column on Why Wikipedia can be a PR Problem for Political Campaigns

Stanford Internet Observatory Report on Wikipedia and Elections in British Columbia

A bit more on the infamous Alan MacMasters!

Dr. Rob Eschmann, Associate Professor of Social Work at Columbia University, discusses his latest book When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age (University of California Press). 

We cover how social media works to unmask everyday experiences of racism, and how this affects student life at American universities. Dr. Eschmann also shares his research on social media, racial microaggressions, and Black Twitter; thoughts on TikTok and algorithmic bias; and how resisting racism requires engaging in conversation. 

Prof. Kate Dommett, Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield, and Dr. Simon Kruschinski, Postdoctoral Researcher in Communication at the University of Mainz, discuss their new book: Data-Driven Campaigning and Political Parties.

We discuss the book's theoretical framework on how system-level, regulatory-level, and party-level factors explain variation in data-driven campaigning across five democracies: the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia. 

Prof. Dommett and Dr. Kruschinski also break down their findings on how data, analytics, targeting, and personnel differ across these five cases, and how regulation might need to focus on broader structures in the electoral system to minimize the potential harms of campaign practices. 

Dr. Andrew W. MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Social Science at Duke Kunshan University, shares research from his new book Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies: How China Wins Online. 

We discuss the Chinese digital and social media context, citizens' perceptions of online propaganda, and how the state manipulates digital information to further its political interests. We also discuss survey methodology, how citizens circumvent the Great Firewall, and what affect using the internet and VPNs has on trust in the state. 

The 8th Annual Social Media and Politics Year in Review! 

This year, we cover the platforms' year in review reports, AI for political communication, the creator economy, and EU concerns around disinformation and cyberattacks. 

Here are links to resources discussed in the episode, and see you in 2024!

Platform Reports:

Meta
Instagram
TikTok
Reddit
Pinterest
Snap
Twitch
Google
YouTube
Pornhub Insights

Jimmie Åkesson's Arabic Deepfake

Dr. Jennifer Forestal, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago, discusses how digital platforms can be approached from an architectural perspective. Dr. Forestal shares insights from her latest book, Designing for Democracy, where she evaluates digital platforms' democratic potential from the lens of political theory. The episode breaks down a framework for how to assess the democratic quality of social media platforms by examining their degrees of boundaries, durability, and flexibility. Dr. Forestal reveals how these properties can be illustrated by the cases of Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. 

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! 

Dr. Alexander Coppock, Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University, shares his research on measuring the political effects of persuasive information. We discuss how political persuasion affects voters holding different viewpoints, the durability of these effects over time, and how much political ads seem to affect voters' political attitudes. 

Here are Dr. Coppock's research studies discussed in the episode: 

Persuasion in Parallel: How Information Changes Minds about Politics (2022)

The small effects of political advertising are small regardless of context, message, sender, or receiver (2020)

Does digital advertising affect vote choice? Evidence from a randomized field experiment (2022)

The impact of digital advertising on turnout during the 2020 US presidential election (Pre-print, 2022)

Dr. Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, Associate Professor in Strategic Communication at Lund University, joins a discussion of cross-cutting expression and its implications for digital campaigning on Facebook. On the theory side, we discuss concepts of online self-expression and cross-pressures. We also discuss how political ideology can be inferred from Facebook reactions such as 'likes' and 'loves'. Finally, we discuss what topic models of the Brexit debate around Facebook can reveal about how and what Facebook users discussed around the referendum. 

Links to the paper and supplementary material: 

Reconceptualizing Cross-Cutting Political Expression on Social Media: A Case Study of Facebook Comments During the 2016 Brexit Referendum (2023)

Supplementary Material