The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election

The present study argues that political communication on social media is mediated by a platform's digital architecture, defined as the technical protocols that enable, constrain, and shape user behavior in a virtual space. A framework for understanding digital architectures is introduced, and four platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat) are compared along the typology. Using the 2016 US election as a case, interviews with three Republican digital strategists are combined with social media data to qualify the studyies theoretical claim that a platform's network structure, functionality, algorithmic filtering, and datafication model affect political campaign strategy on social media

Gamification in Politics

Although gamification is a popular term, the concept has rarely been applied to political studies. Therefore, this chapter provides an overview of the key features of gamification and offers an adapted definition of gamification suited to the study of electoral politics. To help illustrate this definition, two examples of gamification from recent campaigns are discussed: the uCampaign mobile application and contests promoted on social media. In concluding, I suggest theoretical and methodological approaches to study gamification in politics moving forward

Cultural racism without race : an exploratory insight into the discrimination and self-perception of the Sweden Democrats

This study presents a fresh, humanistic perspective into the worldview of a rarely studied group: The Sweden Democrats. Having entered the Swedish Parliament in 2010, the Sweden Democrats are a controversial nationalist-populist party, and they are currently the only major party in Sweden rejecting the country’s famed multiculturalism model. The Sweden Democrats, and other Swedes who are openly critical of their country’s immigration and multiculturalism policies, are often stigmatized as ‘racists’ by a number of actors across Swedish society. This essay interprets such stigmatization, as well as other processes of exclusion, as forms of discrimination. Through analyzing the first-hand experiences of these ‘immigration-critical’ Swedes, this study explores who they perceive as actors of discrimination, as well as the specific processes through which these actors enact discrimination. By adopting theoretical and methodological approaches from previous studies of ‘cultural racism’ while avoiding appeals to ‘race’, this paper posits the existence of a ‘cultural racism without race’ in Sweden towards those holding an ‘immigration-critical’ standpoint. The term posited for this relatively unexplored form of discrimination is ‘intra-cultural ethnicism,’ where interpretations of national identity and one’s role in the world take center stage. This study contends that opposing interpretations of ‘Swedishness’ by the two groups lead to incongruous ‘parallel subjective realities’, hindering effective public debate on Sweden’s immigration policies. The study offers an exploratory first step towards understanding how immigration-critical Swedes perceive themselves in relation to their social context. The underlying motivation is that the subjective reality constructions of these Swedes, and those of nationalist-populist party sympathizers in other countries, must be understood and addressed before they are to be merely stigmatized. In the case of Sweden, bridging the gap between the incongruous ‘parallel realities’ of the pro-multiculturalist and immigration-critical Swedes is a necessary condition for effective debate on issues of immigration and multiculturalism

Antisemitism on Social Media Platforms : Placing the Problem into Perspective

This chapter provides a survey of the existing quantitative research on antisemitism and social media. Through doing so, it argues that the sheer quantity of antisemitism on social media is much less than commonly perceived. In addition, the chapter argues that quantitative research often neglects counter-narratives calling out antisemitism, which are an important counterpoint to include in antisemitism research on social media. Then, the chapter discusses how specific components of platform design help explain why antisemitism is likely to surface on some plaftforms but not others. Through this theoretical lens, the chapter compares the design of major social media platforms to online forums. The comparison highlights why memes typically originate in online forums and then are pushed towards more public and mainstream social media platforms. Ultimately, the chapter argues that future research on antisemitism and social media should approach studying antisemitic content across online spaces, with specific attention to the effects of such content on users’ potential for radicalization

FBAdLibrarian and Pykognition: open science tools for the collection and emotion detection of images in Facebook political ads with computer vision

We present a methodological workflow using two open science tools that we developed. The first, FBAdLibrian, collects images from the Facebook Ad Library. The second, Pykognition, simplifies facial and emotion detection in images using computer vision. We provide a methodological workflow for using these tools and apply them to a case study of the 2020 US primary elections. We find that unique images of campaigning candidates are only a fraction (<.1%) of overall ads. Furthermore, we find that candidates most often display happiness and calm in their facial displays, and they rarely attack opponents in image-based ads from their official Facebook pages. When candidates do attack, opponents are portrayed as displaying emotions such as anger, sadness, and fear

Introduction: Populism in the 21st Century: Critical reflections on a global phenomenon

Introductio

Analyzing Citizen Engagement With European Politics on Social Media

Contributions in this thematic issue focus explicitly on citizens and their online engagement with European politics. For social media research in the European Union, citizens remain an understudied actor type in comparison with political elites or news organizations. The reason, we argue, is four key challenges facing social media research in the European Union: legal, ethical, technical, and cultural. To introduce this thematic issue, we outline these four challenges and illustrate how they relate to each contribution. Given that these challenges are unlikely to dissipate, we stress the need for open dialogue about them. A key part of that involves contextualizing research findings within the constraints in which they are produced. Despite these challenges, the contributions showcase that a theoretical and empirical focus on citizens’ social media activity can illuminate key insights into vitally important topics for contemporary Europe. These include civic participation, institutional communication, media consumption, gender inequality, and populism