Networks in context: The social flow of political information

1995 ◽  
pp. 124-145
Keyword(s):  
Political Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Flow

Networks in Context: The Social Flow of Political Information

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 1197-1216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Huckfeldt ◽  
John Sprague
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Data Base ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Individual Control ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Flow ◽  
Informational Networks

We examine the effects of individual political preferences and the distribution of such preferences on the social transmission of political information. Our data base combines a 1984 election survey of citizens in South Bend, Indiana with a subsequent survey of people with whom these citizens discuss politics. Several findings emerge from the effort. First, individuals do purposefully construct informational networks corresponding to their own political preferences, and they also selectively misperceive socially supplied political information. More important, both of these individual-level processes are shown to be conditioned by constraints imposed due to the distribution of political preferences in the social context. Thus, individual control over socially supplied political information is partial and incomplete. Finally, these information-transmitting processes interact with the social context in a manner that favors partisan majorities while undermining political minorities.

scholarly journals Information Support of Youth Policy as a Factor of Formation of the Social Capital and Political Attitudes of the Young Generation

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Galina Viktorovna Morozova ◽  
Artur Romanovich Gavrilov ◽  
Bulat Ildarovich Yakupov
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Young People ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Information Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Youth Policy ◽  
The Social

If we sum up the tasks facing the Russian state in relation to the young generation, then all of them are associated with its harmonious inclusion in the social and political development of the country. At the normative level, the current need is declared for young people to form active citizenship and democratic political culture, which is possible only in a constant and equal dialogue between the authorities and young people. Ensuring the interaction of the younger generation with the political elite presupposes the existence of certain conditions - the creation and effective functioning of the information infrastructure of youth policy, as well as the conduct of an open active information policy. The article describes the results of a study of the political status of students of the capital of Tatarstan - Kazan, in particular, such parameters as youth interest in political information, trust in the sources of this information, and political participation. Together with the data of secondary studies, this made it possible to characterize the youth sector of political communication, identify the existing difficulties in the interaction of the government and youth, in particular, identify some difficulties in receiving and disseminating political information among the youth, which impede the development of a democratic political culture and the accumulation of social capital of the young generation.

Do the Social Web 2.0 Media Foster Democratization?

2016 ◽  
pp. 314-330
Author(s):  
Rasoul Namazi
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Internet ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Impacts

This chapter studies the influence of the Internet and new Web 2.0 technologies on the process of democratization in authoritarian regimes. The objective is to show that the new information technologies are not necessarily helpful to dissident movements and have even some negative impacts on the process of democratization. The author questions the capacity of Internet to transmit political information discusses how the new technologies contribute to the depoliticization of societies by creating passive citizens in authoritarian regimes. This chapter also shows how authoritarian regimes use new information technologies as instruments of control and repression and questions the effectiveness of the new cyber-activism by explaining the structure of the Internet and discussing the capacity of the new technologies in creating political community.

scholarly journals Contexts, networks, and voting behavior: the social flow of political communication in Italy

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moreno Mancosu
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Multilevel Models ◽  
Individual Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Flow ◽  
Geographical Context

Previous research demonstrated that different contextual sources can affect voting behavior. Homogeneous familiar networks affect individual behavior of people embedded in these networks toward voting for certain parties. Moreover, being exposed to higher levels of homogeneity in the geographical place where one lives contributes to developing higher propensities to vote for a certain political object. By means of 2006 National Italian Elections data (and by employing new measures of network political homogeneity), this paper tests, with multilevel models, the hypothesis according to which networks and geographical context interact while affecting individuals’ voting behavior. Results confirm such a hypothesis, showing that familiar networks represent a ‘social bubble’, which limits the likelihood of being affected by the broader context.

scholarly journals Visual Conjoints: Twitter Profiles

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Vecchiato ◽  
Kevin Munger
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Social

Conjoint experiments have seen an explosion of interest within political science, enabling scholars to understand the preferences of citizens in a varietyof political contexts. However, one notable limitation of the standard conjointdesign is the textual medium; citizens frequently encounter political information encoded as images, and in particular, encounter implicit cues that cannotbe unawkwardly translated into the literal form of that standard conjoint. Wepresent a method for algorithmically generating images at scale, enabling us deploy conjoint experiments where subjects select between two images that encodethe denotational information possible in standard conjoints in addition to thesubtle image- or style-based information prominent in more ecologically validencounters with political information. We explore the utility of this methodin an application where subjects evaluate the Twitter profiles of hypotheticalcandidates. We demonstrate that the visual conjoint allows subjects to take inimage-based information and that it can also incorporate the social endorsementinformation that is central to politics on social media.

scholarly journals Complex Contagion Features without Social Reinforcement in a Model of Social Information Flow

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Tyson Pond ◽  
Saranzaya Magsarjav ◽  
Tobin South ◽  
Lewis Mitchell ◽  
James P. Bagrow
Keyword(s):  
Information Flow ◽  
Social Reinforcement ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Multiple Exposures ◽  
Written Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Flow ◽  
Network Properties ◽  
Complex Features

Contagion models are a primary lens through which we understand the spread of information over social networks. However, simple contagion models cannot reproduce the complex features observed in real-world data, leading to research on more complicated complex contagion models. A noted feature of complex contagion is social reinforcement that individuals require multiple exposures to information before they begin to spread it themselves. Here we show that the quoter model, a model of the social flow of written information over a network, displays features of complex contagion, including the weakness of long ties and that increased density inhibits rather than promotes information flow. Interestingly, the quoter model exhibits these features despite having no explicit social reinforcement mechanism, unlike complex contagion models. Our results highlight the need to complement contagion models with an information-theoretic view of information spreading to better understand how network properties affect information flow and what are the most necessary ingredients when modeling social behavior.

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