Journal of Information Technology & Politics最新文献

{"title":"Public opinion effects of digital state repression: How internet outages shape government evaluation in Africa","authors":"Rebecca Strauch","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2283011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2283011","url":null,"abstract":"1Internet shutdowns have become a popular instrument for repressive regimes to silence dissent in a digitized world. While authorities seek to suppress opponents by imposing Internet outages, we kn...","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138541259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"One conflict, two public spheres, three national debates: comparing the value conflict over judicial independence in Europe across print and social media","authors":"Stefan Wallaschek, Kavyanjali Kaushik, Monika Eigmüller","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2278539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2278539","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTConflicts over the independence of judiciary as one of the European Union’s core democratic values is one indicator of democratic backsliding among its member states. Based on the Europeanization framework, we compare this conflict in German, Polish and Spanish print media and Twitter from 2019 to 2021. In the countries that are strongly affected by the value conflict, Poland and Spain, Europeanization is less evident. In contrast, the German discourse shows a high degree of Europeanization. We demonstrate that the print media is strongly elite-centric, while Twitter shows a higher actor visibility and inclusivity. However, we also identify important country differences.KEYWORDS: European UnionEuropeanizationindependence of judiciarylegacy medianetwork analysisrule of lawTwittervalue conflicts AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as the editors of the special issue for their constructive feedback on our work. We also highly appreciate the helpful comments from colleagues at the ECPR General Conference 2022 where we presented a previous version of our manuscript. We are thankful to Julia Martyniewicz and Lara Fuge for outstanding research assistance.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2278539Notes1. Location filter by country ensures tweets from other countries containing the same keywords are not captured during data collection. However, the total number of tweets collected in Germany and Spain is strongly affected when using the location filter. While it was necessary in the Spanish context to avoid capturing tweets from other Spanish-speaking countries, in Germany the location filter yielded a very low number of tweets. This could be because Twitter users can choose not to divulge their location information. Thus, all German-language tweets were collected without the location filter and then tweets from other German-speaking nations such as Austria and Switzerland were removed during the data cleaning process. The Polish case was not as affected and a similar number of tweets were captured with or without the use of a location filter, and thus the location filter was used to ensure minimum noise in the data.2. For detailed network characteristics such as number of nodes/actors and links/edges between them, average degree centrality and modularity scores, and descriptive statistics on vertical and horizontal Europeanization on traditional and social media networks, see Appendix Tables A3-A8.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation in the project “Value Conflicts in a Differentiated Europe: The Impact of Digital Media on Value Polarisation in Europe (ValCon)” (2020-2024)Notes on contributorsStefan WallaschekStefan Wallaschek is a postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Europesan S","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"79 21","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135037121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Incentives to cultivate a diaspora vote and rhetorical involvement in foreign elections: Lessons from Colombian politicians’ involvement in the 2020 US presidential election","authors":"Taishi Muraoka","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2278541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2278541","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTWhat explains politicians’ involvement in foreign elections? Understanding this behavior is important not only because it has received little scholarly attention but also because it could undermine public faith in electoral integrity in target countries. In this study, I consider an electorally based explanation, which suggests that politicians’ electoral incentives to appeal to expatriate voters in a foreign country can explain their rhetorical involvement in that country’s elections. I test this argument in the context of the 2020 US presidential election, where more than 50 Colombian MPs extensively promoted or attacked Joe Biden and Donald Trump on social media. My analysis indicates that whether Colombian MPs competed for Colombian Americans’ votes and their popularity in the US are the systematic correlates of how much they got involved in the 2020 US election. The findings highlight how diaspora enfranchisement is important to understand elite online communication that cuts across national borders.KEYWORDS: Colombiaconstituency communicationdiasporaelectoral interventionsocial media AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Brian Crisp, Christopher Lucas, Theodore Masthay, Jacob Montgomery, Guillermo Rosas, Margit Tavits, Yi-Ting Wang, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 2023 Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2278541Notes1. Put differently, they may become skeptical about the extent to which election outcomes reflect the will of the people. Media reporting of an intervention event is often sufficient to trigger this negative effect of eroding voter confidence (Dawood, Citation2021).2. According to Hutcheson and Arrighi (Citation2015), four different diaspora electoral systems are used around the world. First is reserved seats, which allow expatriates to elect their own representatives. The other three types of diaspora electoral systems do not create a special constituency for overseas voters but provide different mechanisms to aggregate diaspora votes either (i) in districts where expatriates have biographical ties; (ii) in a single