scholarly journals A Roadmap for Fighting Election Interference

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 69-73
Author(s):  
Jens David Ohlin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Online Tools ◽  
2016 Election

If we have learned anything since the 2016 election, it is that foreign election interference is not just a strategic tool used by Russia. Many countries are now using social media disinformation as statecraft to attack democracies. With a relatively small investment of personnel and financial resources, a foreign power can use social media and other online tools to heighten divisions in the electorate, spread disinformation and conspiracy theories, and undermine confidence in the electoral system specifically and democratic institutions generally. The Biden administration should use the moral, political, and legal authorities of the Executive Branch to protect the United States from foreign election interference. In parallel, it should work cooperatively with allies to combat election interference using multilateral initiatives.

‘Op proef doeltreffend gebleken, kunnen we spreken van een bereikt ideaal’

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-59
Author(s):  
Jacques Lemmink
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dutch Version ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Religious Networks ◽  
Voting Machine

Abstract ‘Proved effective on trial, we can speak of an achieved ideal’ Abraham Kuyper and the mechanical voting machine, c. 1895-1905 During the latest presidential elections in the United States, unfounded conspiracy theories sprung up concerning alleged ballot box fraud by compromised voting machines. Although different voting machines had been used in the Netherlands since 1966, concerns over their reliability ended this in 2007. This article investigates the forgotten but ultimately failed attempt to introduce mechanical voting machines a century earlier. It focuses on the role played by prominent politician Abraham Kuyper, who personally visited the Standard Voting Machine Company in Rochester in 1898. The article illustrates how Kuyper’s transatlantic political and religious networks facilitated the voting machine’s transfer, rather than scientific connections. Paradoxically, the introduction of proportional representation in 1917 marked the end of tentative attempts to develop a Dutch version of the American mechanical voting machine. The implementation in the voting process turned out be too expensive, too early, and too complicated for the Dutch electoral system at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Electoral system influence on social network usage patterns of parliamentary assistants as their legislators’ stand-in: The United States, Germany, and Israel

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482090655
Author(s):  
Chen Sabag Ben-Porat ◽  
Sam Lehman-Wilzig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Communications ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Media Work ◽  
German Bundestag

Social networks are generally regarded as channels through which parliamentarians establish direct contact with the public. However, do they engage in these activities personally or rather delegate them to their parliamentary assistants? This study examines the intermediary relationship between parliamentarians and the public (henceforth PAs)—seeking to understand their role in contemporary, political communications. While numerous studies have looked at types of parliamentarian contact with the public, PAs have received little scholarly attention. Adopting a comparative perspective, this study will suggest a theoretical model of the MP/PA social media work relationship, creating a new questionnaire for PAs in the US House of Representatives, German Bundestag, and Israeli Knesset, exploring whether level of parliamentarians’ involvement in social networking is influenced by working within different electoral systems: representatives elected directly (the United States), mixed (Germany), and indirectly (Israel). The study investigates the level of parliamentarians’ engagement with social media communication according to a four-category model.

Disinformation as a Threat to Deliberative Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292093814
Author(s):  
Spencer McKay ◽  
Chris Tenove
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
System Level ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Social Media Platforms

It is frequently claimed that online disinformation threatens democracy, and that disinformation is more prevalent or harmful because social media platforms have disrupted our communication systems. These intuitions have not been fully developed in democratic theory. This article builds on systemic approaches to deliberative democracy to characterize key vulnerabilities of social media platforms that disinformation actors exploit, and to clarify potential anti-deliberative effects of disinformation. The disinformation campaigns mounted by Russian agents around the United States’ 2016 election illustrate the use of anti-deliberative tactics, including corrosive falsehoods, moral denigration, and unjustified inclusion. We further propose that these tactics might contribute to the system-level anti-deliberative properties of epistemic cynicism, techno-affective polarization, and pervasive inauthenticity. These harms undermine a polity’s capacity to engage in communication characterized by the use of facts and logic, moral respect, and democratic inclusion. Clarifying which democratic goods are at risk from disinformation, and how they are put at risk, can help identify policies that go beyond targeting the architects of disinformation campaigns to address structural vulnerabilities in deliberative systems.

