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Relying on the theory of Saward (2010) and Disch (2015), we study political representation through the lens of representative claim-making. We identify a gap between the theoretical concept of claim-making and the empirical (quantitative) assessment of representative claims made in the real world’s representative contexts. Therefore, we develop a new approach to map and quantify representative claims in order to subsequently measure the reception and validation of the claims by the audience. To test our method, we analyse all the debates of the German parliament concerned with the introduction of the gender quota in German supervisory boards from 2013 to 2017 in a two-step process. At first, we assess which constituencies the MPs claim to represent and how they justify their stance. Drawing on multiple correspondence analysis, we identify different claim patterns. Second, making use of natural language processing techniques and logistic regression on social media data, we measure if and how the asserted claims in the parliamentary debates are received and validated by the respective audience. We come to the conclusion that the constituency as ultimate judge of legitimacy has not been comprehensively conceptualized yet.
In this article, we build on research arguing that linguistic self-representation on social media can be viewed as a form of face-work and that the strategies employed by users are influenced by both a desire to connect with others and a need to preserve privacy. Drawing on our own analyses of usernames as well as that of others which were conducted as part of a large-scale project investigating usernames in 14 languages (Schlobinski/T. Siever 2018a), we argue that these conflicting goals of wanting to be recognised as an authentic member of an in-group while retaining a degree of anonymity are also observable in the choice of username. Online self-naming can thus be viewed as a key practice in the debate of face-work on social media platforms, because names and naming strategies can be studied more readily than broader and more complex aspects, such as stylistic variation or text-image interdependence, while at the same time forming part of these.
Are we in a new “Polanyian moment”? If we are, it is essential to examine how “spontaneous” and punctual expressions of discontent at the individual level may give rise to collective discourses driving social and political change. It is also important to examine whether and how the framing of these discourses may vary across political economies. This paper contributes to this endeavor with the analysis of anti-finance discourses on Twitter in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK between 2019 and 2020. This paper presents three main findings. First, the analysis shows that, more than ten years after the financial crisis, finance is still a strong catalyzer of political discontent. Second, it shows that there are important variations in the dominant framing of public anti-finance discourses on social media across European political economies. If the antagonistic “us versus them” is prominent in all the cases, the identification of who “us” and “them” are, vary significantly. Third, it shows that the presence of far-right tropes in the critique of finance varies greatly from virtually inexistent to a solid minority of statements.
In times of increased political polarization, the continuing existence of a deliberative arena where people with antagonistic views may engage with each other in non-violent ways is critical for democracy to live on. Social media are usually not conceived as such arenas. On the contrary, there has been widespread worry about their role in increasing polarization and political violence. This paper suggests a more positive impact of social media on democracy. Our analysis focuses on the subreddit “r/WallStreetBets” (r/WSB) - a finance-related forum that came under the spotlight when its users coordinated a financial attack on hedge funds during the Gamestop saga in early 2021. Based on an original method attributing partisanship scores to users, we present a network analysis of interactions between users at the opposite sides of the political spectrum on r/WSB. We then develop a content analysis of politically relevant threads in which polarized users participate. Our analyses show that r/WSB provides a rare space where users with antagonistic political leanings engage with each other, debate, and even cooperate.
Dies ist eine gekürzte Version eines Beitrags, der in der Zeitschrift Internationale Politik – IP, Ausgabe Mai/Juni 2016, erschienen ist.
Während in den zehn Jahren des Afghanistan-Krieges von 1979 bis 1989 geschätzte 20 000 „foreign fighters“ zu den Mudschahedin und Al-Kaida ins Kriegsgebiet zogen, sind es im vom so genannten „Islamischen Staat“ (IS) gehaltenen Territorium nach drei Jahren bereits etwa 30 000. Zwischen 6000 und 7000 kommen aus Ländern der EU; erstmals folgen auch Frauen in signifikanter Zahl dem Ruf einer islamistischen Terrororganisation. Warum also zieht der IS so viel mehr Anhänger an, als es Al-Kaida je getan hat? Wieso machen sich Tausende junger Muslime, die in Europa geboren wurden, auf den Weg in ein angebliches Kalifat und reales Kriegsgebiet? Und welche Rolle spielen die Narrative und Angebote des IS dabei?...
A link between populism and social media is often suspected. This paper spells out a set of possible mechanisms underpinning this link: that social media changes the communication structure of the public sphere, making it harder for citizens to obtain evidence that refutes populist assumptions. By developing a model of the public sphere, four core functions of the public sphere are identified: exposing citizens to diverse information, promoting equality of deliberative opportunity, creating deliberative transparency, and producing common knowledge. A wellworking public sphere allows citizens to learn that there are genuine disagreements among citizens that are held in good faith. Social media makes it harder to gain this insight, opening the door for populist ideology.
This is the ninth article in our series Trouble on the Far-Right.
Since around 1990, the state of the Austrian far right1 has been characterized by the strength of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ – Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, more precisely translated as Freedomite Party of Austria2) and the relative weakness of extra-parliamentarian far right activism. Far from a mere coincidence, these two features are to be understood as closely linked: the FPÖ’s electoral successes have brought far right causes and talking points unto the political center stage on a national level, given them ample media coverage and made street militancy increasingly pointless. Insofar, the Austrian far right spectrum could – at least until recently – be described as a photographic negative of the situation in Germany: successful party politics, weak bottom-up mobilizations and a comparatively low incidence of street violence. Currently, however, the long held hopes of German right-wingers for a party both in the mold, and strength, of the FPÖ are apparently being fulfilled by the emergence of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Conversely, both legal and illegal street activism have been on the rise in Austria in recent years, particularly since the start of the asylum crisis in Europe. Numerous violent incidents were reported in 2015, including a minimum of 25 attacks on housing facilities for asylum seekers.
Social media, asthe fifth estate, increasingly influence public dis-courses and play a major role in shaping public opinion.Undoubt-edly, they have the potential to promote participation and democra-cy. On the other side, they also constitute a risk for democratic soci-eties, as the spread of hate speech and fake news has shown. As aresponse,forms of counterspeech organisedby civil society have emerged in social media to counter the normalisation of hate speech and democracy-threateningdiscourses. In order to influence dis-course in social media in terms of the fifth estate, counterspeech campaigns must be visible alsoquantitatively. In this ethnographic contrastive study, I analysed the activitiesof the German and Finn-ish Facebook groups of the network #iamhere international. The in-tensity and continuity of their activities is obviously influenced by their strategic organisation: conventionalised rules support them whereas lacking or inconsequent rules seemed to be counterpro-ductive.