Daniel Muise, David Markowitz, Byron Reeves, Nilam Ram, Thomas N. Robinson
The affordances of the smartphone are shifting individuals toward ever smaller and more fragmented units of political experience. In this piece, we make use of a novel approach to granular assessment of political exposure on smartphones, revealing an incredible level of complexity in modern political content diets, somewhat at odds with simplifying assumptions commonly made by political communication research. Based on five million screen-recording frames taken from 119 smartphones over two weeks, we find clear challenges to three common assumptions in the literature, with clear impacts on new theories about fragmented political media use: Assumption (1) unique encounters with political content can be aggregated by tabulation as though they are equivalent experiences; (2) durations of exposure to political content can be aggregated (e.g., at a monthly or daily level) without regard for how those time units are clustered at smaller timescales; and (3) singular political formats or sources (particularly the news formats and sources) are sufficient proxies for measuring and manipulating overall political content exposure. Regarding the first and second assumptions, our findings suggest that the majority of political content exposure occurs in bursts of only a few potentially-forgettable seconds, and that the remainder follow a power-law curve that reemerges across apps and individuals, with extreme variability within and across individuals. Regarding the third assumption, we find the vast majority of political content is encountered from formats and sources other than news and social media. We articulate how these results fit within and augment literature focused on political content exposure.
{"title":"(Mis)measurement of Political Content Exposure within the Smartphone Ecosystem","authors":"Daniel Muise, David Markowitz, Byron Reeves, Nilam Ram, Thomas N. Robinson","doi":"10.51685/jqd.2024.015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2024.015","url":null,"abstract":"The affordances of the smartphone are shifting individuals toward ever smaller and more fragmented units of political experience. In this piece, we make use of a novel approach to granular assessment of political exposure on smartphones, revealing an incredible level of complexity in modern political content diets, somewhat at odds with simplifying assumptions commonly made by political communication research. Based on five million screen-recording frames taken from 119 smartphones over two weeks, we find clear challenges to three common assumptions in the literature, with clear impacts on new theories about fragmented political media use: Assumption (1) unique encounters with political content can be aggregated by tabulation as though they are equivalent experiences; (2) durations of exposure to political content can be aggregated (e.g., at a monthly or daily level) without regard for how those time units are clustered at smaller timescales; and (3) singular political formats or sources (particularly the news formats and sources) are sufficient proxies for measuring and manipulating overall political content exposure. Regarding the first and second assumptions, our findings suggest that the majority of political content exposure occurs in bursts of only a few potentially-forgettable seconds, and that the remainder follow a power-law curve that reemerges across apps and individuals, with extreme variability within and across individuals. Regarding the third assumption, we find the vast majority of political content is encountered from formats and sources other than news and social media. We articulate how these results fit within and augment literature focused on political content exposure.","PeriodicalId":509803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media","volume":"35 14","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141660376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bin Chen, Porsmita Borah, Ross Dahlke, Josephine Lukito
Despite its proven pervasiveness and effectiveness, the role of email in political campaigns has been understudied. In this article, we seek to understand the use of emails by Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's campaigns during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Employing newly collected email data (N = 4051), we compared how the two campaign teams differ in the use of appeals in their emails, and the functions of the message (e.g., attack, acclaim). We found that, while both campaigns used emails primarily for fundraising, Trump's campaign (compared to Biden’s campaign) was more likely to use all of the four appeals we defined — material, solidarity, ideology, and issue appeals. We also found that by sending emails, Biden's campaign tends to acclaim itself more while Trump's campaign attacks opponents more.
{"title":"Battle for Inbox and Bucks","authors":"Bin Chen, Porsmita Borah, Ross Dahlke, Josephine Lukito","doi":"10.51685/jqd.2024.012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2024.012","url":null,"abstract":"Despite its proven pervasiveness and effectiveness, the role of email in political campaigns has been understudied. In this article, we seek to understand the use of emails by Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's campaigns during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Employing newly collected email data (N = 4051), we compared how the two campaign teams differ in the use of appeals in their emails, and the functions of the message (e.g., attack, acclaim). We found that, while both campaigns used emails primarily for fundraising, Trump's campaign (compared to Biden’s campaign) was more likely to use all of the four appeals we defined — material, solidarity, ideology, and issue appeals. We also found that by sending emails, Biden's campaign tends to acclaim itself more while Trump's campaign attacks opponents more.","PeriodicalId":509803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media","volume":"40 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141270042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Soyeon Jin, Jan Zilinsky, Franziska Pradel, Yannis Theocharis
Using an original survey covering 17 countries, this paper documents the prevalence of beliefs in conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 pandemic and characterizes the informational, demographic, and trust profiles of individuals who believe them. There is considerable variation across countries in the level of conspiracy beliefs, with people in a set of countries like Romania, Poland, Greece, and Hungary being relatively more susceptible than respondents in Northern Europe. We find several factors are correlated with conspiracy beliefs across countries. Relative to respondents who do not read news on social media, social media users tend to endorse more conspiracies, and this is the case for Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube users in particular. We also observe a link between distrust in medical experts or government and endorsement of conspiracy theories in most countries. In a subset of countries, we also find individuals with medium level of education and those who are younger to believe in a higher number of conspiracy theories.
