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MMP Complete > Lecture 7 + 8 > Flashcards

Lecture 7 + 8 Flashcards

1
Q

A high-choice media environment:

A

In a few decades, from a world where:
Most people exposed to the same news content
Even those not very interested in the news are exposed to it.

To a world where:
People can choose from many different news sources
People play a more important role in the dissemination of news in detriment of news companies/journalists.

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2
Q

6 concerns about ‘recent’ changes in political information environments

A
  1. Declining amount of political news
  2. Towards declining quality of news
  3. Power concentration and decreasing diversity? Decline in revenue and resources → media concentration.
  4. Towards increasing polarization and fragmentation
  5. Towards increasing relativism
  6. Towards increasing inequalities
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3
Q
  1. Declining amount of political news
A

In absolute terms, there are mow more political news.
In relative terms, hard political news play a much secondary role in detriment of soft political news.

A decline in the demand of political news:

  • Clear decline in the consumption of “traditional” news.
  • Higher consumption of news online but many things not hard news.

How much quality is enough? It depends on the normative democratic model one uses as reference. At least:

  • Cover topics relevant for people to be informed citizens
  • True information
  • Balanced (the different sides are presented)
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4
Q
  1. Towards declining quality of news
A

Concern from a demand perspective: economic pressure will bring media companies to increase amount of soft news…

But mix evidence, varies accros countries.

“There is no compelling evidence of a universal downward trend towards declining quality in terms of more soft or game-framed news” (p.9)

BUT…
• Decrease in the resources of journalists and media outlets
• Increasing resource inequalities between outlets

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5
Q
  1. Power concentration and decreasing diversity? Decline in revenue and resources → media concentration.
A

Decreasing diversity?

Diversity Paradox: More outlets (because online world) but they are less diverse.

The more media outlets, the fewer outlets people consume. People find and stick to their niche .

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6
Q
  1. Towards increasing polarization and fragmentation
A

More media outlets available online → greater supply of niche/partisan media.
• Fragmented audience?
• Filter bubbles? balkanization?

Some selective exposure: people do prefer those media outlets that align their own views.

Some evidence of a polarization effect of news: the more pro-attitudinal news/info, the more polarized.
• Although this seems to be the case particularly for those who are already quite polarized and/or really interested in politics (a minority).

“Although the supply of biased information has increased, particularly online, news media with an ambition to cover politics in a balanced and neutral way still constitute the main source of political information for most people” (p.14)

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7
Q
  1. Towards increasing relativism
A
  • Increasing relativism towards facts
  • Prevalence of opinions over fact-based/investigative journalism
  • Problematic because politicians/citizens rely on factual info to make decisions

Supply

  • Media organizations have fewer resources to clearly investigate stories.
  • Having an opinion pundit is less expensive that doing extensive research on a topic.ds
  • Social media facilitates the dissemination of unchecked and false information (no gatekeeper).
  • Organizations specialized in the production of biased information (interest groups, think tanks, etc.)
  • How much misinformation is out there? → There will be a lecture on this!

Demand
• Confirmation bias and Motivated reasoning: people likely to believe (and not fact-check) pro-attitudinal information. There is a public demand for biased information.

• How to correct beliefs in misinformation? → There will be a lecture on this!

Demand • Confirmation bias and Motivated reasoning: people likely to believe (and not fact-check) pro-attitudinal information. There is a public demand for biased information. • How to correct beliefs in misinformation?

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8
Q
  1. Towards increasing inequalities
A

Increasing media choice → increasing inequality in media usage → increasing political inequalities

A growing knowledge gap between news seekers and news avoiders.

conclusion: the state of affairs is not that bad

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9
Q

Digital Media and Collective Action

Towards new mobilization forms

A

15-M Indignados (2011). Protesters:

  • not regularly involved in formal political/civic organizations
  • no formal affiliation with political groups
  • much younger than “average protester

” How were so many people able to organize a large and sustained mobilization without the support of strong organizations and resources?

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10
Q

The logic of collective action reconsidered

A
  • Common good problem: people benefit from collective action even if they don’t participate
  • Free rider problem: people have an incentive to not participate
  • Strong organizations with resources are key to successful collective actions (resource mobilization theory )

But in the current post-industrial era:

  • formal political engagement in decline
  • people still interested in politics
  • but seek personal expression rather than group identifies
  • from group-based to individualized society
  • from strong-ties to weak-ties networks
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11
Q

Two broad organizational changes that allowed for a new type of collective actions:

A
  1. Political content in the form of easily personalized ideas (We are the 99%).
  2. Technology platforms taking over the role of organizations (communication inside/outside publics, recruitment, etc.).
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12
Q

The Logic of Connective Action

A
  • Social media did not only change the speed/pace/size of traditional mobilization tactics.
  • A new logic:
    * Self-motivated participation (a need to express one’s feelings) → participation is not a cost
  • Mass public self-expression of grievances/feelings, cascading through networks, potentially building large focal points → putting pressure on policy makers
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13
Q

Digital media contributed to solve many problems discontent population of non-democratic countries often face.

