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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Of Humans, Machines, And Extremism: The Role Of Platforms In Facilitating Undemocratic Cognition, Julia R. Decook, Jennifer Forestal
Of Humans, Machines, And Extremism: The Role Of Platforms In Facilitating Undemocratic Cognition, Julia R. Decook, Jennifer Forestal
Political Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The events surrounding the 2020 U.S. election and the January 6 insurrection have challenged scholarly understanding of concepts like collective action, radicalization, and mobilization. In this article, we argue that online far-right radicalization is better understood as a form of distributed cognition, in which the groups’ online environment incentivizes certain patterns of behavior over others. Namely, these platforms organize their users in ways that facilitate a nefarious form of collective intelligence, which is amplified and strengthened by systems of algorithmic curation. In short, these platforms reflect and facilitate undemocratic cognition, fueled by affective networks, contributing to events like the …
Facebook Algorithm Changes May Have Amplified Local Republican Parties, Kevin Reuning, Anne Whitesell, A. Lee Hannah
Facebook Algorithm Changes May Have Amplified Local Republican Parties, Kevin Reuning, Anne Whitesell, A. Lee Hannah
Political Science Faculty Publications
In this research note we document changes to the rate of comments, shares, and reactions on local Republican Facebook pages. Near the end of 2018, local Republican parties started to see a much higher degree of interactions on their posts compared to local Democratic parties. We show how this increase in engagement was unique to Facebook and happened across a range of over a thousand local parties. In addition, we use a changepoint model to identify when the change happened and find it lines up with reported information about the change in Facebook’s algorithm in 2018. We conclude that it …
The Distrust Of Experts, Noah Smith
The Distrust Of Experts, Noah Smith
Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters
This paper will compile demographic data and analyze their correspondence with trust of expert opinion in order to develop a profile of individuals who mistrust expert opinions. I will be using the American National Election Survey of 2020 as the central data source for this paper. I will also be using supplementary data from research into trust of expertise to create my profile. The mistrust of expert opinions has been an issue simmering in the background of American politics for quite some time. Previously its largest impact was on the discourse and policy surrounding climate change. Now it is also …
Constructing Digital Democracies: Facebook, Arendt, And The Politics Of Design, Jennifer Forestal
Constructing Digital Democracies: Facebook, Arendt, And The Politics Of Design, Jennifer Forestal
Political Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works
Deliberative democracy requires both equality and difference, with structures that organize a cohesive public while still accommodating the unique perspectives of each participant. While institutions like laws and norms can help to provide this balance, the built environment also plays a role supporting democratic politics—both on- and off-line. In this article, I use the work of Hannah Arendt to articulate two characteristics the built environment needs to support democratic politics: it must (1) serves as a common world, drawing users together and emphasizing their common interests and must also (2) preserve spaces of appearance, accommodating diverse perspectives and …
How Do Politicians Use Facebook? An Applied Social Observatory, Simon Caton, Margeret A. Hall, Christof Weinhardt
How Do Politicians Use Facebook? An Applied Social Observatory, Simon Caton, Margeret A. Hall, Christof Weinhardt
Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications
In the age of the digital generation, written public data is ubiquitous and acts as an outlet for today’s society. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn have profoundly changed how we communicate and interact. They have enabled the establishment of and participation in digital communities as well as the representation, documentation and exploration of social behaviours, and had a disruptive effect on how we use the Internet. Such digital communications present scholars with a novel way to detect, observe, analyse and understand online communities over time. This article presents the formalization of a Social Observatory: a low latency method …
Keeping Pace: The U.S. Supreme Court And Evolving Technology, Brian Thomas
Keeping Pace: The U.S. Supreme Court And Evolving Technology, Brian Thomas
Politics Summer Fellows
Contemporary mainstream discussions of the Supreme Court are often qualified with the warning that the nine justices are out of touch with everyday American life, especially when it comes to the newest and most popular technologies. For instance, during oral argument for City of Ontario v. Quon, a 2010 case that dealt with sexting on government-issued devices, Chief Justice John Roberts famously asked what the difference was “between email and a pager,” and Justice Antonin Scalia wondered if the “spicy little conversations” held via text message could be printed and distributed. While these comments have garnered a great deal of …
The Rancor Of Republicans, The Diatribe Of Democrats A Social Network Analysis Of Partisan Interconnectivity On Facebook, Sean Langille
