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2 results

  • Asymmetric flooding as a tool for foreign influence on social media

  • Alexandra Cirone, William Hobbs
  • Journal:
    Political Science Research and Methods / Volume 11 / Issue 1 / January 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    25 March 2022, pp. 160-171
    • Article
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  • Research on Russian troll activity during the 2016 US presidential campaign largely focused on divisive partisan messaging. Here, we document the use of apolitical content—content that could counteract mobilization efforts and escape detection in future campaigns. We argue this resembled techniques used by autocratic regimes domestically, in “flooding” social media with entertainment content to distract from and displace mobilizing messaging. Using automated text analysis and hand coding to construct a timeline of IRA messaging on Twitter, we find left-leaning trolls posted large volumes of entertainment content in their artificial liberal community and shifted away from political content late in the campaign. Simultaneously, conservative trolls were targeting their community with increases in political content. This suggests the use of apolitical content might be an overlooked strategy to selectively manipulate levels of attention to politics.

Contemporary US Populism in Comparative Perspective

Contemporary US Populism in Comparative Perspective
  • Kirk Hawkins, Levente Littvay
  • Published online:
    07 May 2019
    Print publication:
    30 May 2019
  • With the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election, populists have come to power in the US for the first time in many years. However, US political scientists have been flat-footed in their response, failing to anticipate or measure populism's impact on the campaign or to offer useful policy responses. In contrast, populism has long been an important topic of study for political scientists studying other regions, especially Latin America and Europe. The conceptual and theoretical insights of comparativist scholars can benefit Americanists, and applying their techniques can help US scholars and policymakers place events in perspective.