scholarly journals THE POLITICAL INFORMATION TO PROTEST: AN ASSESSMENT OF TOPICAL SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE IN CONTENTIOUS POLITICS

Author(s):  
Dan Mercea

This article leverages social media and survey data to probe the scope and depth of political knowledge possessed by participants in the Romanian 2017 #rezist protests. For several months, demonstrators gathered in town squares around the country to oppose a project law intended to water down penalties for corruption in high office. Against the backdrop of well-founded scepticism regarding exposure to and engagement with political knowledge on social media, we scrutinize the social media usage of protestors with an interest in the formulation and circulation of political knowledge. We find evidence of applied political knowledge as a prominent component of public activist communication on Facebook. An examination of the network structure further revealed bottlenecks in the circulation and brokerage of knowledge, a result that helps qualify the aforementioned scepticism.

Author(s):  
Kevin Munger ◽  
Patrick J. Egan ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Jonathan Ronen ◽  
Joshua Tucker

Abstract Does social media educate voters, or mislead them? This study measures changes in political knowledge among a panel of voters surveyed during the 2015 UK general election campaign while monitoring the political information to which they were exposed on the Twitter social media platform. The study's panel design permits identification of the effect of information exposure on changes in political knowledge. Twitter use led to higher levels of knowledge about politics and public affairs, as information from news media improved knowledge of politically relevant facts, and messages sent by political parties increased knowledge of party platforms. But in a troubling demonstration of campaigns' ability to manipulate knowledge, messages from the parties also shifted voters' assessments of the economy and immigration in directions favorable to the parties' platforms, leaving some voters with beliefs further from the truth at the end of the campaign than they were at its beginning.


Author(s):  
Hamza Saad Mohamed

This study aims to investigate the extent to which university students are actively seeking out political information on social media during the 2015 Egyptian parliamentary elections. Moreover, it explores the impact of social media usage in the production of political information and its influence on participants' likelihood to vote. A random sample of 400 students at three public Egyptian universities qualified to vote in the 2015 parliamentary election were selected. The interesting result that emerged from this study was that students use social media for seeking information mainly in politics during the election more than pass time and entertainment purposes. Furthermore, the findings have shown that social media usage increased both the political information and participants' likelihood to vote during the 2015 parliamentary election.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (23) ◽  
pp. eabf1234
Author(s):  
R. Kelly Garrett ◽  
Robert M. Bond

The idea that U.S. conservatives are uniquely likely to hold misperceptions is widespread but has not been systematically assessed. Research has focused on beliefs about narrow sets of claims never intended to capture the richness of the political information environment. Furthermore, factors contributing to this performance gap remain unclear. We generated an unique longitudinal dataset combining social media engagement data and a 12-wave panel study of Americans’ political knowledge about high-profile news over 6 months. Results confirm that conservatives have lower sensitivity than liberals, performing worse at distinguishing truths and falsehoods. This is partially explained by the fact that the most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote conservative positions, while corresponding truths typically favor liberals. The problem is exacerbated by liberals’ tendency to experience bigger improvements in sensitivity than conservatives as the proportion of partisan news increases. These results underscore the importance of reducing the supply of right-leaning misinformation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-51
Author(s):  
Simran Kaur Madan ◽  
Payal S. Kapoor

The research, based on uses and gratifications theory, identifies consumer motivation and factors that influence consumers' intention to follow brands on the social media platform of Instagram. Accordingly, this study empirically examines the role of need for self-enhancement, the need for entertainment, and deal-seeking behaviour on the intention to follow brands on Instagram. Further, the study investigates the mediation of social media usage behaviour for consumption decisions on eliciting brand following behaviour. Moderation of consumer skepticism on the relationship of deal-seeking behaviour, and intention to follow brands is also investigated. Findings reveal a significant direct effect of need for self-enhancement, need for entertainment, and deal-seeking behaviour on intention to follow brands. Indirect effect of social media usage behaviour for consumption decisions was also significant; however, moderation of consumer skepticism was not found to be significant. The study will help marketers create engaging content that enables consumer-brand interactions.


Heritage ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassilis Poulopoulos ◽  
Costas Vassilakis ◽  
Angeliki Antoniou ◽  
George Lepouras ◽  
Anastasios Theodoropoulos ◽  
...  

