scholarly journals Modern technologies of social management in the US political process (using the example of the 2020 presidential election campaign)

Author(s):  
P. Y. Feldman ◽  
N. S. Danyuk ◽  
Y. S. Senokop

This article provides an applied analysis of the social network technologies used by Western IT-companies to exert a direct or indirect influence on political processes. The study focuses on a set of tools that were employed to shape the media landscape during the 2020 presidential election campaign in the United States. Overall, the empirical observations suggest that the largest networking services (such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, etc.) more or less contributed to the success of the Democratic candidate.Having studied the relevant U.S. experience, the authors identify a set of manipulative techniques used by social network administrators to form specific electoral attitudes among users. These include blocking accounts; setting up search algorithms to produce pre-programmed results; labeling ideologically objectionable materials as “fake”, “untrustworthy”, “manipulative” and “potentially dangerous”; automatically recommending certain materials for viewing; and removing or pessimizing unwanted content.Seeking to expand their own audience, social networks flood the media space with so-called “partisan” content, which is vigorously welcomed by one part of society and just as vigorously rejected by another. This leads to polarization and radicalization of the masses. The most destructive consequences of this process can be witnessed in the United States, where Democrat and Republican supporters become not just political opponents but real antagonists.Social media, search engines and news aggregators, developing their capacity as political actors, pave the way to a qualitative change in the established electoral practices. The greatest concern is the ability of IT-companies to manipulate the political consciousness and behavior of citizens during crucial election campaigns. Considering this circumstance, the authors raise a question about the need to regulate the political and communication processes unfolding on the Internet platforms.

2020 ◽  
pp. 000276422097506
Author(s):  
Camilo Prado-Román ◽  
Raúl Gómez-Martínez ◽  
Carmen Orden-Cruz

The media and election campaign managers conduct several polls in the days leading up to the presidential elections. These preelection polls have a different predictive capacity, despite the fact that under a Big Data approach, sources that indicate voting intention can be found. In this article, we propose a free method to anticipate the winner of the presidential election based on this approach. To demonstrate the predictive capacity of this method, we conducted the study for two countries: the United States of America and Canada. To this end, we analysed which candidate had the most Google searches in the months leading up to the polling day. In this article, we have taken into account the past four elections in the United States and the past five in Canada, since Google first published its search statistics in 2004. The results show that this method has predicted the real winner in all the elections held since 2004 and highlights that it is necessary to monitor the next elections for the presidency of the United States in November 2020 and to have more accurate information on the future results.


Author(s):  
A. V. Bogapova ◽  

During election campaigns populist slogans and promises are often used in the speeches of candidates. There are some differences although between the discourses of the progovernment and the opposition candidates. It is therefore important to study the political discourse of the 2018 presidential election campaign. Since the political struggle develops in real life and is broadcast in details in the media space, the publications of the candidates on the social network VKontakte have been chosen in order to analyze their discourses. Topic modeling of the text published overtly was used to create a thematic profile of each candidate. Comparing topic profiles the author was able, firstly, to identify and compare the topics of the prostate and opposition candidates’ populist discourses, and, secondly, to identify the most similar agendas of the candidates in the information environment using the vector space model. Thereby, the thematic profiles of the candidates identified corresponded to their ideological positioning. The opposition candidates including the systemic opposition appealed to the problems of negative mobilization in their speeches, which is based on populist slogans. The discourses of candidates who pursue a certain ideology and status have been found to be similar.


1985 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan W. Cafruny

The political challenge to the post-World War II order in shipping has been issued in the context of the North-South debate, but American power and interest are central to current developments. In the bulk and tanker sector the United States retains a strong interest in stability and successfully defends the existing order. In the liner sector, on the other hand, the United States has participated in recent assaults on the postwar order, producing great tension between Europe and America. There is a strong correlation between this growing maritime conflict and the political processes anticipated by the general theory of hegemonic stability. But “hegemony” and “power” are distinct concepts. Instability in international shipping arises neither from America's loss of power in shipping nor from challenges from Europe and the Third World. Rather, instability reflects American attempts to establish a closer identity between the existing regime and short-term national interest.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Kathrin Weber

Martha Nussbaum’s political theory of compassion offers an extensive and compelling study of the potential of employing compassionate emotions in the political realm to further social justice and societal “love”. In this article, two pitfalls of Nussbaum’s affirming theory of a politics of compassion are highlighted: the problem of a dual-level hierarchisation and the “magic” of feeling compassion that potentially removes the subject of compassion from reality. I will argue that Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on pity provide substantial challenges to a democratic theory of compassion in this respect. Following these theoretical reflections, I will turn to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 US-American presidential election campaign, to her video ads “Love and Kindness” in particular, in order to provide fitting illustrations from current realpolitik for these specific pitfalls of the political employment of compassionate emotions.


