Regulating Online Campaign Finance: Chasing the Gost

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khushbu Agrawal ◽  
Yukihiko Hamada ◽  
Alberto Fernández Gibaja
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Political Finance ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Online Campaigning ◽  
Targeted Messages

As the number of Internet and social media users increases, political parties and candidates are spending significant amounts of money on online campaigning. It not only helps them to reach out to more voters with comparatively lower costs, but also allows them to communicate more targeted messages to voters when compared with other traditional campaign tools. Despite the growing use of online campaigns, appropriate regulation of online expenditures is almost non-existent around the world. In fact, online expenditure is one of the key weaknesses of political finance systems and regulatory frameworks. Appropriate regulation of online expenditures will not only protect the integrity of the political process, but also thwart negative effects, such as disinformation and polarization and, more generally, prevent inauthentic activities that usually characterize online campaigns. As online expenditure is a relatively new phenomenon, its regulation is not straightforward and there is no conclusive evidence on what works. This report outlines some of the challenges that policymakers, legislators and oversight agencies face when drafting and implementing laws to include online expenditure within the scope of regulated political finance. It also provides recommendations for policymakers, social media platforms, political parties, candidates and campaigners, as well as civil society actors, on the steps that they can take towards closing the regulatory gap.

scholarly journals Introduction to special issue about election reporting: Why journalism (still) matters

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 985-993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion ◽  
Daniel Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Campaign Coverage ◽  
Election Coverage ◽  
Social Media Platforms

This introduction unpacks the eight articles that make up this Journalism special issue about election reporting. Taken together, the articles ask: How has election reporting evolved over the last century across different media? Has the relationship between journalists and candidates changed in the digital age of campaigning? How do contemporary news values influence campaign coverage? Which voices – politicians, say or journalists – are most prominent? How far do citizens inform election coverage? How is public opinion articulated in the age of social media? Are sites such as Twitter developing new and distinctive election agendas? In what ways does social media interact with legacy media? How well have scholars researched and theorised election reporting cross-nationally? How can research agendas be enhanced? Overall, we argue this Special Issue demonstrates the continued strength of news media during election campaigns. This is in spite of social media platforms increasingly disrupting and recasting the agenda setting power of legacy media, not least by political parties and candidates who are relying more heavily on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to campaign. But while debates in recent years have centred on the technological advances in political communication and the associated role of social media platforms during election campaigns (e.g. microtargeting voters, spreading disinformation/misinformation and allowing candidates to bypass media to campaign), our collection of studies signal the enduring influence professional journalists play in selecting and framing of news. Put more simply, how elections are reported still profoundly matters in spite of political parties’ and candidates’ more sophisticated use of digital campaigning.

Profiling the Users of High Influence on Social Media in the Context of Public Events

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-49
Author(s):  
Lu An ◽  
Junyang Hu ◽  
Manting Xu ◽  
Gang Li ◽  
Chuanming Yu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Emotional Support ◽  
Opinion Leader ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Influential Users

The highly influential users on social media platforms may lead the public opinion about public events and have positive or negative effects on the later evolution of events. Identifying highly influential users on social media is of great significance for the management of public opinion in the context of public events. In this study, the highly influential users of social media are divided into three types (i.e., topic initiator, opinion leader, and opinion reverser). A method of profiling highly influential users is proposed based on topic consistency and emotional support. The event of “Jiankui He Editing the Infants' Genes” was investigated. The three types of users were identified, and their opinion differences and dynamic evolution were revealed. The comprehensive profiles of highly influential users were constructed. The findings can help emergency management departments master the focus of attention and emotional attitudes of the key users and provide the method and data support for opinion management and decision-making of public events.

Interaction on Instagram?

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uta Russmann ◽  
Jakob Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Paper Analysis ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Social Media Platforms

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.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Duncan B. Hollis ◽  
Jens David Ohlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
International Perspectives ◽  
National Priority ◽  
Broad Array ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Information And Communication

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.

scholarly journals Political Parties in Indonesia and the Internet: A comparative analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Sigit Andhi Rahman ◽  
Ella S Prihatini
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Website Features ◽  
Use Of Internet

<p>This is the first such study of the use of Internet by political parties in Indonesia. It also documents parties’ websites performance index and online popularity for campaigning in 2019. The purpose of this comparative study is to look at how the Internet was used by Indonesian political parties approaching the 2019 elections. Internet campaign consists of two parts: online presence through political party website, and political marketing through social media. Total of 16 parties participating the elections next year were examined for how they are utilizing official websites and social media platforms. We created an index based on list of website features (scoring system) and then classify it into 4 variables (information provision, mobilization, engagement, and technological sophistication) containing 43 features. We also visualise the descriptive statistical analysis on parties’ social media accounts using RStudio software. The study found that despite half of Indonesian national population is using the Internet, political parties were not yet achieving their maximum potential in using the digital media to disseminate political messages and propaganda. The quality of most of the websites have been subpar. In addition, the quality seems to have no relationship with the financial resources and the current parliamentary size of political parties. On average, official social media accounts run by parties has only been used in the last 3.25 years. Well-established older parties in Indonesia continue to engage with their constituents without heavily relying on social media. Yet, this situation is very likely to change in the future as parties’ elites are now beginning to look into this platform as they seek out to the millennials for electoral support.</p>

scholarly journals Social Media Usage and its Effect on Quality of Adolescent Social Relationships

