A new article co-authored with ComProp post-doc Gillian Bolsover was published in Information, Communication, and Society. ABSTRACT A 2016 review of literature about automation, algorithms and politics identified China as the foremost area in which further research was needed because of the size of its population, the potential for Chinese […]
Political communication is the process of putting information, technology, and media in the service of power. Increasingly, political actors are automating such processes, through algorithms that obscure motives and authors yet reach immense networks of people through personal ties among friends and family. Not all political algorithms are used for […]
Computational propaganda has recently exploded into public consciousness. The U.S. presidential campaign of 2016 was marred by evidence, which continues to emerge, of targeted political propaganda and the use of bots to distribute political messages on social media. This computational propaganda is both a social and technical phenomenon. Technical […]
Does social media use have a positive or negative impact on civic engagement? The cynical “slacktivism hypothesis” holds that if citizens use social media for political conversation, those conversations will be fleeting and vapid. Most attempts to answer this question involve public opinion data from the United States, so we […]
