A Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis of Tweets Pertaining to the 2020 US Presidential Election

We capture the public sentiment towards candidates in the 2020 US Presidential Elections, by analyzing 7.6 million tweets sent out between October 31st and November 9th, 2020. We apply a novel approach to first identify tweets and user accounts in our database that were later deleted or suspended from Twitter. This approach allows us to observe the sentiment held for each presidential candidate across various groups of users and tweets: accessible tweets and accounts, deleted tweets and accounts, and suspended or inaccessible tweets and accounts. We compare the sentiment scores calculated for these groups and provide key insights into the differences. Most notably, we show that deleted tweets, posted after the Election Day, were more favorable to Joe Biden, and the ones posted leading to the Election Day, were more positive about Donald Trump. Also, the older a Twitter account was, the more positive tweets it would post about Joe Biden. The aim of this study is to highlight the importance of conducting sentiment analysis on all posts captured in real time, including those that are now inaccessible, in determining the true sentiments of the opinions around the time of an event

The Role of the IRA in Twitter during the 2016 US Presidential Election: Unveiling Amplification and Influence of Suspended Accounts

The impact of the social media campaign conducted by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 U.S. presidential election continues to be a topic of ongoing debate. While it is widely acknowledged that the objective of this campaign was to support Donald Trump, the true extent of its influence on Twitter users remains uncertain. Previous research has primarily focused on analyzing the interactions between IRA users and the broader Twitter community to assess the campaign's impact. In this study, we propose an alternative perspective that suggests the existing approach may underestimate the true extent of the IRA campaign. Our analysis uncovers the presence of a notable group of suspended Twitter users, whose size surpasses the IRA user group size by a factor of 60. These suspended users exhibit close interactions with IRA accounts, suggesting potential collaboration or coordination. Notably, our findings reveal the significant role played by these previously unnoticed accounts in amplifying the impact of the IRA campaign, surpassing even the reach of the IRA accounts themselves by a factor of 10. In contrast to previous findings, our study reveals that the combined efforts of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and the identified group of suspended Twitter accounts had a significant influence on individuals categorized as undecided or weak supporters, probably with the intention of swaying their opinions.Comment: 13 Tables, 12 Figure

Network Propaganda

"Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or ""Fake news"" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a ""post-truth"" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.

Network Propaganda

"Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or ""Fake news"" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a ""post-truth"" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.

A Sociology of Gab: A Computational Analysis of a Far-Right Social Network

This dissertation examines the racial discourse circulated on Gab, a microblogging and social networking platform, by the far right to proliferate hate speech, and how the far-right discourse has evolved on the platform. Gab was created 2016 in response to mainstream social media’s increase of content moderation and deplatforming of extremist users to curtail hate speech and harassment. The platform gained a substantial number of new users after the Charlotteville incident of 2017. In this thesis, I examine the creation of Gab, as an alternative social media platform, as a strategic site of socio-technical innovation, as well as the important part far-right discourse on Gab plays in the asymmetric polarization phenomenon of the media ecosystem. This project asks: How has Gab developed and what discourses about race circulate on Gab? To answer these questions, I draw on a large dataset of digital trace data of the entire Gab platform of approximately 10 million posts on Gab from 2016 to 2019. This constitutes an archive of the far-right activities on an important alternative social media platform. I use computational methodologies including structural topic modeling, word embeddings and qualitative analysis to examine the materials, and form conclusions about the impacts of asymmetric polarization of the far right on social media. I argue that Gab occupies an important position in the social media ecosystem in the context of mainstream social media platforms’ deplatforming post- Charlottesville, and the absence of legislation that regulates hate speech. Gab, as an opportunistic innovation, is emblematic of an alternative social media ecosystem that flourishes online, drawing in users who are rejecting, and rejected by, mainstream social media platforms and searching for platforms with looser content moderation that reflect their absolutist freedom-of-speech stance. This environment is conducive to asymmetric polarization, spreading anti-liberal, anti-mainstream media, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigration discourses. These ideological strings are not new but consistent with earlier articulations of the ideology of white supremacy ideology, just taking place on a newer platform that itself may enable new variations of the same theme

