Social Media and Politics Folgen

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 of this engagement, the role of qualitative research in project designs, and person-centered solutions to countering misinformation on private social media.

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. We also discuss post virality and Prof. Larsson's work comparing viral posts in Norway across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Here are the studies mentioned in the episode: Longitudinal studies of European party communication: Picture-perfect populism: Tracing the rise of European populist parties on Facebook (2022)The rise of Instagram as a tool for political communication: A longitudinal study of European political parties and their followers (2021)Studies using Norwegian data:‘Win a sweater with the PM’S face on it’ – A longitudinal study of Norwegian party Facebook engagement strategies (2020)‘Coherent clusters’ or ‘fuzzy zones’ – Understanding attention and structure in online political participation (2019)Winning and losing on social media: Comparing viral political posts across platforms (2019)

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 newsroom, and how automation might affect news consumption in the future. Check out the Unbiased Podcast!And test out The Factual's engine at IsThisCredible.com