Toxic speech and limited demand for content moderation on social media

When is speech on social media toxic enough to warrant content moderation? Platforms impose limits on what can be posted online, but also rely on users’ reports of potentially harmful content. Yet we know little about what users consider inadmissible to public discourse and what measures they wish to see implemented. Building on past work, we conceptualize three variants of toxic speech: incivility, intolerance, and violent threats. We present results from two studies with pre-registered randomized experiments (Study 1, N = 5,130; Study 2, N = 3,734) to examine how these variants causally affect users’ content moderation preferences. We find that while both the severity of toxicity and the target of the attack matter, the demand for content moderation of toxic speech is limited. We discuss implications for the study of toxicity and content moderation as an emerging area of research in political science with critical implications for platforms, policymakers, and democracy more broadly

Social media and political communication in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament

Social media play an increasingly important part in the communication strategies of political campaigns by reflecting information about the policy preferences and opinions of political actors and their public followers. In addition, the content of the messages provides rich information about the political issues and the framing of those issues during elections, such as whether contested issues concern Europe or rather extend pre-existing national debates. In this study, we survey the European landscape of social media using tweets originating from and referring to political actors during the 2014 European Parliament election campaign. We describe the language and national distribution of the messages, the relative volume of different types of communications, and the factors that determine the adoption and use of social media by the candidates. We also analyze the dynamics of the volume and content of the communications over the duration of the campaign with reference to both the EU integration dimension of the debate and the prominence of the most visible list-leading candidates. Our findings indicate that the lead candidates and their televised debate had a prominent influence on the volume and content of communications, and that the content and emotional tone of communications more reflects preferences along the EU dimension of political contestation rather than classic national issues relating to left-right differences

Civil Society in Times of Crisis: Understanding Collective Action Dynamics in Digitally-Enabled Volunteer Networks

Social media play an important role in political mobilization. Voluntary engagement can especially benefit from new opportunities for organizing collective action. Although research has explored the use of Twitter by decentralized individuals for this, there has been little emphasis on its use for community engagement and the provision of public goods. Even less is known about its role in the emergence and offline expansion of spontaneous self-organized solidarity initiatives. This paper investigates how networked communication facilitates self-organization and the development of ties in a network of volunteers in Greece. To examine whether initiative-specific community feelings that can transcend online-offlsine divides evolve in such hybrid networks, the analysis is complemented with individual-level data drawn from a survey with the initiative's volunteers

From seeing the writing on the wall, to getting together for a bowl: direct and compensating effects of Facebook use on offline associational membership

Research concerned with a decline of associational involvement has examined whether the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, may reinvigorate or crowd out involvement in civil society. Yet, previous studies have not systematically investigated possible effects of Facebook use on associational membership. We posit that the effects of Facebook use are twofold: Facebook stimulates associational membership directly through its inherent networking features and indirectly by compensating for the lack of traditional mobilizing factors, such as social trust and internal efficacy. Relying on a probabilistic sample of German participants aged 18-49, our findings show that Facebook users are more likely to be members of voluntary associations and that Facebook use increases the likelihood of associational membership even for individuals with low levels of social trust and internal efficacy. Instead of crowding out offline associational involvement, Facebook use stimulates membership in voluntary associations, thus contributing to the vitality of civil society

Navigating high-choice European political information environments : a comparative analysis of news user profiles and political knowledge

The transition from low- to high-choice media environments has had far-reaching implications for citizens’ media use and its relationship with political knowledge. However, there is still a lack of comparative research on how citizens combine the usage of different media and how that is related to political knowledge. To fill this void, we use a unique cross-national survey about the online and offline media use habits of more than 28,000 individuals in 17 European countries. Our aim is to (i) profile different types of news consumers and (ii) understand how each user profile is linked to political knowledge acquisition. Our results show that five user profiles – news minimalists, social media news users, traditionalists, online news seekers, and hyper news consumers – can be identified, although the prevalence of these profiles varies across countries. Findings further show that both traditional and online-based news diets are correlated with higher political knowledge. However, online-based news use is more widespread in Southern Europe, where it is associated with lower levels of political knowledge than in Northern Europe. By focusing on news audiences, this study provides a comprehensive and fine-grained analysis of how contemporary European political information environments perform and contribute to an informed citizenry

Every crisis is a digital opportunity : the Aganaktismenoi movement’s use of social media and the emergence of networked solidarity in Greece

Please note that this is a preliminary draft and thus still subject to chang

Can digital media help build social capital and strengthen civil society? The rise of networked solidarity in Greece

Vortrag von Dr. Yannis Theocharis (Research Fellow und Projektleiter am Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung, Universität Mannheim) im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung 2015/16 "Tauschen, teilen, tricksen - andere Formen des Wirtschaftens" vom 14. Januar 2016

Cuts, Tweets, Solidarity and Mobilisation: How the Internet Shaped the Student Occupations

After the UK government announced cuts to higher education and an increase in the tuition fee cap, thousands of students across the country used new media tools to organise peaceful protests at over 35 universities. Although extensive theoretical frameworks about online mobilisation and political action are available, we know very little about how these new informational tools are used in practice. This article provides an overview of the increasingly influential role of the internet in youth politics. Using the case study of the student occupations, it assesses the role of a variety of online tools and methods that were used to coordinate and mobilise young people. The study reveals the extensive use of old and new online platforms and hardware, and the constant blending of offline and online repertoires of participation, which have facilitated a novel way of organising political action. It argues that the student protests were important in demonstrating the potential of new media for political mobilisation, stresses the need to better understand the role of digital tools in political activism and suggests avenues for further research