{"title":"Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Online News Consumption during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Soyeon Jin, Jan Zilinsky, Franziska Pradel, Yannis Theocharis","doi":"10.51685/jqd.2024.008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2024.008","url":null,"abstract":"Using an original survey covering 17 countries, this paper documents the prevalence of beliefs in conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 pandemic and characterizes the informational, demographic, and trust profiles of individuals who believe them. There is considerable variation across countries in the level of conspiracy beliefs, with people in a set of countries like Romania, Poland, Greece, and Hungary being relatively more susceptible than respondents in Northern Europe. We find several factors are correlated with conspiracy beliefs across countries. Relative to respondents who do not read news on social media, social media users tend to endorse more conspiracies, and this is the case for Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube users in particular. We also observe a link between distrust in medical experts or government and endorsement of conspiracy theories in most countries. In a subset of countries, we also find individuals with medium level of education and those who are younger to believe in a higher number of conspiracy theories. ","PeriodicalId":509803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140247660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While a series of case studies have provided useful insights into the political uses of Twitter, scholars have pointed to the necessity for longitudinal and cross-country findings in order to further our understanding of social media use in this regard. The study at hand presents a comparative analysis of Scandinavian political party communication on Twitter. Adopting a longitudinal approach, the study details the full histories of party Twitter accounts from Denmark, Norway and Sweden in order to provide overarching, structural insights into how the studied political parties have made use of Twitter – but also how their potential voters have chosen to engage with the tweets posted by the parties. While Twitter once was described as integral for political campaigning and indeed for the hybrid media systems in these countries, the results indicate an overall declining trend when it comes to use - albeit an increase of what could be considered as less demanding types of use for parties and citizens alike. Implications and opportunities for further research are discussed.
{"title":"Death of a Platform?","authors":"Anders Olof Larsson","doi":"10.51685/jqd.2024.006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2024.006","url":null,"abstract":"While a series of case studies have provided useful insights into the political uses of Twitter, scholars have pointed to the necessity for longitudinal and cross-country findings in order to further our understanding of social media use in this regard. The study at hand presents a comparative analysis of Scandinavian political party communication on Twitter. Adopting a longitudinal approach, the study details the full histories of party Twitter accounts from Denmark, Norway and Sweden in order to provide overarching, structural insights into how the studied political parties have made use of Twitter – but also how their potential voters have chosen to engage with the tweets posted by the parties. While Twitter once was described as integral for political campaigning and indeed for the hybrid media systems in these countries, the results indicate an overall declining trend when it comes to use - albeit an increase of what could be considered as less demanding types of use for parties and citizens alike. Implications and opportunities for further research are discussed.","PeriodicalId":509803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media","volume":"38 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139530961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wei Zhong, C. Bailard, David Broniatowski, Rebekah Tromble
Utilizing an original data set of public Telegram channels affiliated with a right-wing extremist group, the Proud Boys, we conduct an exploratory analysis of the structure and nature of the group’s presence on the platform. Our study considers the group’s growth, organizational structure, connectedness with other far-right and/or fringe factions, and the range of topics discussed on this alternative social media platform. The findings show that the Proud Boys have a notable presence on Telegram, with a discernable spike in activity coinciding with Facebook’s and Instagram’s 2018 deplatforming of associated pages and profiles with this and other extremist groups. Another sharp increase in activity is then precipitated by the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. By February 2022, we identified 92 public Telegram channels explicitly affiliated with the Proud Boys, which constitute the core of a well-connected network with 131,953 subscribers. These channels, primarily from the United States, also include international presences in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, and Germany. Our data reveals substantial interaction between the Proud Boys and other fringe and/or far-right communities on Telegram, including MAGA Trumpists, QAnon, COVID-19-related misinformation, and white-supremacist communities. Content analyses of this network highlights several prominent and recurring themes, including opposition to feminism and liberals, skepticism toward official information sources, and propagation of various conspiracy beliefs. This study offers the first systematic examination of the Proud Boys on Telegram, illuminating how a far-right extremist group leverages the latitude afforded by a relatively unregulated alternative social media platform.
{"title":"Proud Boys on Telegram","authors":"Wei Zhong, C. Bailard, David Broniatowski, Rebekah Tromble","doi":"10.51685/jqd.2024.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2024.003","url":null,"abstract":"Utilizing an original data set of public Telegram channels affiliated with a right-wing extremist group, the Proud Boys, we conduct an exploratory analysis of the structure and nature of the group’s presence on the platform. Our study considers the group’s growth, organizational structure, connectedness with other far-right and/or fringe factions, and the range of topics discussed on this alternative social media platform. The findings show that the Proud Boys have a notable presence on Telegram, with a discernable spike in activity coinciding with Facebook’s and Instagram’s 2018 deplatforming of associated pages and profiles with this and other extremist groups. Another sharp increase in activity is then precipitated by the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. By February 2022, we identified 92 public Telegram channels explicitly affiliated with the Proud Boys, which constitute the core of a well-connected network with 131,953 subscribers. These channels, primarily from the United States, also include international presences in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, and Germany. Our data reveals substantial\u0000interaction between the Proud Boys and other fringe and/or far-right communities on Telegram, including MAGA Trumpists, QAnon, COVID-19-related misinformation, and white-supremacist communities. Content analyses of this network highlights several prominent and recurring themes, including opposition to feminism and liberals, skepticism toward official information sources, and propagation of various conspiracy beliefs. This study offers the first systematic examination of the Proud Boys on Telegram, illuminating how a far-right extremist group leverages the latitude afforded by a relatively unregulated alternative social media platform.","PeriodicalId":509803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media","volume":"54 19","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139447561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：