Social Media as Propaganda Tools: The Greek Conservative Party and National Elections

2017 ◽  
pp. 193-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiannis Mylonas
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uta Russmann ◽  
Jakob Svensson

This paper directs attention to the use of Instagram by political parties in the Swedish national elections in 2014. It investigates how political parties made use of Instagram – a platform centered around images – when engaging in interaction with their followers on the platform. Therefore, the paper analysis Instagram images including their captions and comments (posts) that Swedish parties have published four weeks prior to Election Day. A particular focus is on the deliberative potential of Instagram. The results suggest that not much changes on Instagram compared to other social media platforms: Political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers and the few interactions taking place on parties Instagram accounts did not contribute to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics (i.e., deliberation). Interaction and deliberation is also not enhanced by the images.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (03) ◽  
pp. 118-121
Author(s):  
Archana Sawshilya ◽  

The 2019 election witnessed a society that was consuming digital technology .For the first time in the history of India’s political platform the national elections were fought both on the streets and by using the smart phones and social media platforms using the digital technology .The digital media teams of the political parties in the 2019 elections played a very crucial role in trying to tip the scales in the favor of their party .The NaMo app had nearly 10 million downloads while the Shakti app of the Congress had around 70-80 lakh users. But the critics raised the question what if the party that mis-adopted the technology during 2019 is also the majority party in the house that would be responsible for designing the control mechanisms?


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-237
Author(s):  
Muhammad Edy Susilo

AbstrakPemilihan umum merupakan salah satu Peristiwa penting yang akan menentukan arah perjalanan sebuahnegara. Ada 12 parti politik yang bertanding dalam pemilihan umum 2014. Pelaksanaan pemilihan umumtidak dapat dipisahkan dengan media,kerana media menjadi salah satu cara bagi parti politik untukmendapatkan pemilih. Di Indonesia, hubungan antara politik dengan media menjadi lebih rumit keranasebahagian besar ahli politik parti juga merupakan pemilik media massa nasional. Sudah menjadi sifatmedia, untuk selalu akan menyuarakan kepentingan pemiliknya. Namun, pada pemilihan umum 2014ada fenomena yang menarik iaitu luasnya penggunaan media sosial, seiring dengan meningkatnyapenggunaan internet di Indonesia. Maka, kempen politik bergeser dari ruang fizik menuju ruang maya.Jika pada pemilihan umum sebelum ini kempen politik selalu melibatkan massa yang besar, pawai atauorasi di tempat, terbuka, namun kali ini kempen yang dilakukan adalah lebih bersifat individu. Kempendilakukan melalui telefon pintar, komputer riba dan gajet yang lain. Dengan media sosial, masyarakatbukan lagi penonton yang pasif tetapi aktif. Masyarakat boleh menjadi penyampai maklumat dan bukanhanya sebagai penonton, sehingga dominasi media massa konvensional runtuh. Salah satu fenomenayang menonjol adalah munculnya Tokoh Joko Widodo, yang popular dengan nama Jokowi, sebagai salahsatu calon presiden dari Parti Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan. Jokowi berjaya menggunakan mediasosial untuk bekempen, walaupun partinya tidak memiliki media massa. Abstract General election is one of the crucial moments that will determine the development of a country. Thereare 12 political parties competing in the 2014 Indonesian national elections. The elections cannot beseparated with the media, because political parties use media in their campaign to influence voters. InIndonesia, the relationship between politics and the media becomes more complicated because most ofthe party’s political elites are also the owner of the national mass media. It is the nature of media, to alwaysbe voicing the interests of its owner. However, in the 2014 elections there is an interesting phenomenon:the increasing use of social media, along with the increasing penetration of the Internet in Indonesia. Thus,the political campaign shifted from physical space to the virtual space. If in the previous elections, politicalcampaigns always involve huge masses and rhetorics in the open space; in this election the campaigncarried more personal. Now, campaigns are conducted through smart phones, laptops and other gadgets.With social media, people are no longer passive but active audience. People can be a message producerand not just as an audience, so the conventional media dominance collapsed. One of the prominentphenomenon is the rising popularity of the president candidates from the Partai Demokrasi IndonesiaPerjuangan, Joko Widodo, who is popularly known as Jokowi. Jokowi has successfully used social mediafor the campaign, even though his political party does not have the mass media.