Characterizing Twitter Discussions About Coronavirus Vaccines in the United States: A Topic Modelling Analysis (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
LI Crystal Jiang ◽  
Tsz Hang Chu ◽  
Mengru Sun
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Topic Model ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Topic Modelling ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Key Opinion Leaders

BACKGROUND A coronavirus vaccine that works is considered a game-changer in the battle against the unprecedented pandemic. News and social media discussions have been extensively covered the issue of coronavirus vaccines, with a mixture of advocacies, concerns, rumors and conspiracy theories. OBJECTIVE This study aims to uncover the emerging themes in social media discussions regarding the potential coronavirus vaccines. METHODS This study employ topic modelling to analyze Tweets related to coronavirus vaccines at the start of the COVID-19 in the United States (February 21 to March 20, 2020). We created a predefined query (e.g., "COVID" AND "vaccine") to extract the tweet text and metadata (number of followers of the Twitter account and engagement metrics based on likes, comments and retweeting) from the Meltwater database. After pre-processing the data, we tested Latent Dirichlet Allocation models with different solutions for identifying topics associated with tweets. The topic model with 20 topics provided the best topic coherence, and each topic was interpreted based on its top associated terms. RESULTS In total, we analyzed 100,209 tweets related to coronavirus vaccines. The 20 topics were further collapsed based on their similarities, resulting in seven big themes. Our analysis characterized 26.3% of the tweets as News Related to Coronavirus and Vaccine Development, 25.4% as General Discussion and Information Seeking of Coronavirus, 12.9% as Financial Concerns, 12.7% as Venting Negative Emotions, 9.9% as Prayers and Call for Positivity, 8.1 as Efficacy of Vaccine and Treatment and 4.9% as Conspiracies. Different themes demonstrated some changes over time, mostly in a close association with news or events related to the progress of vaccine developments. Users with a large number of followers (also known as key opinion leaders) preferred to discuss the themes of conspiracy theories, efficacy of vaccines and treatments, and financial concerns over other themes. The engagement levels of different themes were similar except for venting negative emotions. CONCLUSIONS This study concluded that financial concerns emerged as one important concern among the public regarding the potential coronavirus vaccines. The discussions of vaccines considerably mixed with political discussions, which suggests that the issue of coronavirus vaccines is politicized in the US. Only a small proportion of tweets were concerned about conspiracy theories, but their impact can be amplified by key opinion leaders and its relatively higher engagement level with the audiences. CLINICALTRIAL N.A.

scholarly journals Ratioing the President: An exploration of public engagement with Obama and Trump on Twitter

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0248880
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Minot ◽  
Michael V. Arnold ◽  
Thayer Alshaabi ◽  
Christopher M. Danforth ◽  
Peter Sheridan Dodds
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Past ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Use Of Social Media

The past decade has witnessed a marked increase in the use of social media by politicians, most notably exemplified by the 45th President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump. On Twitter, POTUS messages consistently attract high levels of engagement as measured by likes, retweets, and replies. Here, we quantify the balance of these activities, also known as “ratios”, and study their dynamics as a proxy for collective political engagement in response to presidential communications. We find that raw activity counts increase during the period leading up to the 2016 election, accompanied by a regime change in the ratio of retweets-to-replies connected to the transition between campaigning and governing. For the Trump account, we find words related to fake news and the Mueller inquiry are more common in tweets with a high number of replies relative to retweets. Finally, we find that Barack Obama consistently received a higher retweet-to-reply ratio than Donald Trump. These results suggest Trump’s Twitter posts are more often controversial and subject to enduring engagement as a given news cycle unfolds.

