“Has Social Media Changed Elections?”
That’s the lead story in this week’s Electionline Weekly. … Continue reading
Category Archives: social media and social protests
“Tweets Alert Virginia Vote-Counters to Mistakes in Race”
Bloomberg reports. … Continue reading
“A Week After Polls Closed, Va. AG Race Still Too Close To Call”
Brian Naylor reports for NPR, with a focus on the role of social media crowd sourcing the vote count. (I am quoted in this piece on “the drama and the data” as making this race special.) Michael McDonald: “Calling Herring … Continue reading
“I Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at #Socialbot”
Big political implications in this Ian Urbina piece in NYT’s Sunday Review: Other bots have more underhanded ambitions. Last year, officials from Mexico’s governing Institutional Revolutionary Party were accused of using bots to sabotage the party’s critics by appropriating some … Continue reading
“Elections B.C. warns candidates: don’t tweet on election day”
Canadian election law more draconian than ours but less than Iran’s. … Continue reading
“SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THE JUDICIARY: The Risks and Benefits of Social Media Use by Judges”
Press release: “The editorial in the March-April 2013 issue of Judicature, the journal of the American Judicature Society, addresses the perils and promise of judges’ use of social media. As social media becomes the norm for communication and networking, government … Continue reading
No More Twitter Campaign Ban in Japan
See here. … Continue reading
“Twitter Reaction to Events Often at Odds with Overall Public Opinion”
Important new Pew study. In the last chapter of The Voting Wars I discuss how extreme political positions on Twitter could translate into social unrest in the event of another razor-thin Presidential election. … Continue reading
“Data Mining is New Lobbying Gold”
Byron Tau for Politico: A congressman gets an earful from his neighbor after church about a tax bill. A senator suddenly finds old high school classmates calling her about an upcoming vote on a small business bill. Those meetings may … Continue reading
“Osaka Mayor Tweets Disapproval of Twitter Ban”
WSJ Japan: “As the Twitter feeds of hundreds of Japanese politicians fell silent earlier this week, one of the nation’s most popular and outspoken politicians–Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto–continued tweeting on defiantly, challenging a law forbidding candidates from Internet campaigning during … Continue reading
“Campaigns Use Social Media to Lure Younger Voters”
NYT reports. … Continue reading
“Obama Has Clear Lead in Using Social Media”
Political Wire: “A new Pew Research study finds that President Obama holds a distinct advantage over Mitt Romney in the way his campaign is using digital technology to communicate directly with voters. The Obama campaign is posting almost four times … Continue reading
“August 2011 recalls harbinger of social media role in close elections”
This item appears at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel‘s “All Politics Blog.” … Continue reading
“Tweeting the Next Election Meltdown: If the next presidential election goes into overtime, heaven help us. It’s gonna get ugly.”
Slate has excerpted part of my new book. Here’s how the excerpt begins: This article is excerpted from Richard L. Hasen’s book, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown. The tweets were full of rage. As … Continue reading
“Statistical Probability That Mitt Romney’s New Twitter Followers Are Just Normal Users: 0%”
The Atlantic reports. … Continue reading
“Campaigns mine online data to target voters”
AP: Voters who click on President Barack Obama’s campaign website are likely to start seeing display ads promoting his re-election bid on their Facebook pages and other sites they visit. Voters searching Google for information about Mitt Romney may notice … Continue reading
“Don’t Tweet Your Ballot”
Unless you want to face felony charges in Wisconsin. … Continue reading
“Justice bars analyst from Mississippi cases after Facebook post calling state ‘disgusting’”
FOX News: “The Justice Department has blocked one of its civil rights analysts from dealing with all matters Mississippi after the employee apparently described the state as ‘disgusting and shameful’ on Facebook — comments that drew a rebuke Tuesday from … Continue reading
“Twitter plays outsize role in 2012 campaign”
AP: “Four years ago, Twitter was in relative infancy and just 1.8 million tweets were sent on Election Day 2008. Now, Twitter gets that many approximately every eight minutes.” I discuss the role that Twitter and other social media could … Continue reading
Web Makes Regulating Politics Tough in Mexico
Interesting NYT report. … Continue reading
“Twitter Becomes Real Time Tool for Campaigns”
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
“World French Twitter Users Outsmart Election Law With Cheese, Flan References”
Time: “Dutch cheese, Hungarian wine, rotten tomato and flan were just a few buzzwords thrown around in the French Twitter community on Sunday, when users wittily tweeted in code to skirt a French law prohibiting voting predictions in the first … Continue reading
“A Lie Races Across Twitter Before the Truth Can Boot Up”
Anatomy of a tweeted rumor about Gov. Nikki Haley. … Continue reading
“Trutanich paid for YouTube views of D.A. campaign videos”
LA Times: “An unlikely Internet sensation has struck it big on YouTube: Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich. Two polished videos promoting his run for district attorney last month show Trutanich driving the gritty streets of Los Angeles telling war … Continue reading
“Vote 4 Me!! The political consultants who want to send you unsolicited text messages, and the man who is fighting to stop them.”
