Patrícia Rossini
Biographic Data
| ID | 336675 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patrícia Rossini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patrícia |
| FAMILY NAME | Rossini |
| SIGNATURE | ROSSINI P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7582-3867 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Do WhatsApp news channels help users navigate the information environment? A field experiment on information-related attitudes
Messaging applications have become central sources of news, especially in the Global South, raising concerns about the quality of information circulating in these spaces. This study examines how receiving news through WhatsApp channels shapes key information-related attitudes in Brazil, including misinformation belief, news fatigue, and media trust. In a pre‐registered experiment conducted in November/December 2024, 601 participants from multiple…
From Access to Experience: Exploring Social Inequalities in Digital News Use Through Trace Interviews
Digital transformation has not only reshaped access to journalism but also increased inequalities in news use. This paper examines these divides through the lens of news experience, focusing on how people from different socioeconomic groups in the Global North and South use digital news. Drawing on 73 trace interviews in the United Kingdom and Brazil, we highlight agency as a key differentiator in news exposure, curation, and algorithms. Lower-so…
No time or tech for online news: How social and digital inequalities contribute to gender gaps in online news consumption
Despite the proliferation and accessibility of online news, gaps in news use between women and men have endured. We interrogate the unequal relationship between gender and news consumption by closely examining several sociological indicators of inequality that adversely impact women. Combining survey data with passive tracking of web browser and mobile app use in the UK and Brazil, we analyze how digital literacy, issues with technology, personal…
Evaluating the potential and limits of trace-based interviews when studying news use
Digital trace data have expanded possibilities for studying news use but often obscure how people make sense of their encounters with journalism. This paper examines trace-based interviewing as a methodological approach for contextualising such data and understanding their limits. Drawing on 73 qualitative trace-based interviews conducted in the United Kingdom and Brazil, the study shows how using participants’ own digital traces prompts reflecti…
Amplifying Division: Electoral Misinformation and Political Intolerance in Brazil
This study examines the relationship between misinformation and political intolerance during the 2022 Brazilian Election. Using a three-wave survey, we show that citizens who believe false claims about electoral fraud become more intolerant toward political opponents over time. Beliefs in electoral misinformation consistently predicted increases in intolerance over the course of the election. We find an indirect effect for using messaging apps fo…
Understanding Perceptions and Effects of Online Intolerance: A Four-Country Experimental Study
Research on online political discourse has long been concerned with the pervasiveness of incivility across various digital arenas. However, most of this work has focused on discourse that is rude in tone, but not necessarily harmful in substance. Consequently, there remains a significant gap in understanding the true impact of harmful online speech on both its targets and bystanders. Addressing this gap, this four-country experimental study exami…
News is not made for me: A novel scale for measuring audience alienation from news and its outcomes
In this paper, we develop the “News is Not Made for Me” scale for measuring audience alienation from news. Drawing on literature highlighting the importance of recognition, learning, and understanding in journalism, we developed this eight-item scale by utilizing findings from qualitative research exploring the gaps between news media and audiences. Using a three-wave panel survey across the United Kingdom ( n = 1248) and Brazil ( n = 1998), we f…
Discussions That Divide: The Interplay Between Experiencing Uncivil Conversations and Politically Motivated Avoidance on Whatsapp and Facebook
This study examines how experiences of incivility in political conversations influence selective avoidance on WhatsApp and Facebook in Brazil, using a national survey. Using national survey data, we find that being targeted by incivility in political discussions consistently predicts avoidance behavior on both platforms, despite their different affordance and networks. However, exposure to disagreement shows platform-specific effects, with WhatsA…
Examining the implications of different news avoidance practices during elections in Greece and Brazil
Longitudinal research has documented an increase in news avoidance frequency in many countries. Following this line of research, a number of studies have examined the patterns and drivers of news avoidance practices. In doing so, scholars have used different measures of news avoidance, most prominently selective (or active) news avoidance and low/no levels of news use (regardless of whether it is intentional or not). However, we know much less ab…
Unleash Britain’s Potential (To Go Negative): Campaign Negativity in the 2017 and 2019 UK General Elections on Facebook
