Pigeon

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How social media shapes the media environment to influence the conduct of political campaigns

In the internet age, social media has become an increasingly important source of political news, and these platforms have replaced campaign networks as the main online information channel for political parties and candidates (Enli, 2017) Meanwhile social media helps politically like-minded people find each other and cultivate political communities (Rohlinger & Bunnage, 2017) Therefore, these media platforms seem to have created a special media environment to interfere with the political process.

In a world of interconnectedness, our behaviour is being accurately predicted. And many people who are not interested in political news start to participate in political discussions and campaigns through their close friends and social media communication, and then Big Data algorithmically pushes relevant political information to these users, making the media environment increasingly utilitarian. Celebrities becoming politicians has become more likely because of changes in the media system, the political system, and the political culture (Boydstun & Lawrence, 2019). Enli (2017) mentions that since 2008, social media has become a more important communication channel for US campaigns, for example, the Obama campaign used more social media platforms than the Romney campaign. Hillary Clinton tweeted a campaign called "Start" and Trump is taking social media to the extreme.

The video named “start”

Figure 1(Enli, 2017)

From Figure 1 we can see that on Twitter, more than half of Trump's tweets are unconventional, and only 38% are by traditional standards, but 81.7% of Hillary's tweets are conventional. The media environments they are shaping are beginning to be distinctly different, with the use of social media. In Enli's (2017) study, it was found that more than a third of Trump's tweets contained consistent features such as "authenticity markers" (Figure 2) and “capital letters” (Figure 3). Therefore, Trump's tweets are predictable. And it can be better delivered to his followers with the help of big data, setting the stage for his campaign success.

Figure 2(Enli, 2017)

Figure 3 (Rohlinger & Bunnage, 2017)

Digital tools have played an important role in political upheavals around the world, such as the rise of the far right in Germany, Sweden and elsewhere. (Tufekci, 2018) As a result, the growth of social media has provided opportunities for more non-political people to the campaign. (Enli, 2017) And all of this is made possible by the media environment shaped by social media. Thus, from the above examples, we can find that social media are becoming a larger part of political life than traditional media, and more and more people are inadvertently becoming involved in political life through social media. But the environment shaped by social media also has many drawbacks, and this will be one of the topics I will continue to study.

Reference:

Boydstun, A. E., & Lawrence, R. G. (2019). When Celebrity and Political Journalism Collide: Reporting Standards, Entertainment, and the Conundrum of Covering Donald Trump’s 2016 Campaign. Perspectives on Politics, 18(1), 128–143. https://doi.org/10.1017/s153759271900238x

Enli, G. (2017). Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. European Journal of Communication, 32(1), 50–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323116682802

Rohlinger, D. A., & Bunnage, L. (2017). Did the Tea Party Movement Fuel the Trump-Train? The Role of Social Media in Activist Persistence and Political Change in the 21st Century. Social Media + Society, 3(2), 205630511770678. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117706786

Rosenwald, M. S. (2018, June). Trump’s Iran tweet and THE LONG HISTORY OF SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/07/23/trumps-iran-tweet-and-the-long-history-of-typing-in-all-caps/

Tufekci, Z. (2018, August 14). How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/14/240325/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/

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Is social media having an impact on the political participation of young citizens?

In many cases, social media is not a medium of political communication for most citizens, regardless of their level of interest in political participation. (Cristian Vaccari & Augusto Valeriani, 2021) The media plays a different role in the election campaign and therefore the content of social media is diverse, which is a combination of political and non-political messages. Thus Cristian & Augusto (2021) mention that disinterested young people do not have a full range of reasons to participate in politics, but that young citizens in countries with a free media system are likely to be more engaged in political life.