Author(s):  
Benedict E. DeDominicis

Nuclear powers battle indirectly through competitive interference within the political systems of third actors in addition to targeting not only each other, but also their own national public opinion. Postwar global human rights norms developed to include national self-determination for all. Covert intervention became politically preferable domestically to avoid negative domestic political reactions to perceived imperialism. Covert intervention decreases political resistance and costs to the intervenor. The nature of social media content distribution makes propaganda and disinformation distribution very extensive at relatively very low cost. These trends and advantages furthered the stress on covert intervention and the formation of national security bureaucracies for engaging in it. Russian state agency internet-based covert intervention via social media in the 2016 US national elections demonstrated that the US is part of the politically globalizing postmodern world that it helped create after 1945. The surveillance capabilities of the national security state will be strengthened.


2012 ◽  
pp. 1596-1610
Author(s):  
Mariah Kraner

This chapter looks at the political trends associated with using social media sources as a way to enhance participation in national elections. It is hypothesized that participation has declined across groups and through time, regardless of the new uses of social media in political campaigning. The historical significance of voter participation is examined using Alexis De Tocqueville’s and Robert Putnam’s frameworks. The path is paved to examine both the importance of new media in the election process and its drawbacks. A national empirical test is presented that examines the correlation between race categories, genders, and age ranges, with the percentage of voter turnout in each presidential election year from 1964 to 2008. Regression analysis is also conducted to examine the predictive nature of increased time on national voter participation. The correlation and regression results are presented, indicating that, in general, participation has continued to decline among most groups, regardless of the perceived access and connection provided by social media outlets. However, a slight change after 1996 may indicate an effect from social media presence. The data presents a starting point for future evaluation of e-government effects on national voter participation in the election process, providing a benchmark for later empirical tests.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Duncan B. Hollis ◽  
Jens David Ohlin

Election interference is one of the most widely discussed international phenomena of the last five years. Russian covert interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election elevated the topic into a national priority, but that experience was far from an isolated one. Evidence of election interference by foreign states or their proxies has become a regular feature of national elections, and election interference is likely to get worse in the near future. Information and communication technologies afford those who would interfere with new tools that can operate in ways previously unimaginable: Twitter bots, Facebook advertisements, closed social media platforms, algorithms that prioritize extreme views, disinformation, misinformation, and malware that steals secret campaign communications. Defending Democracies: Combating Foreign Election Interference in a Digital Age tackles the problem through an interdisciplinary lens and focuses on: (1) defining the problem of foreign election interference; (2) exploring the solutions that international law might bring to bear; and (3) considering alternative regulatory frameworks for understanding and addressing the problem. The result is a deeply urgent examination of an old problem on social media steroids, one that implicates the most central institution of liberal democracy—elections. This volume seeks to bring domestic and international perspectives on elections and election law into conversation with other disciplinary frameworks, escaping the typical biases of lawyers—preferring international legal solutions for issues of international relations. Taken together, the chapters in this volume represent a more faithful representation of the broad array of solutions that might be deployed, including international and domestic, legal and extralegal, ambitious and cautious.


Subject Anti-Dalit violence -- and its impact on politics and Modi's prospects. Significance Cow protection vigilante groups connected with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have carried out a slew of violent attacks against Dalits (low castes) in recent months, the latest in Modi's home-state of Gujarat in July. Clumsy handling of the attacks has provoked a backlash on the streets and in parliament, forcing Modi into a public condemnation of these vigilantes and the ouster of Gujarat's BJP Chief Minister Anandi Patel. Impacts Reducing caste discrimination is key to promoting truly inclusive development in India. Losing the Dalit vote-base would harm the BJP's prospects in the 2019 national elections. Anti-Dalit atrocities, now widely publicised through social media, damage India's reputation among investors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoav Halperin

This article examines the growing public awareness of deceptive online campaigns where automated networks of social media bots are deployed to manipulate public opinion, disrupt debates, and stoke intercommunal strife. Drawing on a grounded thematic analysis of discussion threads that appeared on Israeli politicians’ Facebook pages during the lead-up to Israel’s national elections in April 2019, I argue that users’ frequent allusions and reactions to the presence of suspected manipulative agents allow these users to negotiate, challenge, and raise competing claims regarding whether certain prominent voices on social media are reflective of actual public opinion. As such, this article contributes to the emerging body of literature about online manipulation, which in recent years has focused mostly on examining the nature and scope of deceptive bot campaigns around the globe and on devising new techniques for detecting and countering the activities of fake social media accounts. The present investigation, in contrast, seeks to shift attention away from bots themselves and toward their intended targets: ordinary users and their discourse. In so doing, it aims to contribute to and expand the study of how automated manipulation is shaping contemporary social media environments by asking: What do ordinary users have to say about the deployment of political bots? How does users’ growing awareness of deceptive bot campaigns inform their interpretations of their own online experiences? And how do users leverage claims about bot activity in online exchanges with others to advance their political agendas?


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document