Sasha Issenberg has this Slate column. … Continue reading
“Super PACs v. Social Media”
Maria Teresa Kumar has written this Politico oped.“Come November, we may see a new kind of generational divide emerge in the electorate. Massive media campaigns driven by hundreds of millions of super PAC dollars may indeed overwhelm older ‘offline’ voters … Continue reading
“Facebook Users to Put Political Views Up in Lights on Times Square”
NYT reports. … Continue reading
“In Nonstop Whirlwind of Campaigns, Twitter Is a Critical Tool”
NYT reports. … Continue reading
“Censoring of Tweets Sets Off #Outrage”
NYT: “But this week, in a sort of coming-of-age moment, Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages in countries where they were deemed illegal. The move immediately prompted outcry, argument and even calls for a boycott from … Continue reading
Blogs and Social Media at AALS Event
This panel on which I will participate will be held on Jan. 5 from 1:30 to 2:45 pm in Madison A, mezzanine level. … Continue reading
“The Tweets, Tics And Turns Of Twitter Politics”
NPR: “Political convo on Twitter is more opinionated, more negative. Diff from that in blogs or lamestream media, sez new study by Pew. Like duh!” This is something I explore in my forthcoming book, The Voting Wars, in terms of … Continue reading
Ohio’s Regulation of False Campaign Speech Meets Twitter
See here. … Continue reading
Hashtags as Political Snark
#tellmesomethingIdontknow … Continue reading
“Digital Media A Factor in Ferocity of Political Campaigns”
See this press release from the University of Missouri. … Continue reading
“Twitterology: A New Science?”
Indeed. (I found such studies very helpful in writing the final chapter of “The Voting Wars,” called “Tweeting the Next Meltdown.) … Continue reading
“Republicans Embrace Twitter Hard for ’12″
Tweeting, pizza, and partisanship in the NYT. … Continue reading
“Perry Blocks Some Reporters on Twitter”
Odd. And ineffective. … Continue reading
“Twitter to Sell Political Advertising”
WaPo reports. In somewhat related news, the FEC put out this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Internet campaign communications (via Marc Elias). … Continue reading
“Political Campaigns Adopt Pornbot Tactics”
The Atlantic Wire puts the Coon astrotweets into some political context. … Continue reading
How Political Operatives Use Astrotweeting to Spread Lies About Candidates
As part of my research for The Voting Wars, I have been reading a great deal of computer science and related research on Twitter and politics. Some of the most interesting work is coming out of Indiana University’s School of … Continue reading
“In Unsettled Times, Media Can Be a Call to Action, or a Distraction”
NYT: THE mass media, including interactive social-networking tools, make you passive, can sap your initiative, leave you content to watch the spectacle of life from your couch or smartphone. Apparently even during a revolution. That is the provocative thesis of … Continue reading
“Public safety, technology and the First Amendment collide in San Francisco’s subway”
WaPo reports (right now the link is not letting me view the entire article). … Continue reading
Quote of the Day
“The legality of that is very questionable and additionally it is also a very useful intelligence asset.” –London Metropolitan Police Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin, about shutting off Twitter etc. during the London riots. … Continue reading
Twitter, Social Protests and Violence
I’ll be writing about the potential for social media to transform post-election disputes in my forthcoming book, The Voting Wars. In advance of that publication next summer, from time to time I’ll be highlighting stories on the more general topic … Continue reading