2019 ◽  
pp. 146144481989228
Author(s):  
Stine Eckert ◽  
Jade Metzger-Riftkin ◽  
Sean Kolhoff ◽  
Sydney O’Shay-Wallace

We interviewed 61 Muslims in 15 focus groups from the most visible Muslim population in the United States: the Detroit Metropolitan Area. Participants shared their experiences of and responses to Islamophobia on social media and face-to-face during the 2016 US presidential election campaign and aftermath. Applying Fraser’s and Squires’ theories of counterpublics, we developed an adapted understanding of counterpublics in collapsed contexts of online and face-to-face spaces. We argue that everyday Muslim internet users in the United States are an example of a hyper differential counterpublic. They face the pressures of near ubiquitous and ever evolving Islamophobic attacks, while needing to engage with the internet for personal and professional purposes. We suggest that hyper differential counterpublics operate in collapsed contexts of mixed, unimaginable publics, switch between group and individual responses, and craft hyper situational responses to discriminations case by case.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 446-448
Author(s):  
Kim Speers

For Better or Worse: How Political Consultants are Changing Elections in the United States, David Dulio, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004, pp. xvii, 289.During the 2004 federal election, the media shone light on the political consultants who were reportedly affiliated or somehow related to Paul Martin's election campaign. By their account, the traditional party machine, often viewed to be the primary, if not the only, actor in political campaigns in Canada, seemed to have taken a backseat to the expensive, polished and professional campaign machinery the private sector had to offer. Campaign management through consultancy was now publicly visible in Canada and reliance on the party machine, while still important, seemed to face competition in terms of expertise and proximity to power. However, the study of political campaigns and specifically, the role of political consultants within campaigns, has received sparse attention from the political science community outside of the United States. Yet even in the US, in spite of the prevalent and pervasive presence of political consultants in electoral politics, the study of this group is relatively new.


2015 ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
A. A. Orlov

The article analyzes the political processes taking place in Latin America. The author pays special attention to the increase of tension in some countries on the continent, especially in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. He comes to the conclusion that the United States, who have distanced themselves from Latin America’s affairs in recent years, head for «reformatting» of the continent under its own interest, that can have a serious destabilizing effect.


Author(s):  
Andriy Martynov

Americans as a nation are more focused on the present and the future than on the past. Until recently, various «historical traumas» have not been the subject of current American political discourse. The American dream focuses on the needs of everyday life, not on the permanent experience of the past. The aim of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of symbolic conflicts over the sites of the Civil War in the United States in the context of the 2020 election campaign. Research methods are based on a combination of the principles of historicism and special historical methods, in particular, descriptive, comparative, method of actualization of historical memory. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is determined by the historical and political analysis of the “wars of memory” during the presidential election campaign in the United States in 2020. Radical political confrontation exacerbates the conflicts of collective memory. This process is not prevented by the postmodern state of collective consciousness, the virtualization of political processes, attempts to form a «theater society». The coronavirus pandemic has raised the issue of choosing a strategy for the development of the globalization process as harshly as possible. Current events break the link between the past and the present, which makes the future unpredictable. Developed liberal democracy is considered the «end of history». Multiculturalism has created different interpretations of US history. Conclusions. Trump’s victory deepened the rift between different visions of the history of the Civil War. The Democratic majority unites African Americans, Latinos, women with higher education, and left liberals. Attacks on the memorials of the heroes of the former Confederacy became symbols of the war of memory. The dominant trend is an increase in the democratic and electoral numbers of non-white Americans. The «classic» United States, dominated in all walks of life by white Americans with Anglo-Saxon Protestant identities and relevant historical ideas, is becoming history. The situation is becoming a political reality when white Americans become a minority. It is unlikely that such a «new minority» will abandon its own interpretation of any stage of US history, including the most acute. This means that wars of memory will become an organic element of political processes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 598-606
Author(s):  
Victor V. Chebanenko

This article analyzes the media market of Ukraine during the period from 2018 to 2020. The study includes social and political phenomena that had an effect on media consumption in Ukraine. Firstly, at the end of 2018, the presidential election campaign contributed to the mass digitalization of the country. Then at the begging of 2020, news consumption was highly increased due to the situation with coronavirus pandemic. The article provides statistics on the Ukrainization of media content.


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