preexisting district within the state (usually the capital city); or (iii) as a part of a national voting total. Colombia uses reserved seats for the lower house and (iii) for the upper house.3. However, in Appendix B, I extend the analysis to Colombian MPs’ involvement in elections in Spain and Venezuela and show that diaspora electoral incentives are useful predictors in these elections as well.4. According to Burgess and Tyburski (Citation2020), overseas voters’ turnout varies across countries, from below 1% point in countries like Mexico to more than 40% points in Italy.5. This allows them to avoid unnecessary ","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":" 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135242543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perils of political engagement? Examining the relationship between online political participation and perceived electoral integrity during 2020 US election","authors":"Saifuddin Ahmed, Yifei Wang, Melissa Tully","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2275255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2275255","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"111 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135869288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Smart government: practical uses of artificial intelligence in local government (improving financial management with AI) <b>Smart government: practical uses of artificial intelligence in local government (improving financial management with AI)</b> , Chris Chiancone, TX, 2023, 126 pp., $39.99 (Hardcover), ISBN: 979-8392655519","authors":"Joseph Amazuwa Chirwa","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2271907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2271907","url":null,"abstract":"\"Smart government: practical uses of artificial intelligence in local government (improving financial management with AI).\" Journal of Information Technology & Politics, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2 Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the N/A.","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"2 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135367219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The political contention of LGBTQ+ communities in the digital age - state of the art, limitations, and opportunities for comparative research","authors":"Verena K. Brändle, Olga Eisele, Aytalina Kulichkina","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2263758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2263758","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops an analytical framework for comparative research on political contention in the digital age and, building upon it, provides a literature review of social media research related to LGBTQ+ political contention. So far, we lack systematic insights into the literature on digitally-mediated LGBTQ+ political contention and its potential for comparative research. Applying scoping literature review, we focus on the key comparative dimensions such as political context, social media, and knowledge production. The results provide an overview of the state of the art, limitations, and opportunities while also developing an agenda for future comparative research. This paper supports the visibility of LGBTQ+ issues in a still hostile public debate for both LGBTQ+ activists and researchers.","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135689815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"White supremacists anonymous: how digital media emotionally energize far-right movements","authors":"Anton Törnberg, Petter Törnberg","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2262459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2262459","url":null,"abstract":"Digital media platforms have been implicated in the recent rise of far-right extremism. This study proposes that these platforms afford emotional processes that lie at the core of far-right movements. Drawing on Randall Collins’ interactional framework and the literature on cultural trauma, we investigate the emotional processes triggered by traumatic experiences within far-right online communities. As a case, we examine how the white supremacist community Stormfront responded to the 2008 election of Barack Obama, by analyzing the complete datasets of discussion on the forum through a combination of computational methods and qualitative analysis. Our findings suggest that the community functioned as a “emotional refuge”, where members collectively interpreted and transformed their emotional reactions, thereby shaping an emotionally energized collective with a focused target of collective action.","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135828230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trusting tech firms’ big data for political microtargeting? A qualitative analysis of parties’ communication managers risk and trust perceptions","authors":"Natascha Löffler","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2264299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2264299","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTParties use political microtargeting (PMT) to address voter subsegments individually. Due to limited resources and legal restrictions, parties often rely on Meta’s platforms and advertising ecosystem for PMT. However, using these external infrastructures and big data analyses might be risky for parties, since big data are criticized for their validity, robustness, representativeness, and usefulness. A mechanism to tolerate risks is trust. With the theoretical background of trust in technology, this study investigates the extent to which parties’ communication managers perceive risks in their strategic use of PMT on Meta’s platforms and how they evaluate big data’s trustworthiness. Based on in-depth expert interviews with German parties’ communication managers on state level, the results show that parties’ communication managers perceive various risks in relying on Meta’s platforms and are ambivalent about PMT’s big data analytics in terms of quality and reliability. To minimize risk perceptions, parties adopt strategies such as inputting their own data or creating own target audiences. Parties’ risk perceptions only partially influence their trust in big data and Meta. Despite varying degrees of trust, PMT is still used in campaigns as it has become too common and necessary to compete with other parties.KEYWORDS: Political microtargetingdata-driven campaigningtrust in big dataqualitative expert interviewsadvertising infrastructure Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2264299.Ethics declarationsResearch in the social sciences requires ethical standards that were thoroughly considered in this study. First, the study’s author confirms that the qualitative expert interviews were based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In doing so, no personal data and information of the interviewees are used in the presented work by anonymizing all interviews, i.e., there is no possibility to identify participants from their data. The author confirms that the interviewees were informed accordingly that strict confidentiality will be maintained about all collected data and that these data will be used exclusively for scientific purposes. The author also declares that all interviewees have participated voluntarily. Their participation was free to be declined or withdrawn at any time during the study, without giving any reason and without any adverse consequences.More general ethical standards are defined in the Guidelines for Good Scientific Practice by the German Research Foundation (DFG). With regard to the research project, ethical aspects of the study were evaluated before data collection. The study’s topic and the qualitative guideline’s questions are not likely to trigger strong emotions or cause severe psychological distress or traumatic experiences. Further, the study does","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135829912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Resisting right-wing populism in power: a comparative analysis of the Facebook activities of social movements in Italy and the UK","authors":"Nicolò Pennucci","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2262973","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2262973","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis paper aims to present a comparative study of the civil society reaction to right-wing populism in power through social media, by looking at cases in Italy and the United Kingdom. The research question is how social movements are implementing a process of reactive political identity construction – i.e. political identification – and a political counter-strategy by opposing right-wing populism in power through their Facebook official accounts. It implements a mixed-method research design with in-depth semi-structured interviews and a two-step quantitative text analysis based on Topic Model and Dictionary Method.KEYWORDS: Social movementssocial mediaright-wing populismtext-as-datamixed methods Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsNicolò PennucciNicolò Pennucci is a PhD candidate in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence (Italy). He works on civil society reaction to right-wing populism in the UK, Italy and the United States. He employs mixed method combining qualitative interviews and computational methods.","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"130 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135386638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Together we stand? The evolution of online interactions by Southern European LGBTQIA* organizations","authors":"Aurora Perego, Katia Pilati","doi":"10.1080/19331681.2023.2259371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2259371","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTEuropean LGBTQIA* organizations have often been perceived as isolated from other organizations. While investigations have suggested that social media platforms foster inter-organizational ties, their role in promoting or dampening within- and cross-field interactions is understudied. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the factors shaping within- and cross-field digital interactions established by LGBTQIA* organizations located in Milan and Madrid. It analyzes the networks resulting from LGBTQIA* organizations mentioning, sharing, and promoting events on Facebook between 2011 and 2020. Results show that Madrid- and Milan-based LGBTQIA* organizations increasingly engage in cross-field interactions on social media, becoming crucial bridging actors with organizations from other fields. They also suggest that political threats moderate the relationship between organizational identities and cross-field ties.KEYWORDS: LGBTQIA*digital interactionsFacebooksocial network analysiscross-field networkingcivil society organizations Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2259371Notes1. Scholars have addressed lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, and other (LGBTQIA*) issues and identities in diverse ways. To the purpose of this article, we use the acronym “LGBTQIA*” to refer to people and communities marginalized because of sexual orientations and/or gender identities that deviate from cis-heteronormative frameworks.2. Building on Di Maggio and Powell (Citation1983) and Melucci (Citation1989), collective action fields are understood as localized relational arenas shaped by actors’ reciprocal recognition in which organizations act on a recognized area of social life, and in which the mechanisms for the emergence of collective actions are defined (Crossley & Diani, Citation2019; Diani & Pilati, Citation2011).3. To the purpose of this research, all organizations identifying as L/G/B/T/Q/I/A/* are considered part of the LGBTQIA* collective action field since they share experiences of discrimination due to the cis-heteronormative matrix (Butler, Citation2013) that permeates societal structures and institutions. This does not hinder, however, the fact that individuals within the LGBTQIA* spectrum are positioned at different levels of privilege and marginalization, since the cis-heteronormative matrix particularly affects transgender, intersex, and non-binary individuals (Weeks, Citation2015).4. Scholars have also provided evidence of the potential risks posed by digital communication platforms which, due to their by default public structure and high connectivity, may expose LGBTQIA* subjects and make them targets of hate speech and physical violence, especially in countries where LGBTQIA* communities are criminalized (Birdal, Citation2020; Wijaya, Citation2022).5. ","PeriodicalId":47047,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Information Technology & Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136153837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}