Figure 1: Survey of 1,025 young people across England, Scotland, and Wales eligible to vote for the first time in the 2010 general election. (Goddard, 2014)

Social media has played a huge role, whether it was the 2010 UK general election or Trump's 2016 election campaign. In response to the 2010 UK elections, Goddard's (2014) research (Figure 1) found that 28% felt that politics was only about national governance, 25% felt that politics was only about the national government, and over half felt that young people like them do not have the right to speak what their government did. But because of the global reach and sharing of the internet, most young people who are not interested in politics may access political information through other channels, such as friends' online networks or virtual communities of acquaintances. This may give them some political interest as social media provides an easy way to share and discuss politics (Boulianne, 2017), thus increasing their own political engagement.

In addition, young citizens have a different level of interest in issues. Nations (2018) mentioned that because young people are often disillusioned and dissatisfied with politicians and the traditional political process, they choose issues that have a strong emotional resonance, for example, global warming and human rights. In traditional political propaganda, such as speeches and newspapers, young people do not receive enough information and are characterized by one-sided ideas and a lack of empathy. However, the vast amount of information presented on social media and the intense debate from people in different countries has allowed young citizens to be exposed to a large amount of information and to participate in it, which has greatly increased the political participation of the younger generation.

Thus, the rise of social networking sites has made the Internet instrumental in enhancing the interactivity of politics with the people, who have given the government more opportunities to mobilize through the wide dissemination of political messages supported in different personal networks. (Theocharis & Lowe, 2015) Therefore, social media may help young citizens to understand and be aware of political issues and to express their political views through research and discussion. And the state may be able to gather the thoughts of the younger generation more quickly and authentically.

Reference:

Boulianne, S. (2017). Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe. Information, Communication & Society, 22(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2017.1353641

Cristian Vaccari, & Augusto Valeriani. (2021). Outside the bubble : social media and political participation in western democracies. Oxford University Press.

Goddard, C. (2014, March). Research Report: Social Differentiation in Young People’s Political Participation. CYP Now. https://www.cypnow.co.uk/other/article/research-report-social-differentiation-in-young-people-s-political-participation

Nations, U. (2018, January). Young People’s Civic and Political Engagement and Global Citizenship. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/young-peoples-civic-and-political-engagement-and-global-citizenship

Theocharis, Y., & Lowe, W. (2015). Does Facebook increase political participation? Evidence from a field experiment. Information, Communication & Society, 19(10), 1465–1486. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1119871

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Have social media solved any of the fundamental problems of collective action?

It is widely accepted that social media is vital to campaign organization, which has become more flexible and agile with the development of digital technology. (Suk et al., 2019) Many online campaigns and collective activities are considered unorganized without bureaucracy, facilities, many staff, and sufficient funding, but it is possible to organize them through social media.

Firstly, collective action requires individuals to come together spontaneously and participate in activities on their own, which requires a medium, and social media is well placed to play this role. Social and mobile technologies have led to wider and more effective peer-to-peer coordination. For example, people from different regions come together more frequently and faster than before (Seo et al., 2013) No more external factors such as costs that make it impossible to organize events. Secondly, social media acts as a communication hub, connecting people of different races and types, but with a convergence of ideas, who act collectively, in pursuit of the same preferences, and the same goals. Zheng & Yu (2016) also refer to collective action ranging from consumer rights or trade union strikes to larger social movements with an ideological agenda. For example, gender equality or global environmentalism. And the transnational radical right became a more powerful entity than before, as they used social media to coordinate and organize their activities. (Urman & Katz, 2020) Therefore, social media has helped to a certain extent in the communication, organization, and development of collective action.

However, Siegel (2009) mentions that the pattern of participation will differ from society to society. Social media also has many pitfalls for the organization of collective action, such as the lack of guaranteed individual participation. And the greater the costs and dangers of collective action, the stronger the bonds between individuals must be to support the decision to participate. (Spier, 2017) This will also lead to changes in the organization of some activities.

Therefore, social media has largely increased the ability of social movements to reach a wider audience. (Spier, 2017) It contributes to the organization of collective activities, and the aggregation of human resources. Social media is not the answer to all the problems of group activities, but it can make a big difference in terms of reducing the cost of activities and increasing the speed and efficiency of organizations.

