Social Media, Opinion Polls, and the Use of Persuasive Messages During the 2016 US Election Primaries

Political campaigns’ use of digital technologies has been a topic of scholarly concern for over two decades, but most studies have been focused on analyzing the use of digital platforms without considering contextual factors of the race, like public opinion polls. Opinion polls are an important information source for citizens and candidates and provide the latter with information that might drive strategic communication. In this article, we explore the relationship between the use of social media in the 2016 US presidential elections and candidates’ standing in public opinion polls, focusing on the surfacing and primary stages of the campaign. We use automated content analysis to categorize social media posts from all 21 Republican and Democratic candidates. Results indicate that a candidate’s performance in the polls drives certain communicative strategies, such as the use of messages of attacks and advocacy, as well as the focus on personal image

Opposing Power

Opposing Power argues that perceptions of regime vulnerability and mutual dependency by opposition elites shape the building of opposition alliances. When electoral autocracies are consistently dominant, opposition parties eschew fully fledged alliances. At best, they allocate only one candidate to contest against the incumbent in each subnational electoral district to avoid splitting the opposition vote. However, when multiple regime-debilitating events strike within a short period of time, thus pushing an incumbent to the precipice of power, opposition elites expect victory, accepting costly compromises to build alliances and seize power. Opposing Power shows how oppositions build these alliances through case study comparisons in East and Southeast Asia—between the Philippines and South Korea in the late 1980s, and between Malaysia and Singapore from 1965 to 2020

Border Crossings and Transnational Movements in Sandra Cisneros’ Spatial Narratives Offer Alternatives to Dominant Discourse

My study aims to reveal how ideologies, the way we perceive our world, what we believe, and our value judgments inextricably linked to a dominant discourse, have real and material consequences. In addition to explicating how these ideologies stem from a Western philosophical tradition, this thesis examines this thought-system alongside selections from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and Caramelo or Puro Cuento. My project reveals how Cisneros’ spatial narratives challenge ideologies concerning the border separating the United States and Mexico, which proves significant as the project of decolonization and understanding of identity formation is fundamentally tied to these geographical spaces. Through the main chapters in this thesis, it is proposed that Cisneros’ storytelling does not attempt to counter fixed ideas of spaces and identity or an alleged objective Truth and single History by presenting a true or better version, but offers alternative narratives as a form of resistance to dominant discourse

Partisan narratives on the 2016 US presidential election: a critical geopolitical analysis of Russian interference

As the Cold War drew to a close, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck coined the concept of reflexive modernization to describe the structural risks inadvertently produced by modernity’s progress. Through the approach of critical geopolitics, such risks radically began to transform traditional understanding of space and territory, allegedly deterritorializing traditional spatial structures, such as nation-states. However, scholars maintain that the process of reterritorialization, defined as the “inscription of new boundaries” reattaching space to “newly imagined visions of state, territory, and community,” cyclically follow deterritorialization (Albert 1991, 61; Ó Tuathail 1996, 230). Nevertheless, few scholars in the field of International Relations (IR), have seriously analyzed the process of reterritorialization. However, following the 2016 US presidential election, popular discourse in the US on Russian interference appeared to reterritorialize previously deterritorialized space, such as cyber and information space, by likening Russian hacks, leaks and collusion to the violation of the sovereign territory of the US. Thus, this thesis aims to research how US popular discourse reterritorializes Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, while comparing and contrasting the partisan narratives constructed in light of the political polarization of the US in recent years. To achieve this goal, a discourse analysis is conducted on storylines from 30 online news articles, from three right-wing and three left-wing media outlets. As hypothesized, the analysis confirms that both partisan narratives reterritorialize previously deterritorialized risks associated with reflexive modernization, transcribe the storylines into traditional US geopolitical culture, and call for assertive measures towards Russia which violated US territory, as well as towards internal Others, which weakened US territory.http://www.ester.ee/record=b5147583*es

Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics

Today, political leaders and candidates for office must campaign in a multimedia world through traditional forums—newspapers, radio, and television—as well as new digital media, particularly social media. Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics chronicles how Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes are used successfully and unsuccessfully to influence elections. Each of these platforms have different affordances and reach various audiences in different ways. Campaigns often have to wage different campaigns on each of these mediums. In some instances, they are crucial in altering coverage in the mainstream media. In others, digital media remains underutilized and undeveloped. As has always been the case in politics, outcomes that depend on economic and social conditions often dictate people’s readiness for certain messages. However, the method and content of those messages has changed with great consequences for the health and future of democracy. This book answers several questions: How do candidates/parties reach audiences that are preoccupied, inattentive, amorphous, and bombarded with so many other messages? How do they cope with the speed of media reporting in a continuous news cycle that demands instantaneous responses? How has media fragmentation altered the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and general campaign discourse? Finally and most critically, what does this mean for how democracies function

