The goal of this week is to provide you with:

  • A broad overview of the most recent research concerning the politics of social media.
  • An overview of discussions of the representativeness of social media data.

For readings, please do the following:

  1. Read two articles under “Substantive readings” that you think look interesting. You might want to read a short one (e.g. from Science, PNAS, Science Advances) and a long one (e.g. from APSR).**
  2. Read each of the reports/articles under “Representativeness readings”

Substantive readings (read 2 of them)

  1. How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression
    American Political Science Review, 2013, 107 (2): 326-343
    Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts

  2. From Isolation to Radicalization: Anti-Muslim Hostility and Support for ISIS in the West
    American Political Science Review, 2019, 113 (1): 173-194
    Tamar Mitts

  3. Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes
    Working Paper No. 19-04, Immigration Policy Lab, May
    Ala’ Alrababa’h, William Marble, Salma Mousa, and Alexandra Siegel
    • Coverage of the article in The Economist here

  4. Exposure to Opposing Views Can Increase Political Polarization: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment on Social Media
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018, 115 (37): 9216-9221
    Christopher Bail, Lisa Argyle, Taylor Brown, John Bumpus, Haohan Chen, M. B. Fallin Hunzaker, Jaemin Lee, Marcus Mann, Friedolin Merhout, and Alexander Volfovsky
    • New York Times article about the study here

  5. Fake News on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
    Science, 2019, 363: 374–378
    Nir Grinberg, Kenneth Joseph, Lisa Friedland, Briony Swire-Thompson, and David Lazer

  6. Political Advertising Online and Offline
    American Political Science Review, 2021, 115 (1): 130-149
    Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz, Gregory J. Martin, Zachary Peskowitz, and Travis N. Ridout

  7. Exposure to Ideologically Diverse News and Opinion on Facebook
    Science, 2015, 348 (6239): 1130-1132
    Eytan Bakshy, Solomon Messing, and Lada A. Adamic

  8. Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency’s Impact on the Political Attitudes and Behaviors of American Twitter Users in Late 2017
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, 117 (1):243-250.
    Christopher A. Bail, Brian Guay, Emily Maloney, Aiden Combs, D. Sunshine Hillygus, Friedolin Merhout, Deen Freelon, and Alexander Volfovsky

  9. The Spread of True and False News Online
    Science, 2018, 359 (6380): 1146-1151
    Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral

  10. Less Than You Think: Prevalence and Predictors of Fake News Dissemination on Facebook
    Science Advances, 2019, 5 (1): 1-8
    Andrew Guess, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua Tucker

  11. Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: Experimentally Reducing Racist Harassment
    Political Behavior, 2017, 39 (3): 629-649
    Kevin Munger

  12. How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information
    American Political Science Review, 2018, 112 (3): 484-501
    William R. Hobbs and Margaret E. Roberts

Representativeness readings

  1. Big Questions for Social Media Big Data: Representativeness, Validity and Other Methodological Pitfalls
    Proceedings of the Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 2014
    Zeynep Tufekci

  2. The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis
    Science, 343 (6176): 1203-1205
    David Lazer, Ryan Kennedy, Gary King, and Alessandro Vespignani

  3. Sizing Up Twitter Users
    Pew Research Center, April 24
    Stefan Wojcik and Adam Hughes