This essay explores the changing character of public discourse in the Age of Twitter. Adopting the perspective of media ecology, the essay highlights how Twitter privileges discourse that is simple, ...impulsive, and uncivil. This effect is demonstrated through a case study of Donald J. Trump's Twitter feed. The essay concludes with a brief reflection on the end times: a post-truth, post-news, President Trump, Twitter-world.
Following the 2016 US presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake ...news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: 1) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; 2) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; 3) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and 4) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.
Impactos das eleições presidenciais nas empresas federais Schmidt, Paulo; Martins, Marco Antonio dos Santos; Quadrado, Gustavo Martins
Revista Pensamento Contemporâneo em Administração,
01/2021, Volume:
14, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Este estudo examinou os impactos do primeiro turno da eleição do Presidente Bolsonaro nas cotações das ações das estatais federais listadas na B3. A análise utilizou o método de Estudo de Eventos. Os ...documentos analisados apontam que os resultados são significantes, indicando que há diferenças relevantes entre o retorno normal e o anormal das ações analisadas. Portanto, demonstrou-se que as expectativas dos agentes econômicos em relação à influência dessas eleições são transferidas às cotações das ações dessas empresas no mercado de capitais. O estudo demonstrou que essa eleição gerou retornos anormais estatisticamente significante nos preços das ações das empresas estatais.
Citizens increasingly rely on social media to consume and disseminate news and information about politics, but the factors that drive political information sharing on these sites are not well ...understood. This study focused on how online partisan news use influences political information sharing in part because of the distinct negative emotions it arouses in its audience. Using panel survey data collected during the 2012 U.S. presidential election, we found that use of proattitudinal partisan news online is associated with increased anger, but not anxiety, directed at the opposing party's presidential candidate and that anger subsequently facilitated information sharing about the election on social media. The results suggest partisan media may drive online information sharing by generating anger in its audience.
GESPALTENE USA Braml, Josef
Politische Studien,
11/2020, Volume:
71, Issue:
494
Journal Article
Josef Braml ist ein renommierter Kenner Amerikas und seiner Politik. Auf seinem Blog „usaexperte.com“ veröffentlicht er regelmäßig aktuelle Analysen dazu. Wir haben uns mit ihm zur momentanen ...Situation in den USA und den Präsidentschaftswahlen im November 2020 unterhalten. Im nachfolgenden Interview gibt er uns dazu Ein- und Ausblicke.
Conspiracy beliefs have been studied mostly through cross‐sectional designs. We conducted a five‐wave longitudinal study (N = 376; two waves before and three waves after the 2020 American ...presidential elections) to examine if the election results influenced specific conspiracy beliefs and conspiracy mentality, and whether effects differ between election winners (i.e., Biden voters) versus losers (i.e., Trump voters) at the individual level. Results revealed that conspiracy mentality kept unchanged over 2 months, providing first evidence that this indeed is a relatively stable trait. Specific conspiracy beliefs (outgroup and ingroup conspiracy beliefs) did change over time, however. In terms of group‐level change, outgroup conspiracy beliefs decreased over time for Biden voters but increased for Trump voters. Ingroup conspiracy beliefs decreased over time across all voters, although those of Trump voters decreased faster. These findings illuminate how specific conspiracy beliefs are, and conspiracy mentality is not, influenced by an election event.
MEASURING ECONOMIC POLICY UNCERTAINTY BAKER, SCOTT R.; BLOOM, NICHOLAS; DAVIS, STEVEN J.
The Quarterly journal of economics,
11/2016, Volume:
131, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We develop a new index of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) based on newspaper coverage frequency. Several types of evidence—including human readings of 12,000 newspaper articles—indicate that our ...index proxies for movements in policy-related economic uncertainty. Our U.S. index spikes near tight presidential elections, Gulf Wars I and II, the 9/11 attacks, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the 2011 debt ceiling dispute, and other major battles over fiscal policy. Using firm-level data, we find that policy uncertainty is associated with greater stock price volatility and reduced investment and employment in policy-sensitive sectors like defense, health care, finance, and infrastructure construction. At the macro level, innovations in policy uncertainty foreshadow declines in investment, output, and employment in the United States and, in a panel vector autoregressive setting, for 12 major economies. Extending our U.S. index back to 1900, EPU rose dramatically in the 1930s (from late 1931) and has drifted upward since the 1960s.
In the 2016 US presidential election campaign, social media platforms were increasingly used as direct sources of news, bypassing the editorial media. With the candidates’ millions of followers, ...Twitter has become a platform for mass communication and the candidate’s main online information channel. Likewise, social media has provided a platform for debating and critiquing the mainstream media by the campaigns and their networks. This article discusses the Twitter strategies of the democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and republican candidate Donald Trump during their US 2016 presidential election campaigns. While the Clinton campaign’s strategy confirms theories regarding the professionalisation of election campaigns, the Trump campaign’s more amateurish yet authentic style in social media points towards de-professionalisation and even amateurism as a counter-trend in political communication.
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