A political ecology of bauxite extraction at Atewa Forest, Ghana

In 2018, Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo announced “My government is going to implement an alternative financing module to leverage our bauxite reserves, in particular to finance major infrastructure programs across Ghana. This will probably be the largest infrastructure program in Ghana’s history without any addition to Ghana’s debt stock” (Akufo-Addo 2018). In the same year, the government signed a deal with the Chinese state firm Sinohydro in the form of a resource-backed loan with bauxite as collateral. Ghana’s president highlighted the opportunity to develop an integrated bauxite-aluminum industry and stimulate nationwide industrialisation. Due to the lack of transparency and environmental concerns, however, the Sinohydro deal has increased a growing movement against bauxite mining in Ghana, especially in the Atewa Forest Reserve, which is not only a possible mining site, but also a protected biodiversity hotspot. I analyse this dispute from a political ecology perspective. Political ecology examines the political dynamics surrounding material and discursive struggles over the environment. Additionally, political ecologists acknowledge that resources are relational assemblages which are in a constant state of becoming. In this regard, ecology is always political. During three fieldtrips in March 2018, 2019 and 2020, I observed this conflict with the empirical goal to contextualise it. The dynamics, actors and subjects of conflict are related to a variety of factors. Social environmental movements and disputes emerge at certain historical points, specifically in geographical and cultural contexts. Moreover, as I argue, they emerge as a specific set of relationships between structures, institutions, agency and narratives. Therefore, my empirical goal is to contextualise the dispute over the Atewa Forest and analyse how the bauxite reserves at Atewa Forest were and are politicised. For this empirical part, I refer to the framework provided by Dietz and Engels (2020) which examines structure, agency, institutions and narratives. This is done alongside actor-mapping, in order to identify key actors in this conflict. I demonstrate herein that the Ghanaian government is under a lot of pressure, not only from local NGOs, but also from international NGOs, intellectuals (or actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio) and major manufacturing companies that oppose mining in the Atewa Forest. In addition, Ghana has to meet the loan obligations of the Sinohydro deal, and it is yet to build any refineries. Second, as part of my theoretical-conceptual goal, I argue to adapt temporalities to a political ecology of resource extraction. This involves temporalities of resources, temporality surrounding resource extraction and time as a political strategy. Activists have for example urged for a decision to act immediately, but simultaneously they have tried to delay the mining project. By coupling the protection of the forest with global climate discourses, NGOs point out that in times of environmental crisis, it is essential that the forest is protected. They push this agenda forward via open letters, protests and social media campaigns. On the other hand, the delay they hereby produce gives rising attention to this topic. Additionally, by building more pressure, it makes mining at Atewa Forest unattractive to investors who cannot afford any delays. On the contrary, the government promotes imaginaries of future growth, jobs and prosperity. Creating such a historical momentum suggests that now is the right time to solve a long-lasting problem and to decouple seemingly fast economic benefits from long-term environmental pollution. With the theoretical notions of becoming and temporalities in mind, an empirical contextualisation helps attain a detailed understanding on how nature is politicised. The decision to mine bauxite at Atewa Forest is not a given, or logical, per se. For a political ecologist, decisions are inherently political and therefore the result of power asymmetries. Meanwhile, as a result of the always recurring discussions on bauxite mining at Atewa Forest, the building of an extractive industry with its facilities and infrastructure, connected with the promise of fast and rapid industrialisation and prosperity, the forest is – at least currently – still standing

UNNATURAL DIVIDES: A CASE STUDY OF THE NY-24 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION IN 2018

Progress on environmental issues in the U.S. relies on governmental action. However, our partisan political system currently produces intense divides and debate, stalling progress on environmental protections. This project explores how this trend emerged in the 2018 congressional midterm election in the NY-24 district. Through semi-structured interviews with politically active people in the NY-24 district, an intimate understanding of the connections drawn between political subjectivity and environmental values reveals that while conservation is not unimportant, it is not a key or defining issue for many voters in the election. A content analysis of election coverage from local newspapers supports this idea, as the environment was a prevalent issue but far from the predominant issue in the coverage. The conclusions of this thesis demonstrate that a shift in framing the environment on behalf of politicians, the media, and environmentalists is necessary to bring focus and true change for environmental problems

Through the looking glass: leader personhood and the intersubjective construction of institutions

Institutions have been mainly understood in a dualistic way: as abstract, macro cultural logics, or as inhabited socio-cultural sites. This form of dualism divided people into cognitive cultural dopes or persons with a heart. Scholars are now trying to overcome dualistic modes of thinking about people in institutions, through the consideration of the persons as whole human beings. In this new theoretical approach, it is crucial to understand how institutions frame individual action and how individuals shape institutions. We study this duality by considering the lived experience of Colombia’s presidential transition period from Uribe to Santos in the decade of the 2010s

Chalking as disruption and dialogue: a practical exploration of a rhetorical ecology at a southern, rural college

In this thesis, I explore how an informal form of discourse like sidewalk chalking functions as and within a rhetorical ecology, how ideas and texts circulate within such a complex system, and how this sometimes disruptive medium affects the potential for productive dialogue. By applying Margaret Syverson's four principles of rhetorical ecologies (distribution, embodiment, emergence, and enaction), we learn that chalking is an interconnected but informal system of sidewalk-based communication that uses playground chalk for writing or drawing messages, from art to insults, event notices to poetry, protests to love notes. It is a complex, dynamic system that includes other writers, other ideas, other texts, and other overlapping, entangled ecologies of the physical, social, historical, and cultural worlds we live in. Chalking is both social and material, and by mapping the interactions of and relationships between its human and nonhuman actors, we can explore the blurred boundaries of its rhetorical ecology and examine the disruptive potential within that ecology. Furthermore, we can uncover its practical uses: chalking can serve as visual rhetoric that can be studied in the composition classroom, connect students with the "real" world outside the classroom, and encourage them to engage in productive discourse. More broadly, informal discourse, however mundane it may seem, can guide or influence public rhetorics in often surprising, meaningful ways

Democracy and the Media: The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research, Volume 7

Volume 7 of The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research series focuses on the relationship between democracy and the media. Using the extensive collection of the C-SPAN Video Library, chapters cover Trump political rallies, congressional references of late-night comedy, responses of African American congresswomen to COVID-19 bills, and congressional attacks on the media through floor speeches in the House of Representatives and Senate. The C-SPAN Video Library is unique because there is no other research collection that is based on video research of contemporary politics. Methodologically distinctive, much of the research uses new techniques to analyze video, text, and spoken words of political leaders. No other book examines such a wide range of topics―from immigration to climate change to race relations―using video as the basis for research