Reference:

Siegel, D. A. (2009). Social Networks and Collective Action. American Journal of Political Science, 53(1), 122–138. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00361.x

Suk, J., Abhishek, A., Zhang, Y., Ahn, S. Y., Correa, T., Garlough, C., & Shah, D. V. (2019). #MeToo, Networked Acknowledgment, and Connective Action: How “Empowerment Through Empathy” Launched a Social Movement. Social Science Computer Review, 39(2), 089443931986488. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439319864882

Seo, H., Houston, J. B., Knight, L. A. T., Kennedy, E. J., & Inglish, A. B. (2013). Teens’ social media use and collective action. New Media & Society, 16(6), 883–902. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813495162

Spier, S. (2017). Collective Action 2. 0 : the Impact of ICT-Based Social Media on Collective Action. Elsevier Science & Technology.

Urman, A., & Katz, S. (2020). What they do in the shadows: examining the far-right networks on Telegram. Information, Communication & Society, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2020.1803946

Zheng, Y., & Yu, A. (2016). Affordances of social media in collective action: the case of Free Lunch for Children in China. Information Systems Journal, 26(3), 289–313. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12096

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Do social media diffuse or concentrate power?

Media and technological communication are the basis of social movements that can escalate and expand the scope of their struggle. For example, television coverage turned the Selma, Alabama riots into a national event, email allowed for global bulletins, radio enabled the transmission of information, etc. (BONILLA & ROSA, 2015) Most of the changes in society have been technological innovations, however, television, radio, and newspapers were unavailable for all aspects of communication until the advent of social media, which broke through the technological barrier. It has also been used in political life, and today we are discussing whether social media has a role to play in political rights.

Figure1: A visualisation of modern society (Trottier & Fuchs, 2014)

Figure 1 shows a visualisation of modern society, Trottier & Fuchs (2014) mention that the two dimensions of the diagram are constantly creating each other. Media, on the other hand, can be defined as structures that support and constrain human cognitive, communicative, and cooperative information processes and, in modern societies, can also be organized in different forms. The scope of influence of political decisions can be much wider if political activities can make use of social media. Meanwhile, Paine, T. (1992), a political philosopher, also refer to liberalism, which can influence policy agendas and public opinion in ways that were not possible before the Internet, so that people are free to participate in discussions, but this makes the media a double-edged sword.

Most audiences are exposed to information in the way they search, read, view, and share it daily (Baker & Chadwick, 2021), both access and dissemination of information through social media. And it may be that the way social media works influences the way society and politics work and their logic. The state broadcasts the news stories they want people to see, which can be a sensible use of media developed by the state, such as the role of opinion formers.

For example, the Trump campaign. Advertisers on Twitter could reach 486 million users and the figure2 shows that twitter's monetizable daily active users continue to grow. (The Latest Twitter Stats: Everything You Need to Know, 2022) Trump uses Twitter to clam up, even scare the public, and interfere with people's thinking about the topic. Meanwhile, Twitter ran hundreds of millions of ads for Trump during the election, and people who heard Trump more than 3,000 times a day for ten days would have easily voted for him. (GlobalMediaJournal©, 2019) Chadwick & Stanyer, (2021) claim that creating the impression of scarcity to induce a sense of urgency increases the likelihood of deception, with the aim of making quick decisions. This may also have been an important factor in his campaign success.

Figure2: Twitter monetizable daily active users (The Latest Twitter Stats: Everything You Need to Know, 2022)

This is probably the most direct and influential way in which politics and social media can be combined to engage with people's lives. When governments attempt to use social media for political purposes, the news and advertising that people see on the internet are no longer pure but full of purpose. Therefore, in the long-term context of modern society, people's trust in established media and political institutions has declined. (Paine, 1992)

Thus, does social media diffuse or concentrate power? It depends on the situation, when the state needs the media to consolidate political activities, or spread the culture of the country, to increase the cohesion of the people, social media is useful and can be a powerful help.