Negative campaigning has long concerned scholars because of the potential effects on the electorate and on democracy. Most scholarship has focused on single-election studies in the United States, whereas less is known about how campaigns go on the attack in the UK, and few compare two elections. Drawing from a dataset of Facebook posts by parties and leaders in Great Britain during the five weeks of campaigning in the 2017 and 2019 General Electi…
A Human-Centered Design Approach to Creating Tools to Help Journalists Monitor Digital Political Ads: Insights and Challenges
Political actors have increasingly incorporated digital advertising into their persuasive efforts. Greater transparency of how political actors are using digital ads is necessary given concerns that they may be using digital ads to suppress voter turnout and spread disinformation and xenophobia. We apply a human-centered design framework to identify the design requirements necessary to create tools that satisfy journalists’ needs for covering dig…
Barriers to Participation in Polarized Online Discussions About Covid-19 and the Russo-Ukrainian War
Even though social networking sites create a unique online public space for the exchange of opinions, only a small share of citizens participate in online discussions. Moreover, research has depicted current online discussions as highly uncivil, hostile, and polarized, and the number of heated discussions has escalated in the last two years because of health, social, and security crises. This study investigates the perceived barriers to participa…
Incivility and Intolerance in Covid-19 Discussions on Facebook
The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled heated discussions and intensified polarization in the exchange of opinions. Due to strict government restrictions, including a hard lockdown, much of this debate took place online. In this study, we examine how Czechs engaged in political discussions on Facebook during the pandemic. This research looks into the occurrence of incivility and intolerance and the similarities/contrasts with normatively desirable disc…
Categorizing political campaign messages on social media using supervised machine learning
Scholars have access to a rich source of political discourse via social media. Although computational approaches to understand this communication are being used, they tend to be unsupervised and off-the-shelf algorithms to describe a corpus of messages. This article details our approach at using human-supervised machine learning to study political campaign messages. Although some declare this technique too labor-intensive, it provides theoretical…
Unraveling WhatsApp group dynamics to understand the threat of misinformation in messaging apps
In this article, we present an analysis of distinctive WhatsApp uses with a focus on group dynamics, and how they are correlated with exposure to, belief in, accidental, and purposeful sharing of misinformation as well as misinformation corrections. Based on two nationally representative surveys in Brazil, and after controlling for a range of factors, we find that (a) being part of WhatsApp groups with no ties is significantly correlated with hig…
Don’t talk to strangers? The role of network composition, WhatsApp groups, and partisanship in explaining beliefs in misinformation about Covid-19 in Brazil
The spread of disinformation has been a topic of heightened concern, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the response to a public health crisis relies on the ability for public officials to inform citizens. Using a representative two-wave panel of internet users in Brazil, we examine the relationship between pathways to information, WhatsApp use, and the persistence of misinformed beliefs about the pandemic. We find a strong relationshi…
Farewell to Big Data? Studying Misinformation in Mobile Messaging Applications
No abstract available
Reassessing the Role of Inclusion in Political Communication Research
No abstract available
Beyond Incivility: Understanding Patterns of Uncivil and Intolerant Discourse in Online Political Talk
This article takes up the popular argument that much online discussion is toxic and hence harmful to democracy, and argues that the pervasiveness of incivility is not incompatible with democratically relevant political talk. Instead of focusing on the tone of political talk, scholars interested in understanding the extent to which digital platforms threaten democratic values should focus on expressions of intolerance. I demonstrate the validity o…
Introduction: The Idiosyncratic Nature of Renaissance Mathematics
Ever since its foundation in 1540, the Society of Jesus had had one mission—to restore order where Luther, Calvin and the other instigators of the Reformation had brought chaos. To stop the hemorrhage of believers, the Jesuits needed to form a united front. No signs of internal disagreement could to be shown to the outside world, lest the congregation lose its credibility. But in 1570s two prominent Jesuits, Cristophorus Clavius and Benito Perera…
Characterizing Disagreement in Online Political Talk: Examining Incivility and Opinion Expression on News Websites and Facebook in Brazil
This paper examines the ways people engage in political conversation triggered by exposure to political news in two different informal platforms in Brazil: Facebook and news websites. We analyze the extent to which disagreement is associated to discursive traits that are commonly associated with deliberative behavior, such as directly engaging with others, and trying to justify one’s views, and negative traits, such as incivility. The contributio…
