Lecture 7 + 8 Flashcards
A high-choice media environment:
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.
6 concerns about ‘recent’ changes in political information environments
- Declining amount of political news
- Towards declining quality of news
- Power concentration and decreasing diversity? Decline in revenue and resources → media concentration.
- Towards increasing polarization and fragmentation
- Towards increasing relativism
- Towards increasing inequalities
- Declining amount of political news
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)
- Towards declining quality of news
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
- Power concentration and decreasing diversity? Decline in revenue and resources → media concentration.
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 .
- Towards increasing polarization and fragmentation
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)
- Towards increasing relativism
- 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?
- Towards increasing inequalities
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
Digital Media and Collective Action
Towards new mobilization forms
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?
The logic of collective action reconsidered
- 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
Two broad organizational changes that allowed for a new type of collective actions:
- Political content in the form of easily personalized ideas (We are the 99%).
- Technology platforms taking over the role of organizations (communication inside/outside publics, recruitment, etc.).
The Logic of Connective Action
- 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
Digital media contributed to solve many problems discontent population of non-democratic countries often face.
- Preference falsification
- Shared Grievances
- Bandwagon effect
- Traceability
- Reaching to outside international audiences
- Preference falsification
- 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
- Shared Grievances
- 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
- Bandwagon effect
- 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
- Traceability
- Opposition groups often heavily rely on their leadership and key logistical infrastructure
- A horizontal networked movement is less traceable and harder to take down
Reaching to outside international audiences
- 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
5 phases of the story of digital media & Arab spring
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
Digial Media & Democratic Backlash
- 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.)
2 initial observations Article Tucker et al. (2017):
(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)
Key takeaway Article Tucker
“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)
The 3Fs (Roberts 2018)
Fear, friction and flooding
Fear:
- 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…
Friction:
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
Flooding:
- 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!
What’s next? Things to take into account when trying to fix the problem
- 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?
- 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)
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
Coll. Action / Aut. Review
• Posts selected for review are not more likely to be deleted after accounting for whether the post promotes a collective action.
Results: Collective Action
• Posts on collective action between 20-40% percentage points more likely to be censored (no matter if pro/anti government)
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 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.
Results: Gov. Criticism / Aut. review
• Reviews are overcautious. Pro-government content slightly more likely to be selected for review.
Results: Goverment Criticism
- Posts against the government are not more likely to be censored than those in favor.
- Responsive authoritarianism, in line with their 2013 APSR paper
Three main ways in which politicians use social media:
- Marketing: building a public image.
- Mobilization: campaign events, volunteer, donate, vote, etc.
- Dialogue: the most revolutionary from a normative view.
Risks of engaging with people on social media:
- loss of discourse control.
- ambiguity of campaign message.
- additional risks: harassment and trolling.
Hypotheses and Data
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.
Method + findings
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
