On any given day, the Trump campaign is plastering ads all over Facebook, YouTube and the millions of sites served by Google, hitting the kind of incendiary themes — immigrant invaders, the corrupt media — that play best on platforms where algorithms favor outrage and political campaigns are free to […] Read more »
Trump Is Winning the Online War
For all his negative poll numbers and impeachment-related liabilities, President Trump has a decisive advantage on one key election battleground: the digital campaign. Under the management of Brad Parscale, the Trump re-election machine has devoted millions more than any individual Democrat to increasingly sophisticated microtargeting techniques. … Trump’s operatives have […] Read more »
Politics with Amy Walter: Digital Campaign Advertising and 2020
The week started with a letter from White House Counsel Patrick Cipollone to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, informing the House leader that the White House was not going to participate in an impeachment inquiry that it considered unconstitutional. Resistance to the impeachment inquiry escalated when the White House refused to let […] Read more »
Americans Are Wary of the Role Social Media Sites Play in Delivering the News
As heated debate continues over how social media sites can improve the quality of news on their platforms while enforcing rules fairly, most Americans are pessimistic about these efforts and are highly concerned about several issues when it comes to social media and news. Majorities say that social media companies […] Read more »
The Global Disinformation Order
Although propaganda has always been a part of political discourse, the deep and wide-ranging scope of these campaigns raise critical public interest concerns. Cyber troops’ are defined as government or political party actors tasked with manipulating public opinion online (Bradshaw and Howard 2017a). We comparatively examine the formal organization of […] Read more »
More Blaming Extremism, Heated Rhetoric for Mass Shootings
Americans think there is plenty of blame to go around for the mass shootings that have become commonplace in the United States, but two factors are getting more blame than in the recent past. CONT. Lydia Saad, Gallup Read more »