Re: [kictanet] Democracy After Facebook
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542... We’ve known since at least 2012 that Facebook was a powerful, non-neutral force in electoral politics. In that year, a combined University of California, San Diego and Facebook research team led by James Fowler published a study in *Nature* <https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11421.epdf?referrer_access_token=3hEGlbqHkEuGY21mtWU9ytRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O-9kUewX3bdNdtBQCWYxxxyT1mLWjysh846djISzhdVQ8te60SwiEQkr8UOR_w6foAEMGP1agrQAR91rzU45X9hd7s6U3lIzEIbd35aX7ruNgD1yER8FcGDfCZKhbg6O9VCsEgb3kEZAqVvcbtCbcEZFbuSfvBx75f4RZqlS8DhyQ4yVH7PQ2vxssZZOlc6z5EWL8qXh-xIkjAG_gl0XMoATarImt_N_loxzfUHP134AZ9TGXojQKJCt64RPRMU58%3D&tracking_referrer=www.theatlantic.com>, which argued that Facebook’s “I Voted” button had driven a small but measurable increase in turnout, primarily among young people. Rebecca Rosen’s 2012 story, “Did Facebook Give Democrats the Upper Hand? <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/did-facebook-give-democrats-the-upper-hand/264937/>” relied on new research from Fowler, et al., about the presidential election that year. Again, the conclusion of their work was that Facebook’s get-out-the-vote message could have driven a substantial chunk of the increase in youth voter participation in the 2012 general election. Fowler told Rosen that it was “even possible that Facebook is completely responsible” for the youth voter increase. And because a higher proportion of young people vote Democratic than the general population, the net effect of Facebook’s GOTV effort would have been to help the Dems. The research showed that a small design change by Facebook could have electoral repercussions, especially with America’s electoral-college format in which a few hotly contested states have a disproportionate impact on the national outcome. And the pro-liberal effect it implied became enshrined as an axiom of how campaign staffers, reporters, and academics viewed social media. -- Anyega M Jefferson jeffersonanyega@gmail.com 0703824326 Start where you are,use what you have and do what you can.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-end-of-a-world-of-nation-states-may-be-upon-us Nation-states are unlikely to collapse overnight. There are no barbarians at the gate. Even Rome did not collapse in a day. But it evolved during a time of industrialisation, centralised ‘command and control’ bureaucracies and national loyalty. Modern technology tends in the opposite direction: it’s distributed, decentralised and uncontrollable. If our political arrangements are a mirror of the modes of production and assumptions of the time, the future doesn’t look rosy for this 19th-century relic. It looks far brighter for the modern, connected, agile city, whether that’s on land, on borders, or out in the ocean. And anyway: doesn’t it pay to have some experiments going on, just in case? On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 10:48 AM, anyega jefferson < jeffersonanyega@gmail.com> wrote:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/ what-facebook-did/542502/?utm_source=atltw
We’ve known since at least 2012 that Facebook was a powerful, non-neutral force in electoral politics. In that year, a combined University of California, San Diego and Facebook research team led by James Fowler published a study in *Nature* <https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11421.epdf?referrer_access_token=3hEGlbqHkEuGY21mtWU9ytRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O-9kUewX3bdNdtBQCWYxxxyT1mLWjysh846djISzhdVQ8te60SwiEQkr8UOR_w6foAEMGP1agrQAR91rzU45X9hd7s6U3lIzEIbd35aX7ruNgD1yER8FcGDfCZKhbg6O9VCsEgb3kEZAqVvcbtCbcEZFbuSfvBx75f4RZqlS8DhyQ4yVH7PQ2vxssZZOlc6z5EWL8qXh-xIkjAG_gl0XMoATarImt_N_loxzfUHP134AZ9TGXojQKJCt64RPRMU58%3D&tracking_referrer=www.theatlantic.com>, which argued that Facebook’s “I Voted” button had driven a small but measurable increase in turnout, primarily among young people.
Rebecca Rosen’s 2012 story, “Did Facebook Give Democrats the Upper Hand? <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/did-facebook-give-democrats-the-upper-hand/264937/>” relied on new research from Fowler, et al., about the presidential election that year. Again, the conclusion of their work was that Facebook’s get-out-the-vote message could have driven a substantial chunk of the increase in youth voter participation in the 2012 general election. Fowler told Rosen that it was “even possible that Facebook is completely responsible” for the youth voter increase. And because a higher proportion of young people vote Democratic than the general population, the net effect of Facebook’s GOTV effort would have been to help the Dems.
The research showed that a small design change by Facebook could have electoral repercussions, especially with America’s electoral-college format in which a few hotly contested states have a disproportionate impact on the national outcome. And the pro-liberal effect it implied became enshrined as an axiom of how campaign staffers, reporters, and academics viewed social media.
-- Anyega M Jefferson
jeffersonanyega@gmail.com
0703824326
Start where you are,use what you have and do what you can.
-- Anyega M Jefferson jeffersonanyega@gmail.com 0703824326 Start where you are,use what you have and do what you can.
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anyega jefferson