A
  1. Preference falsification
  2. Shared Grievances
  3. Bandwagon effect
  4. Traceability
  5. Reaching to outside international audiences
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14
Q
  1. Preference falsification
A
  • People are afraid of speaking up and protesting (repression)
  • They do not share their private (anti-government) beliefs
  • Discontent people (majority) believe they are a minority
  • On social media people can speak up more/less anonymously/freely, breaking patterns of preference falsification
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15
Q
  1. Shared Grievances
A
  • State-controlled media
  • Citizens rather uninformed about a wide range of grievances
  • Via social media they can bypass government censorship a learn about new grievances
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16
Q
  1. Bandwagon effect
A
  • People don’t want to be the first ones to go on the streets (repression)
  • When a critical mass already on the streets, individual repression is less likely
  • Social media flooded with images of peoples already on the street
17
Q
  1. Traceability
A
  • Opposition groups often heavily rely on their leadership and key logistical infrastructure
  • A horizontal networked movement is less traceable and harder to take down
18
Q

Reaching to outside international audiences

A
  • Key for increasing the scope of the conflict and put pressure on the government (boomerang effect)
  • Very difficult when no freedom of the press
  • Digital media allows for direct and free movement of information to inside but also outside publics
19
Q

5 phases of the story of digital media & Arab spring

A

1 preparation: early tech-savy activists who start sharing grievances and building community 2 ignition: incident / triggering event

3 street protests

4 international buy-in

5 climax: win or lose moment

20
Q

Digial Media & Democratic Backlash

A
  • Social media can be used for pro but also anti-democratic goals
  • General discussion (Tucker et al.)
  • How governments (e.g. China) censor social media (King et al.)
  • How online incivility discourages politicians to use social media (Teocharis et al.)
21
Q

2 initial observations Article Tucker et al. (2017):

A

(1) Social media give a voice to those whose views are normally excluded from political discussions in the mainstream media.
- Protesters seeking more/better democracy
- Antisystem forces seeking to undermine democracy
- Theocharis et al. (2016)

(2) The platforms of information freedom can be exploited in order to silence others.
- Authoritarian censors

  • Illiberal, antisystem forces within democratic regimes
  • King et al. (2014)
22
Q

Key takeaway Article Tucker

A

“Social media are neither inherently democratic nor inherently undemocratic. Rather, social media constitute
a space in which political interests battle for influence, and not all these interests are liberal or democratic” (p.48)

23
Q

The 3Fs (Roberts 2018)

A

Fear, friction and flooding

24
Q

Fear:

A
  • Inciting fear is a classic tool in the tool-belt of authoritarian regimes.
  • Authoritarian governments today use digital tracking in order to imprison opponents who voice their claims on social media.
  • Pan & Siegel (2020) “How Saudi Crackdowns Fail to Silence Online Dissent”

Pan & Siegel (2020)
Visible opponents on social media reduce activity after being arrested

Visible opponents on social media are less anti-regime after being arrested

BUT no effect on followers! So doesn’t seem to be working very well…

25
Q

Friction:

A

Authoritarian governments can also try to block opposing online content

  • Shutting down the internet or particular pages/platforms
  • Surgical removal of social media posts (King et al. (2014))
  • Algorithmic manipulation of search results
26
Q

Flooding:

A
  • Trolls
  • Bots
  • Promote regime propaganda
  • Overflow the internet when attention to opposition content spikes - Chinese govt fabricates 448 posts million/year (King et al. 2017)
  • Harass people online
  • Fake news

A tactic pioneered by authoritarian countries that can also be used in democratic countries to undermine the system.

