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Social media campaigning is increasingly linked with anti-democratic outcomes, with concerns to date centring on paid adverts, rather than organic content produced by a new set of online political influencers. This study systematically compares voter exposure to these new campaign actors with candidate-sponsored ads, as well as established and alternative news sources during the US 2020 presidential election. Specifically, we examine how far higher exposure to these sources is linked with key trends identified in the democratic deconsolidation thesis. We use data from a national YouGov survey designed to measure digital campaign exposure to test our hypotheses. Findings show that while higher exposure to online political influencers is linked to more extremist opinions, followers are not disengaging from conventional politics. Exposure to paid political ads, however, is confirmed as a potential source of growing distrust in political institutions.
The EU Digital Service Acts signals a move away from self-regulation towards co-regulation of social media platforms within the European Union. To address online harms and rising platform power the DSA clarifies responsibilities of platforms and outlines a new technology regulatory framework to increase oversight. One key oversight instrument constitutes Article 40 of the DSA, which lays out data access for vetted researchers, who add value to regulators and the broader public as creators of knowledge, educators, advisors, innovators, and watchdogs. Currently, the EU Commission and national governments make important decisions regarding Digital Service Coordinators (DSCs) that play a key role in implementation. Based on expertise on European public administration and political science we lay out key challenges and success factors of DSCs that will play a role in promoting successful cooperation between DSCs and researchers. We provide three recommendations: First, we recommend to strengthen transfer of scientific knowledge into policy-making by processing publicly accessible publications within public administrative bodies. To this end, capacities of DSCs need to be increased. In addition, we also point towards the database of vetted researchers collected by the Board of DSCs as important resource in order to strengthen knowledge transfer. Second, the DSC network requires agile institutions with fast response time in order to enable researchers to play a constructive role in implementation. This also includes institutional procedures between DSCs and the Intermediary Body and Data Protection Agencies. To avoid delay in implementation agile institution-building needs to start now. Finally, institutional safeguards will help to avoid strategic choice of companies of the DSC of establishment. At the same time, the Irish DSC's capacity should be strengthened compared to other national DSCs since most large intermediary services providers have their European headquarters in Ireland.
Politicians don’t dance? AI doesn’t either!: A discussion of generative AI and political campaigning
(2023)
Whilst social media platforms provide global communication environments, these platforms are not primarily designed for political debates. This may have adverse effects on democracy and contribute to democratic fragmentation. This dissertation project investigates the role of social media platforms as potential accelerators of fragmentation in established democracies. The overarching question of this dissertation explores to what extent social media platforms may contribute to fragmentation that may result in the erosion of democracy. This dissertation comprises three articles focusing on three political arenas 1) political campaigns, 2) protest movements, and 3) democratic institutions.
The first paper investigates the polarisation of online political behaviour on Twitter in democratic election campaigns. The analysis is based on Twitter data of German political parties and election hashtags during the final week of the 2017 and 2021 German Federal elections. The study’s findings suggest that the far-right party AfD seeks to polarise online discourse as a strategy and that far-right online partisans may influence the public reception of politicians and established parties.
The second paper examines the formation of protest movements on Twitter during the Covid-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The study monitors two established conspiracy narratives and their communities on Twitter, the anti-vaccination and anti-5G communities, before and during the first UK lockdown. The study finds that, despite content moderation efforts by Twitter, conspiracy groups were able to proliferate their messages and influence broader public discourses on Twitter, such as #Lockdown in the United Kingdom. The findings underline social platforms' potential for protest formation that can result in disinformed social movements.
The third paper inspects social platform companies’ mimicking of democratic institutions like Meta’s oversight board for content decisions that may erode existing democratic institutions. The study traces the emergence of the supreme court metaphor for Meta’s oversight board and its use in the US News discourse. The findings emphasise how private organisations and the use of constitutional metaphors can erode the legitimacy of supreme courts and other democratic institutions.
The dissertation’s findings imply that social media platforms, besides their democratically desirable function for democratic participation and deliberative potentials, contribute to democratic fragmentation in the inspected arenas of political campaigns, disinformed protest movements and democratic institutions. Thus, extended research data access is key to better understanding the social implications of social media platforms and finding adequate regulations of recommender systems, content moderation, and advertisement-based business models.