THE CORRELATION BETWEEN MORAL LEXICON AND VIOLENT PROTESTS

Various distinct, discrete, and dispersed factors can transform a non-violent social movement into a violent social movement, making such transitions extremely challenging to predict. In this thesis, I develop an analytical approach for predicting the mobilization of violent social movements using a newly expanded multilingual Moral Foundations Dictionary to quantify references to moral categories in geo-referenced social media feeds. This is combined with event data on the timing and location of violent protests in Africa to develop an analytic framework for large-scale, high-resolution assessment and predictions of violent political protests. The evidence shows that a significant relationship exists between social media messages with moral content and the probability of violent protest, which significantly increases the chances that a social movement becomes hostile and violent.Major, United States ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Candides and Cassandras: Technology and Free Speech on the Roberts Court

John Roberts assumed his position as Chief Justice of the United States just prior to the commencement of the October 2005 Term of the Supreme Court. That was seven years after Google was incorporated, one year before Facebook became available to the general public, and two years before Apple released the first iPhone. The twelve years of the Roberts Court have thus been a period of constant and radical technological innovation and change, particularly in the areas of mass communication and the media. It is therefore somewhat astonishing how few of the Roberts Court’s free speech decisions touch upon new technology and technological change. Indeed, it can be argued that only two cases directly address new technology: Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association on video games, and Packingham v. North Carolina on social media. Packingham, it should be noted, is the only Roberts Court free speech case directly implicating the Internet. Even if one extends the definition of cases addressing technology (as I do), only four cases, at most, can be said to address technology and free speech. It seems inevitable that going forward, this is going to change. In particular, recent calls to regulate “fake news” and otherwise impose filtering obligations on search engines and social media companies will inevitably raise important and difficult First Amendment issues. Therefore, this is a good time to consider how the Roberts Court has to date reacted to technology and what that portends for the future. This paper examines the Roberts Court’s free speech/technology jurisprudence (as well as touching upon a few earlier cases), with a view to doing just that. The pattern that emerges is a fundamental dichotomy: some Justices are inclined to be Candides, and others to be Cassandras. Candide is the main character of Voltaire’s satire Candide, ou l’Optimisme, famous for repeating his teacher, Professor Pangloss’s mantra “all is for the best” in the “best of all possible worlds.” Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy in Greek mythology, condemned by the god Apollo to accurately prophesize disaster, but never to be believed. While not all justices fit firmly within one or the other camp, the Roberts Court is clearly divided relatively evenly between technology optimists and technology pessimists. The paper begins by analyzing the key technology/free speech decisions of the Roberts Court, and classifying the current Justices as Candides or Cassandras based on their opinions or votes in those cases. In the remainder of the paper, I offer some thoughts on two obvious questions. First, why is the Court divided between Candides and Cassandras and what qualities explain the divergence (spoiler: it is not simply partisan or political preferences). And second, what does this division portend for the future. As we shall see, my views on the first issue are consistent with, and indeed closely tied to, Greg Magarian’s analysis of Managed Speech on the Roberts Court. On the second question, I am modestly (but only modestly) optimistic that the Candides will prevail and that the Court will not respond with fear to new technology. I am, in other words, hopeful that the Court will fend off heavy handed efforts to assert state control over the Internet and social media, despite the obvious threats and concerns associated with that technology. I close by considering some possible regulatory scenarios and how the Court might respond to them

What factors influence whether politicians’ tweets are retweeted? Using CHAID to build an explanatory model of the retweeting of politicians’ tweets during the 2015 UK General Election campaign

Twitter is ever-present in British political life and many politicians use it as part of their campaign strategies. However, little is known about whether their tweets engage people, for example by being retweeted. This research addresses that gap, examining tweets sent by MPs during the 2015 UK General Election campaign to identify which were retweeted and why. A conceptual model proposes three factors which are most likely to influence retweets: the characteristics of (1) the tweet’s sender, (2) the tweet and (3) its recipients. This research focuses on the first two of these. Content and sentiment analysis are used to develop a typology of the politicians’ tweets, followed by CHAID analysis to identify the factors that best predict which tweets are retweeted. The research shows that the characteristics of tweet and its sender do influence whether the tweet is retweeted. Of the sender’s characteristics, number of followers is the most important – more followers leads to more retweets. Of the tweet characteristics, the tweet’s sentiment is the most influential. Negative tweets are retweeted more than positive or neutral tweets. Tweets attacking opponents or using fear appeals are also highly likely to be retweeted. The research makes a methodological contribution by demonstrating how CHAID models can be used to accurately predict retweets. This method has not been used to predict retweets before and has broad application to other contexts. The research also contributes to our understanding of how politicians and the public interact on Twitter, an area little studied to date, and proposes some practical recommendations regarding how MPs can improve the effectiveness of their Twitter campaigning. The finding that negative tweets are more likely to be retweeted also contributes to the ongoing debate regarding whether people are more likely to pass on positive or negative information online

Political Content And Political Behavior: Using Functional Theory To Test The Ability Of Political Content To Stimulate Political Interest

The health of the American democracy is up for debate. Digital natives will decide the future of this democracy. Fewer digital natives--those who have grown up with Internet access--are engaging in formal political participation, compared to their parents. Digital natives lack the information needed to participate. This study examined the effects of interactive political content on digital natives\u27 political information efficacy (PIE) through an experiment. The results revealed a decrease in the participants\u27 political confidence and a decrease in the likelihood they would vote. Exposure to political information harmed most digital natives\u27 PIE and reinforced political attitudes in some. The results are troubling for the future health of the American democracy. The results call attention to the need for further research on the relationship between digital natives\u27 use of new communication technologies and its effect on political participation

A fourth transformation of democracy? Liquid democracy, supra-national democracy and the fate of participation

Liquid democracy is defined as a cyber democracy that combines representative democracy and spontaneous direct democracy by using technologies of the web 2.0. In recent years, some political theorists and actors have been optimistic that liquid democracy could make a more participatory and direct democracy possible to fulfil the democratic promise of freedom and equality of the people. One could even ask if a supra-national system could become a democratic option by using digital technologies for discussions and deciding. After the historical transformations of democracy, from the Greek city state via the nation-state to a global or supra-national unit, and the second and third ones came or come with a loss of participation, there could be, according to net-optimists, a fourth and more participatory transformation of democracy. This article doubts the emancipatory and participatory potential of liquid democracy (especially for a supra-national system), and I choose the classical theoretical perspective of democracy´s ancient core elements of free and equal participation. By analysing the arguments of net-optimists the problems for participation in a political sphere are shown. The point the paper wants to make is that under the circumstances of a (digital) oligopoly-capitalism, fragmentation, and digital divide, or in short, the omnipresent influence of big social inequalities, a cyber-democracy is an unlikely ideal