Reference:

BONILLA, Y., & ROSA, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), 4–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12112

Baker, C., & Chadwick, A. (2021). The Routledge. https://www.lboro.ac.uk/media/media/research/o3c/pdf/Baker_and_Chadwick_Corrupted_Infrastructures_of_Meaning_Post-truth_Identities_Online_May_12_2020.pdf

GlobalMediaJournal©. (2019). The ways and logic in which social media influence the functioning of society and politics. Www.huxiu.com. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://www.huxiu.com/article/291082.html

Chadwick, A., & Stanyer, J. (2021). Deception as a Bridging Concept in the Study of Disinformation, Misinformation, and Misperceptions: Toward a Holistic Framework. Communication Theory. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtab019

Paine, T. (1992). The rights of man. Oxford Woodstock Books.

Trottier, D., & Fuchs, C. (2014). Social Media, Politics and the State. Routledge.

The Latest Twitter Stats: Everything You Need to Know. (2022). DataReportal – Global Digital Insights. https://datareportal.com/essential-twitter-stats

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Is the” Earnest Internet” impossible to achieve on contemporary social media?

My professor Cristian talked in class about how they were looking at daily information sharing on private messaging apps. People don't spend a lot of time entering content, but they tend to express their opinions, share personal experiences, express their stories with emotion, and talk about the world rather than simply describe it in words. And most social media mobilizes the need for messaging, for example WhatsApp, Facebook, people can share their lives with familiar people, and share with strangers, but they also carry the risk of network transmission. As Hedrick et al. (2018) have mentioned that based on the "Earnest internet", communication science generally assumes that people behave rationally. There are also findings that social media has the greatest impact when social media use is measured as political expression. The web and social media provide ample opportunities to share text-based and multimedia expressions of personal political views. (Boulianne, 2017)

But without the premise of the "Earnest internet", social media can be a tool of contradiction. For example, “Disaster gilr”meme, she was standing in front of a burning house with a smile, and photographed by her father and quickly became popular, but the girl didn't mind the internet spreading her picture, which eventually sold for a high price. (Fazio, 2021)

Figure 1(Fazio, 2021)

On the contrary, “Star Wars Kid”, without his knowledge, his private video was uploaded online by a friend and accidentally 'exploded', he gained notoriety for his video content, which received 28 million views on YouTube, eventually resorting to the court system, a series of lawsuits were filed. (Zittrain, 2014) In addition to the accidents of people around us, there are also threats from social media strangers, as I have studied the negative effects of digital media on people with autism including online fraud, bullying, this is still a topic we need to study, how to reduce cyberbullying. This also goes against the core of the "Earnest internet", which is to act rationally and in good faith.

The development of the Internet has led to the rapid penetration of social media in all corners of the world, breaking the limits of time and space. If people do not look at what is happening with rationality and goodwill, public opinion will be misdirected, the following video addresses social health and the values that underpin them. If people are to be active in political discussions, and the video emphasizes 'active', then they must believe that the decisions of the decision makers are for the people and not for their personal benefit. But people usually interested in the boredom, the social hotspots and people's concerns may never be in focus, so it takes everyone's efforts to build a sustainable development area, this includes the responsibility of the media as well, as most people may not question the results of the reporting. But the contradictions of social media still exist due to the intertwining of interests, differences in knowledge levels, and the height of political thought, and the foundation of social trust is also unstable, so it may still take time to achieve the "Earnest internet" on cotemporary social media.

Does the media have a "duty of care"?

In this thoughtful talk, David Puttnam asks a big question about the media: Does it have a moral imperative to create informed citizens, to

Reference:

Boulianne, S. (2017). Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe. Information, Communication & Society, 22(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2017.1353641

Fazio, M. (2021, April 29). The World Knows Her as “Disaster Girl.” She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme.. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/arts/disaster-girl-meme-nft.html

Hedrick, A., Karpf, D., & Kreiss, D. (2018). The Earnest Internet vs. the Ambivalent Internet. International journal of communication [Online], 1057+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A560927079/AONE?u=anon~cb6bca13&sid=googleScholar&xid=3e5c989e

Zittrain, J. L. (2014). Reflections on Internet Culture. Journal of Visual Culture, 13(3), 388–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914544540