Michael J. Jensen

Civil Society and Cyber Society: The Role of the Internet in Community Associations and Democratic Politics

A healthy civil society has long been held as vital to a healthy democracy and there is interest in whether the Internet affects this linkage. This paper explores the relationships between offline and online modes of associational life and also analyzes offline and online interactions with local governments in the US context. Based on our empirical analyses of 1,203 respondents, we show that online participation is not simply an extension of offline participation, but can be distinguished in important ways. First, we find that political and community-oriented engagements cluster separately from more private-regarding engagements. Second, participants of online democratic engagement are not characterized by the SES markers associated with offline democratic engagement who are older, have higher incomes, and have lived in the community longer. Finally, we find significant links between democratic engagement with the political system and involvement with political associations (but not social and community-oriented associations).

Occupy Wall Street: A New Political Form of Movement and Community?

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the political form of Occupy Wall Street on Twitter. Drawing on evidence contained within the profiles of over 50,000 Twitter users, political identities of participants are characterized using natural language processing. The results find evidence of a traditional oppositional social movement alongside a legitimizing countermovement, but also a new notion of political community as an ensemble of discursive practices that are endogenous to the constitution of political regimes from the “inside out.” These new political identities are bound by thin ties of political solidarity linked to the transformative capacities of the movement rather than thick ties of social solidarity.

Psephological investigations: Tweets, votes, and unknown unknowns in the republican nomination process

This paper analyzes the utility of using information contained within Twitter posts in predicting electoral outcomes. Particularly, we are interested in patterns in Twitter communications that can help explain differences between published opinion polls and the actual vote. We consider three categories of models. The first is a mentions model that examines the correspondence between the prevalence of communications about a candidate and electoral outcomes. The second series of models treat Twitter similar to a prediction market, aggregating not candidate preferences but predictions of the electoral result. Last, we consider whether the rediffusion of tweets about a candidate is a reliable predictor of the candidates performance. The results find inconsistent support for the predictive value of Twitter mentions as an estimate of the overall vote, but these communications provide some evidence of otherwise undetected shifts in momentum with respect to the aggregated predictions of candidate performance and message rediffusion via retweets containing information about a particular candidate. Given the nature of the information extractable, these data are most sensitive to detecting changes in momentum.

Social Media and Political Campaigning: Changing Terms of Engagement?

This paper develops a way for analyzing the structure of campaign communications within Twitter. The structure of communication affordances creates opportunities for a horizontal organization power within Twitter interactions. However, one cannot infer the structure of interactions as they materialize from the formal properties of the technical environment in which the communications occur. Consequently, the paper identifies three categories of empowering communication operations that can occur on Twitter: Campaigns can respond to others, campaigns can retweet others, and campaigns can call for others to become involved in the campaign on their own terms. The paper operationalizes these categories in the context of the 2015 U.K. general election. To determine whether Twitter is used to empower laypersons, the profiles of each account retweeted and replied to were retrieved and analyzed using natural language processing to identify whether an account is from a political figure, member of the media, or some other public figure. In addition, tweets and retweets are compared with respect to the manner key election issues are discussed. The findings indicate that empowering uses of Twitter are fairly marginal, and retweets use almost identical policy language as the original campaign tweets.

Campaigns and Social Media Communications: A Look at Digital Campaigning in the 2010 U.K. General Election

Social media are said to have the potential to transform relationships between political parties, candidates, and citizens. This chapter is a study of social media use at different levels in the 2010 United Kingdom general election to see to what extent that potential is realized. The research compares the use of Twitter by the national level of the campaign, composed of the three major parties, and their leaders, as well as the campaigns of the three major parties across the nine electoral districts in Englands second city, Birmingham. It examines the candidates and parties’ that various informational and engagement strategies at the national and Birmingham levels of the campaign with respect to their campaign functions. The analysis is carried out using natural language processing to computerize the content analysis. The findings reveal that social media are used at both levels, primarily for the undirectional transfer of information rather than for engagement. However, at the Birmingham level of the campaign there appears to be significantly greater emphasis on the creation of personal connections between candidates and the public than at the national level of the campaign. This suggests that lower profile candidates use social media in a compensatory manner, offsetting their limited media coverage which voters typically rely on in getting to know the candidates.

Digitally networked movements as problematization and politicization

ABSTRACT This paper develops the concepts of politicization and problematization using two case studies from Spain. Politicization involves the process of interest articulation and demands for identity recognition whereas problematization concerns placing into question and taking action with respect to otherwise naturalized aspects of politics and society. These concepts are studied in the context of a demonstration by the Indignados as well as a general strike in Spain. The data analysis involves the collection and analysis of tweets produced in relation to both demonstrations using natural language processing. The results indicate a higher degree of calls for problematization during the Indiginados protest whereas there is more evidence of politicization during the general strike. These communications suggest that each movement engages politics on different terms with the Indignados embracing more of a problematization discourse centred on taking action and operating from within the political system whereas the unions have engaged in more of a politicization discourse aimed at petitioning political elites from outsize the political system and eschewing political action themselves.

Populism and Connectivism: An Analysis of the Sanders and Trump Nomination Campaigns

This paper is an analysis of the Trump and Sanders’ campaigns for the presidential nomination of their respective parties. It studies the structure of the relationship between the campaign and its supporters through communication on each candidate’s Facebook page. While both campaigns have been termed populist, we differentiate populism from connectivism and develop an account of a connective campaign as a species of connective action. Whereas populism is predicated on a singular people, connectivity involves the acceptance and recognition of difference as a resource for political activity. Whereas populism involves a hierarchical authority relationship, connectivity is based on a reciprocal authority relationship. Finally, populism articulates an anti-establishment demand while connective campaigns demand for citizens to have the capacity for consequential engagement with political life. The empirical results demonstrate that connectivism and populism are distinct in practice and that these attributes hang together as two separate concepts. Further, we find that Trump’s campaign communications emphasize populist themes, for Sanders such themes are limited and in the shadow of connectivism.

Conclusion: Voting Advice Applications, Information, and Democracy

Though the origins of VAAs developed from a normative social choice account of democracy as a contest between competing packages of policies that rational, egocentric utility maximizers choose between, the evidence presented in this volume suggests their effects are more transformative. Political life has become increasingly digitized. Paradoxically, there is more information available to voters than ever before, but this increases the incentives for voters to be rationally ignorant given the high information costs involved in evaluating competing claims made by parties and candidates.