Dr. Marco Bastos, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at City University of London, discusses his research on Twitter bots and botnets in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. We talk about how to identify bots on Twitter, what these bots were sharing, and how the content they share on social media relates to the activity of human users. Later in the episode, we discuss the ethics behind researching bots and whether recent automated account crackdowns by Facebook and Twitter will improve political debates on social media.
Below are links to the studies we discussed in the episode:
Study 1: The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News
Study 2: The Public Accountability of Social Platforms: Lessons from a Study on Bots and Trolls in the Brexit Campaign
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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: https://socialmediaandpolitics.org.
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Folge vom 04.11.2018Brexit Botnets and Hyperpartisan News Sharing on Twitter, with Dr. Marco Bastos
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Folge vom 28.10.2018P2P Texting for Democrats in the 2018 Midterm Elections, with Naseem MakiyaNaseem Makiya, founder and CEO of Outvote, guests to discuss the peer-to-peer texting technologies available to Democrats ahead of the 2018 Midterm Elections. We break down the features of Outvote and what sets it apart from other P2P platforms. In particular, we focus on the "Swing District" feature, a focus on contacting friends, and the use of emojis to signify a friend's previous voting history. We also talk about the results generated from the platform during the primaries, and the P2P landscape for political campaigning now as well as in the future.
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Folge vom 21.10.2018Inoculating Fake News and Disinformation on Social Media, with Ruurd OosterwoudRuurd Oosterwoud, co-founder of DROG, guests to discuss inoculation techniques against disinformation on social media platforms. Ruurd shares the several initiatives DROG has been working on to educate the public about fake news and disinformation: the Bad News Game, student workshops to increase media literacy about disinformation, and a one day event to create the "biggest Dutch troll army" ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections.
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Folge vom 14.10.2018Political Polarization, Social Media, and News Use in the United States, with Dr. Galen StockingDr. Galen Stocking, Computational Social Scientist at Pew Research Center, discusses political polarization and how it relates to social media use. We take a deep dive into how Pew Research Center measures polarization empirically, how polarization has changed over time, and how widening partisan gaps relate to citizens' traditional and social media habits. Dr. Stocking also discusses the role of computational methods in survey research, using one of his recent studies on media sources shared on Twitter during immigration debates as a case. We also talk about Reddit, which has a relatively low user base in the United States compared to other social media platforms. Yet, Dr. Stocking's research has uncovered that Reddit users are highly active in consuming news on the site. Pew Research Center sources cited in the episode: Graphic Illustration of Political Polarization 1994-2017 Political Polarization and Media Habits (2014) Sources Shared on Twitter: A Case Study of Immigration (2018) News Use across Social Media (2018) Dr. Stocking's study on Reddit (2016)