Social media usage is affecting peoples’ views through opinion sharing, a fact that has started to attract cultural institutions, as it is possible that this procedure can possibly be a part of a museum experience. As the main goal of a cultural institution is the maximization of senses stimulation, the device that is offered to the visitors’ hands everyday and every moment, becomes an important tool for the art spaces. In this notion we perform research on issues that can be of great importance for the museum’s online presence and attraction. We focus on establishing the personality of influencers related to culture, as well as the characteristics of qualitative discussions on the social media. Crosscult Project is an EU funded project, that aims to spur a change in the way European citizens appraise History, and sets that basis of our research as the experiments are conducted within its scope of. Through the experimental procedure, we collect information in order to define the character of the influencer and the substances of a “serious” conversation. “Serious” conversations are regarded the ones in which a cultural organization can participate actively and benefit from the participation. We present the results of our experimental evaluation and analyze how cultural institutions can benefit from the outcomes of our research.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo T Perez-Rivera ◽  
Christopher Torres Lugo ◽  
Alexis R Santos-Lozada

Between July 13-24, 2019 the people of Puerto Rico took the streets after a series of corruption scandals shocked the political establishment. The social uprising resulted in the ousting of the Governor of Puerto Rico (Dr. Ricardo Rosselló, Ricky), the resignation of the majority of his staff something unprecedented in the history of Puerto Rico; this period has been called El Verano del 19 (Summer of 19). Social media played a crucial role in both the organization and dissemination of the protests, marches, and other activities that occurred within this period. Puerto Ricans in the island and around the world engaged in this social movement through the digital revolution mainly under the hashtag #RickyRenuncia (Ricky Resign), with a small counter movement under the hashtag #RickySeQueda (Ricky will stay). The purpose of this study is to illustrate the magnitude and grass roots nature of the political movement’s social media presence, as well as their characteristics of the population of both movements and their structures. We found that #RickyRenuncia was used approximately one million times in the period of analysis while #RickySeQueda barely reached 6,000 tweets. Particularly, the pervasiveness of cliques in the #RickySeQueda show concentrations of authority dedicated to its propagation, whilst the #RickyRenuncia propagation was much more distributed and decentralized with little to no interaction between significant nodes of authority. Noteworthy was the role of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States of America and around the world, contributing close to 40% of all geo-located tweets. Finally, we found that the Twitter followers of the former governor had indicators of being composed of two distinct populations: 1) those active in social media and 2) those who follow the account but who are not active participants of the social network. We discuss the implications of these findings on the interpretation of emergence, structure and dissemination of social activism and countermovement to these activities in the context of Puerto Rico.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Conan Shore ◽  
Jiye Baek ◽  
Chrysanthos Dellarocas

Social media have great potential to support diverse information sharing, but there is widespread concern that platforms like Twitter do not result in communication between those who hold contradictory viewpoints. Because users can choose whom to follow, prior research suggests that social media users exist in "echo chambers" or become polarized. We seek evidence of this in a complete cross section of hyperlinks posted on Twitter, using previously validated measures of the political slant of news sources to study information diversity. Contrary to prediction, we find that the average account posts links to more politically moderate news sources than the ones they receive in their own feed. However, members of a tiny network core do exhibit cross-sectional evidence of polarization and are responsible for the majority of tweets received overall due to their popularity and activity, which could explain the widespread perception of polarization on social media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 18-35
Author(s):  
Brendan O'Hallarn ◽  
James Strode

As sport management pedagogy has evolved, an effort has been made to incorporate popular and innovative social media technologies into classroom instruction. Academic research has suggested how the technology can be utilized to provide real-world skills for students and develop proficiencies in an area where many sport management graduates find employment. Notable among the recommendations about social media use by sport management scholars is a lack of research testing the efficacy of these tools in improving curricula. The current study relied on the recommendations of Sanderson and Browning (2015) to use the social media site Twitter to create online partnerships, testing the perceived benefits of such an arrangement through end-of-semester surveys with student participants. While the survey data show a true partnership may be difficult to realize—particularly during a single semester—the benefits of such an assignment were clearly articulated.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Galina Viktorovna Morozova ◽  
Artur Romanovich Gavrilov ◽  
Bulat Ildarovich Yakupov

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.


Author(s):  
Norsiah Abdul Hamid ◽  
Mohd Sobhi Ishak ◽  
Syamsul Anuar Ismail ◽  
Siti Syamsul Nurin Mohmad Yazam

Social media are playing an increasing role in today’s living. The social media platforms allow users to search, create, share, collaborate, and organise contents among them, and at the same time provide virtual self-presentation and self-disclosure of oneself. Social media were also claimed to give implications to human beings with regards to personality, yet these variables have not much been emphasised in previous studies. Thus, it is important to highlight the implications of social media on users’ personality. Given the issues and challenges faced by the country in profiling the adoption of social media and its implications in view of the perspective of personality, it is timely and significantly important to undertake this research in Malaysia. The objective of this chapter is to discuss a research conducted recently to determine the relationships between social media and personality traits. The specific objectives of this study are to identify the profile of social media adoption among students in Malaysia, including duration, frequency of use, purpose, and person/s that introduced the social media, and to determine the relationships between social media and personality traits.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document