  • ISIS to recruit, coordinate, etc.
  • Man’s rights
  • Alt right
  • … A model of disruption that has come to stay!
27
Q

What’s next? Things to take into account when trying to fix the problem

A
  • Democratic regimes much more constrained than authoritarian regimes in regulating online speech: pros and cons.
  • Debates around repression, censorship, surveillance.
  • From a technical side, it is very difficult to detect bots, trolls, fake news, etc.
  • What role should companies do? Resources? Transparency?
28
Q
  • How censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression (2013, APSR)
  • How the Chinese government fabricates social media posts for strategic distraction, not engaged argument (2017, APSR)
  • Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized experimentation and participant observation (2017, Science)
A

Motivation and hypotheses:
• A key goal of authoritarian regimes is to stay in power
• Oppressing dissent becomes crucial to accomplish such goal. Nowadays, social media censorship is key to fighting dissent.
• 2 relevant forms of dissent: - State critique - Collective action

Experimental design
• Selected top 100 social media sites in the country (87% of the social media volume)
• Created 2 accounts for each site
• Posted messages about collective (and non-collective) action events.
• Chose non-collective action events related to criticism of party elites and about corruption • 2×2 design: Pro v. Anti // Collective Action v. Non-Collective Action
• Posts posted by RAs in China. Controlled for:
• Same keywords
• Same author
• Between 100-200 characters

Results: Automatic review
• Selected top 100 social media sites in the country (87% of the social media volume)

  • Created 2 accounts for each site
  • Posted messages about collective (and non-collective) action events.
  • Chose non-collective action events related to criticism of party elites and about corruption • 2×2 design: Pro v. Anti // Collective Action v. Non-Collective Action
  • Posts posted by RAs in China. Controlled for:
  • Same keywords • Same author • Between 100-200 character
29
Q

Coll. Action / Aut. Review

A

• Posts selected for review are not more likely to be deleted after accounting for whether the post promotes a collective action.

30
Q

Results: Collective Action

A

• Posts on collective action between 20-40% percentage points more likely to be censored (no matter if pro/anti government)

31
Q

Results: Automatic review

A
  • Selected top 100 social media sites in the country (87% of the social media volume)
  • Created 2 accounts for each site
  • Posted messages about collective (and non-collective) action events.
  • Chose non-collective action events related to criticism of party elites and about corruption • 2×2 design: Pro v. Anti // Collective Action v. Non-Collective Action
  • Posts posted by RAs in China. Controlled for:
  • Same keywords • Same author • Between 100-200 characters
  • 66/100 sites automatically review posts posted on the site
  • 40% of the posts they submitted
  • relevant differences between private v. state-controlled platforms
  • state(-controlled) platforms are (over)cautious when it comes to review posts

Reviews indeed seem to aim at taking a closer took to posts potentially related to collective action and state criticism.

32
Q

Results: Gov. Criticism / Aut. review

A

• Reviews are overcautious. Pro-government content slightly more likely to be selected for review.

33
Q

Results: Goverment Criticism

A
  • Posts against the government are not more likely to be censored than those in favor.
  • Responsive authoritarianism, in line with their 2013 APSR paper
34
Q

Three main ways in which politicians use social media:

A
  • Marketing: building a public image.
  • Mobilization: campaign events, volunteer, donate, vote, etc.
  • Dialogue: the most revolutionary from a normative view.
35
Q

Risks of engaging with people on social media:

A
  • loss of discourse control.
  • ambiguity of campaign message.
  • additional risks: harassment and trolling.
36
Q

Hypotheses and Data

A

H1 Politicians make broadcasting rather than engaging use of Twitter.

H2 Engaging style of tweeting is positively related to uncivil responses.

Data:

  • Spanish, British, Greek, and German candidates who ran for a seat during the 2014 European Parliament elections.
  • 2,482 out of 15,527 identified MEP candidates (16%) had a presence on Twitter.
  • a dataset containing every tweet, retweet, and response of a candidate as well as all the responses to these tweets. Plus any tweet mentioning the candidate.
37
Q

Method + findings

A

Automatically coded tweets for the following dimensions:

1 Communication style:
- Broadcasting: @PaulBrannenNE – “Labour’s freepost election address dropping through letter boxes across the North East this week.”

  • Engaging: - @GreenJeanMEP – “@klebudd Thank you Katie. We aimed for a positive campaign #VoteGreen2014”

2 Politeness:

  • Polite: “@paulmasonews why doesnt #EU take a longer term view? Doesnt #Germany remember their 1940s bailout allowing recovery & growth? #Greece”
  • Impolite: “@Nigel Farage How’s your dirty European non British dirty bitch of a wife? Is she ok? Can’t imagine what it’s like for you.”

3 Morality/Democracy: references to moral and/or democracy issues

Findings: Broadcasting v. Engaging
Percentage of broadcasting (v. engaging) tweets sent by candidates to the EP:
• UK 47%
• Spain 55%
• Germany 63%
• Greece 74%
+ Engaging → + Trolling
• candidates who send more engaging tweets are also more likely to receive more impolite responses
• candidates who send more engaging tweets in a given week are more likely to be exposed to more impolite responses the following week
• tweets that are classified as engaging also tend to receive more impolite responses

MMP Complete (11 decks)

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