Dying in Full Detail

In 'Dying in Full Detail' Jennifer Malkowski explores digital media's impact on one of documentary film's greatest taboos: the recording of death. Despite technological advances that allow for the easy creation and distribution of death footage, digital media often fail to live up to their promise to reveal the world in greater fidelity. Malkowski analyzes a wide range of death footage, from feature films about the terminally ill (Dying, Silverlake Life, Sick), to surreptitiously recorded suicides (The Bridge), to #BlackLivesMatter YouTube videos and their precursors. Contextualizing these recordings in the long history of attempts to capture the moment of death in American culture, Malkowski shows how digital media are unable to deliver death "in full detail," as its metaphysical truth remains beyond representation

Social Media #FTW!: The Influence of Social Media on American Politics

Social media has transformed politics in America. Its effect has impacted the way candidates campaign for the presidency, Members of Congress operate their offices, and advocacy organizations communicate with policymakers and supporters. Social media allows politicians and organizations a method to connect directly and without filters with people across the country, assemble a constituency, and solicit their support at a reduced cost and greater reach than traditional media. Social media is not simply the next in a line of communications technologies: it has changed everyday activities and connected people in a manner never before possible. The rise of smartphone technology has enabled this trend since people can access the Internet almost anywhere making a mobile device a potential organizing and fundraising tool. Social media has transformed politics in America because it creates an instantaneous multi-directional public dialogue that offers the ability to rapidly analyze the data and learn from the findings on an unprecedented scope

The President in His Labyrinth: Checks and Balances in the New Pan-American Presidentialism

This dissertation presents a theory of the separation of powers centered on the President’s “power to persuade.” To meet the imperial public expectations placed on the office in the modern age, the President will reliably try to supplement his limited formal powers by convincing others to support his agenda, the people, party allies, and courts being the most important. The President’s techniques of persuasion fall into three regular categories. First, there is “going public,” or popular leadership, where the President turns the force of popular majorities into a tool for shaping policy or legislative outcomes. Second is executive law-making, whereby the President presses on party alliances to shape legislative content: drafting legislative proposals, mediating congressional debates, soliciting or taking advantage of broad delegations of authority. Finally, there is emergency management, whereby the President invokes security threats, real or contrived, to press his natural advantages of speed and decisiveness and claim exclusive power over governance. In three case studies from Latin America, I illustrate these techniques and how institutions have adapted in response. Some are success stories, some are not, but all offer evocative lessons in designing solutions to problems the U.S. also confronts. First, on popular leadership, I discuss Venezuelan democracy under populist Hugo Chávez, in which institutions that could be coopted and radicalized (the courts, the legislature) were, while those that could not (opposition governorships and state and local agencies) were duplicated and circumvented by a proliferation of loyalist organizations that effectively created a shadow “parastate.” Second, I give a critical assessment of Brazil’s spin on “cabinet government,” in which the makeup of the President’s Cabinet directly mirrors party balance in the legislature, thereby heightening the risks of quid-pro-quo policymaking, but also drawing a beneficial link between policy and representative democracy. Finally, I describe Colombia’s efforts to “judicialize” war, internal rebellion, and other economic or social crises by subjecting these to judicial review by the Constitutional Court, created in 1991 with a mandate to curb a historical legacy of presidential excess. Bringing these lessons home, I discuss how the American constitutional system is designed to absorb the shocks of populism, de facto presidential legislating, and the abuse of war powers, and how to channel their beneficial tendencies and contain their negative aspects. I argue that the U.S.’ robust civil society prevents the most egregious abuses of the “bully pulpit,” but that sweeping institutional capture can happen, and that the rule of law is threatened where institutions like the EPA or the FBI are not reformed, but tarred as illegitimate and unrepresentative. Second, I treat executive-legislative cooperation in governance and increases in delegated authority as essentially unavoidable, but argue that the concentration of power ought to be met by increased mechanisms of public oversight and participation that go beyond notice-and-comment, to include citizen initiatives. Finally, I argue that the exploitation of presidential war power needs to be made accountable to strict temporal and legal limits, and that in the American constitutional system, this would be most practically achieved by a new jurisprudence abandoning the political question doctrine with regard to invocations of the commander-in-chief power, especially those unsupported by congressional authorization