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadie Saltzman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Does the number of social media platforms that an adolescent uses have an effect on the quality of their social relationships? As social media continues to grow and evolve, sociologists have begun to explore its effect on an individual’s everyday life. I propose that the more social media platforms that an adolescent uses, the more they will experience negative effects on their social relationships. Using survey data from 786 respondents living in the United States, ages 13 to 17 and collected by the Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2015, regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between social media usage and its effect on quality of adolescent social relationships, controlling for sex and age. The bivariate results show a statistically significant, positive but weak association between number of social media platforms used and the social relationship experience scale. In the multivariate results, this association was still statistically significant. Additionally, the multivariate results show that the control variables, sex and age, have no significant effect on one’s social relationship experience. Therefore, these results show that the more social media platforms used, the more negative a social relationship experience an adolescent will have. The results support the hypothesis and indicate that adolescents who interact with a higher number of social media platforms will experience an increased negative effect on their social relationships. In future studies, researchers should investigate how specific social media platforms influence social relationships. Additionally, this type of research should not only continue, but should refine its methods as social media continues to quickly grow and evolve.

scholarly journals Intentional or inadvertent fake news sharing? Fact-checking warnings and users’ interaction with social media content

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu ◽  
Patricia Delponti ◽  
Carmen Rodríguez-Wangüemert
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
False News ◽  
News Sharing

The main social media platforms have been implementing strategies to minimize fake news dissemination. These include identifying, labeling, and penalizing –via news feed ranking algorithms– fake publications. Part of the rationale behind this approach is that the negative effects of fake content arise only when social media users are deceived. Once debunked, fake posts and news stories should therefore become harmless. Unfortunately, the literature shows that the effects of misinformation are more complex and tend to persist and even backfire after correction. Furthermore, we still do not know much about how social media users evaluate content that has been fact-checked and flagged as false. More worryingly, previous findings suggest that some people may intentionally share made up news on social media, although their motivations are not fully explained. To better understand users’ interaction with social media content identified or recognized as false, we analyze qualitative and quantitative data from five focus groups and a sub-national online survey (N = 350). Findings suggest that the label of ‘false news’ plays a role –although not necessarily central– in social media users’ evaluation of the content and their decision (not) to share it. Some participants showed distrust in fact-checkers and lack of knowledge about the fact-checking process. We also found that fake news sharing is a two-dimensional phenomenon that includes intentional and unintentional behaviors. We discuss some of the reasons why some of social media users may choose to distribute fake news content intentionally.

Political Technology as a Field

2020 ◽  
pp. 32-50
Author(s):  
Daniel Kreiss ◽  
Kirsten Adams ◽  
Jenni Ciesielski ◽  
Haley Fernandez ◽  
Kate Frauenfelder ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Entrepreneurial Ventures ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nature Of Technology ◽  
Commercial Technology ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Political Technology

This chapter discusses how political technology grew into the field it is today. Political technology lies at the intersection of two male-dominated fields, and it also has a number of unique features for politics. The ever-shifting nature of technology requires campaigns and political parties to garner significant amounts of knowledge and expertise from the technology and commercial sectors. This means fluid careers as staffers move into and out of commercial, technology, and political jobs, seeding campaigns with new skills, knowledge, and ways of seeing the world. There are also rapid and continual changes in the technologies that are at the center of how contemporary politicians connect with the public, from social media platforms to political databases. For political tech staffers, this means continual learning and adapting to changes in how the electorate receives political information and communicates about politics. And it means many new opportunities for entrepreneurial ventures to bring talent, tools, and practices down-ballot and across election cycles.

Social Media and Political Mobilization in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Piya Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
New Media ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Election Result ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Near Future

India is considered as the largest democracy in the world. The proper functioning of a democratic system depends upon its electoral politics and election result is the outcome of the mobilization strategies adopted by the different political parties of the country. Thus political mobilization is particularly important in any democratic politics. This paper seeks to understand how the mobilization strategy has been redefined due to the entry of social media into politics. There is no scope to deny the fact that conventional media still play an important role in political mobilization. But the coming into being of social media into politics has made things more interesting, politics more democratic and the electoral system more inclusive. The political leaders irrespective of political parties are trying their best to utilize the social media platforms for their electoral benefits. The paper is evaluating the role of social media in political mobilization as different from conventional media with the expectation that doing away with the fake news will make this new media a prospective media in the near future.

scholarly journals Sociale mediers rolle i politisk kommunikation: et litteraturstudie

Politik ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Andreas Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Trace Data ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
Slow Evolution ◽  
Over Time

This study is a systematic literature review of research on social media and political communication from political parties or politicians in parliament. The literature review is narrowed down further to focus on European studies. The review sorts studies into three thematic categories: political sender, citizen engagement and public actors. The study finds that papers are mostly pessimistic about the democratic influence of social media. This might be because studies have been looking for a social media revolution rather than slow evolution over time. The paper goes on to divide studies according to digital methods using digital trace data or traditional methods or a combination of both. The literature review presents the advantages of each approach and further highlights the potential of mixed and multiple methods. Finally, the literature review highlights recent issues with collecting data through platform API and argues that the field should be careful about relying too heavily on this collection approach in the future as social media platforms are starting to restrict access to digital trace data.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document