The Rancor Of Republicans, The Diatribe Of Democrats A Social Network Analysis Of Partisan Interconnectivity On Facebook, Sean Langille
Masters Theses
The Internet has played a more active role in shaping modern American political communication. With the increased popularity of social networking through websites like Facebook, more are taking to the Internet to engage in civic dialogue. This study will explore how the exchange of socially networked images, texts, and audio between Democrats and Republicans affect beliefs, behaviors and perceptions. Utilizing qualitative methodologies, the researcher interviewed ten (10) registered democrats and ten (10) registered republicans. The participants were basked ten questions and ten follow up questions. The study applied a social network analysis to evaluate how socially networked dialogue between Republicans …
The Growing Use Of Social Media In Political Campaigns: How To Use Facebook, Twitter And Youtube To Create An Effective Social Media Campaign, Kaitlin Vonderschmitt
The Growing Use Of Social Media In Political Campaigns: How To Use Facebook, Twitter And Youtube To Create An Effective Social Media Campaign, Kaitlin Vonderschmitt
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
A political campaign is carefully crafted for each candidate, to address their constituency and present the candidate and party in the best possible way. After the creation of the United States suffrage was limited to land owning white men, these men were involved in politics by reading local newspapers and visiting the politicians face to face. However as we fast forward to the 1930’s President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the radio to connect with the American public, and then in 1960’s Nixon and Kennedy’s debate introduced the mass-produced version of face-to-face politics through televisions all over the country we begin …
New Media And Ethno-Politics In The Guinean Diaspora, Mohamed S. Camara
New Media And Ethno-Politics In The Guinean Diaspora, Mohamed S. Camara
Security Studies & International Affairs - Daytona Beach
This paper discusses the resurgence of ethno-politics in Guinea in conjunction with the reintroduction of multiparty politics after three decades of single-party and military rule, and the trend’s multilayered repercussion into the Guinean Diaspora of North America. It further examines the principal ways in which ethno-regionalist organisations populating that Diaspora use and misuse new media outlets (web sites,web radio stations, and blogs) in order to promote the political agenda of their respective ethno-political elites. The article scrutinises the deficit of professionalism that characterises the performance of most of those publishing on such web sites and broadcasting on such stations and …
New Media And Ethno-Politics In The Guinean Diaspora, Mohamed S. Camara
New Media And Ethno-Politics In The Guinean Diaspora, Mohamed S. Camara
Humanities & Communication - Daytona Beach
This paper discusses the resurgence of ethno-politics in Guinea in conjunction with the reintroduction of multiparty politics after three decades of single-party and military rule, and the trend’s multilayered repercussion into the Guinean Diaspora of North America. It further examines the principal ways in which ethno-regionalist organisations populating that Diaspora use and misuse new media outlets (web sites,web radio stations, and blogs) in order to promote the political agenda of their respective ethno-political elites. The article scrutinises the deficit of professionalism that characterises the performance of most of those publishing on such web sites and broadcasting on such stations and …
Social Media For Social Good: A Guide To New Media For College Activists, Charles Harris
Social Media For Social Good: A Guide To New Media For College Activists, Charles Harris
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
In a world of Tweets and status updates, how do we take all those hours perusing social networks and put them to good use? In my thesis project, Social Media for Social Good: A Guide to New Media For College Activists, I explore the uses of these networks to activate people towards building positive social change. It is my opinion that college is the best time to be an activist. How do college students communicate? Social Media. From the campus to the global scale, social media can be effectively used to mobilize people to take action on a wide array …
Politics 2.0 With Facebook – Collecting And Analyzing Public Comments On Facebook For Studying Political Discourses, Chirag Shah, Tayebeh Yazdani Nia
Politics 2.0 With Facebook – Collecting And Analyzing Public Comments On Facebook For Studying Political Discourses, Chirag Shah, Tayebeh Yazdani Nia
JITP 2011: The Future of Computational Social Science
Analyzing publicly available content on various social media sites such as YouTube and Twitter, as well as social network sites such as Facebook, has become an increasingly popular method for studying socio-political issues. Such public-contributed content, primarily available as comments, let people express their opinions and sentiments on a given topic, news-story, or post, while allowing social and political scientists to extend their analysis of a political discourse to social sphere. We recognize the importance of Facebook in such analysis and present several approaches and observations of collecting and analyzing public comments from it. In particular, we demonstrate what it …