A survey of Instagram users with asthma to evaluate the acceptability of a planned clinical trial intervention (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Spitzer ◽  
Brent Heineman ◽  
Marcella Jewell ◽  
Michael Moran ◽  
Peter Lindenauer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
College Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Healthy Behaviors ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Hispanic White

BACKGROUND Asthma is a chronic lung disease that affects nearly 25 million individuals in the United States. There is a need for more research into the potential for health care providers to leverage existing social media platforms to improve healthy behaviors and support individuals living with chronic health conditions. OBJECTIVE In this study, we assess the willingness of Instagram users with poorly controlled asthma to participate in a pilot study that uses Instagram as a means of providing social and informational support. In addition, we explore the potential for adapting photovoice and digital storytelling to social media. METHODS A survey study of Instagram users living with asthma in the United States, between the ages of 18 to 40. RESULTS Over 3 weeks of recruitment, 457 individuals completed the pre-survey screener; 347 were excluded. Of the 110 people who were eligible and agreed to participate in the study, 82 completed the study survey. Respondents mean age was 21(SD = 5.3). Respondents were 56% female (n=46), 65% (n=53) non-Hispanic white, and 72% (n=59) had at least some college education. The majority of respondents (n = 66, 81%) indicated that they would be willing to participate in the study. CONCLUSIONS Among young-adult Instagram users with asthma there is substantial interest in participating in a study that uses Instagram to connect participants with peers and a health coach in order to share information about self-management of asthma and build social connection.

Lawyers as Activists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Dorf ◽  
Michael S. Chu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Court Action ◽  
The Government ◽  
Trump Administration

Lawyers played a key role in challenging the Trump administration’s Travel Ban on entry into the United States of nationals from various majority-Muslim nations. Responding to calls from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which were amplified by social media, lawyers responded to the Travel Ban’s chaotic rollout by providing assistance to foreign travelers at airports. Their efforts led to initial court victories, which in turn led the government to soften the Ban somewhat in two superseding executive actions. The lawyers’ work also contributed to the broader resistance to the Trump administration by dramatizing its bigotry, callousness, cruelty, and lawlessness. The efficacy of the lawyers’ resistance to the Travel Ban shows that, contrary to strong claims about the limits of court action, litigation can promote social change. General lessons about lawyer activism in ordinary times are difficult to draw, however, because of the extraordinary threat Trump poses to civil rights and the rule of law.

“La Idea Mueve” (The Idea Moves Us)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela González
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Scientific Racism ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment

The concluding chapter explains how race had served defenders of slavery by providing them with an excuse to hold men and women in bondage. For their inhumane treatment of Africans during the Age of Enlightenment to be justified, their humanity needed to be ideologically stripped away—scientific racism served that purpose. Racist theories also kept other groups in subaltern positions. Mexicans with mestizo, mulatto, and Indian genealogies experienced racialization in the United States. Simply put, Americans, proud of their liberal political heritage and their democratic institutions, needed to see oppressed groups as somehow sub-human in order to reconcile their political beliefs with the nation’s less than egalitarian realities. It is for this reason that the politics of redemption practiced by Mexican immigrant and Mexican American activists merits attention.

scholarly journals Stand against anti-Asian racial discrimination during COVID-19: A call for action

2020 ◽  
pp. 002087282097061
Author(s):  
Qin Gao ◽  
Xiaofang Liu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychological Well Being ◽  
Negative Impacts

Racial discrimination against people of Chinese and other Asian ethnicities has risen sharply in number and severity globally amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This rise has been especially rapid and severe in the United States, fueled by xenophobic political rhetoric and racist language on social media. It has endangered the lives of many Asian Americans and is likely to have long-term negative impacts on the economic, social, physical, and psychological well-being of Asian Americans. This essay reviews the prevalence and consequences of anti-Asian racial discrimination during COVID-19 and calls for actions in practice, policy, and research to stand against it.

“The Best Damn Representation of Islam:” Muslims, Gender, Social Media, and Islamophobia in the United States

CyberOrient ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-30
Author(s):  
Stine Eckert ◽  
Sydney O'Shay Wallace ◽  
Jade Metzger-Riftkin ◽  
Sean Kolhoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
The United States
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