Staying in Their Lanes: Issue Ownership in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaigns on Facebook and Twitter
Prior research has identified issue-ownership across partisan lines, with Republicans seen to focus on issues such as taxes and national defense, and Democrats more likely to focus on social issues and welfare. Given the complexities of the primary race, with candidates aiming to differentiate themselves within their own party, we ask whether the candidates in both parties engage in creating “lanes” by owning specific policy topics. Use supervise…
Flexible versus structured support for reasoning: Enhancing analytical reasoning through a flexible analytic technique
Structured analytic techniques (SATs) help the intelligence community reduce flaws in cognition that lead to faulty reasoning. To ascertain whether SATs provide benefits to reasoning we conducted an experiment within a web-based application, comparing three conditions: 1) unaided reasoning, 2) a prototypical order-based SAT and 3) a flexible, process-based SAT that we call TRACE. Our findings suggest that the more flexible SAT generated higher qu…
More than “Fake News: The media as a malicious gatekeeper and a bully in the discourse of candidates in the 2020 U.S. presidential election
While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on seve…
Identifying how Covid-19-related misinformation reacts to the announcement of the UK national lockdown: An interrupted time-series study
COVID-19 is unique in that it is the first global pandemic occurring amidst a crowded information environment that has facilitated the proliferation of misinformation on social media. Dangerous misleading narratives have the potential to disrupt 'official' information sharing at major government announcements. Using an interrupted time-series design, we test the impact of the announcement of the first UK lockdown (8-8.30 p.m. 23 March 2020) on sh…
Exploring the Relationship Between Campaign Discourse on Facebook and the Public’s Comments: A Case Study of Incivility During the 2016 US Presidential Election
Social media is now ubiquitously used by political campaigns, but less attention has been given to public discussions that take place on candidates’ free public accounts on social media. Also unclear is whether there is a relationship between campaign messaging and the tone of public comments. To address this gap, this article analyzes public comments on Facebook accounts of candidates Trump and Clinton during the US election presidential debates…
Farewell to Big Data? Studying Misinformation in Mobile Messaging Applications
No abstract available
More than “Fake News: The media as a malicious gatekeeper and a bully in the discourse of candidates in the 2020 U.S. presidential election
While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on seve…
Unleash Britain’s Potential (To Go Negative): Campaign Negativity in the 2017 and 2019 UK General Elections on Facebook
Negative campaigning has long concerned scholars because of the potential effects on the electorate and on democracy. Most scholarship has focused on single-election studies in the United States, whereas less is known about how campaigns go on the attack in the UK, and few compare two elections. Drawing from a dataset of Facebook posts by parties and leaders in Great Britain during the five weeks of campaigning in the 2017 and 2019 General Electi…
Unraveling WhatsApp group dynamics to understand the threat of misinformation in messaging apps
In this article, we present an analysis of distinctive WhatsApp uses with a focus on group dynamics, and how they are correlated with exposure to, belief in, accidental, and purposeful sharing of misinformation as well as misinformation corrections. Based on two nationally representative surveys in Brazil, and after controlling for a range of factors, we find that (a) being part of WhatsApp groups with no ties is significantly correlated with hig…
Reassessing the Role of Inclusion in Political Communication Research
No abstract available
Deliberation Across a Space of Reasons: Assessing Epistemic Changes in Group Discussions
Most research dealing with deliberation focuses on individual-level data, and the epistemic dimension of deliberation is rarely analyzed. Drawing on Habermas’s “space of reasons” account, we offer a novel analytical perspective on the variation in the stock of reasons in a given discussion, and disentangle how it transforms throughout the process. On the basis of data from face-to-face discussions involving two embattled groups in Brazil (police …
Social Media, Opinion Polls, and the Use of Persuasive Messages During the 2016 US Election Primaries
Political campaigns' use of digital technologies has been a topic of scholarly concern for over two decades, but most studies have been focused on analyzing the use of digital platforms without considering contextual factors of the race, like public opinion polls. Opinion polls are an important information source for citizens and candidates and provide the latter with information that might drive strategic communication. In this article, we explo…
More Than Just Shouting? Distinguishing Interpersonal-Directed and Elite-Directed Incivility in Online Political Talk
Online political talk is often deemed toxic to democracy due to the pervasiveness of incivility. This study challenges this perspective by examining the discursive and contextual conditions related to interpersonal incivility in contrast with incivility targeted at political elites on Facebook comments and news websites. Findings suggest that much of the vitriol online is targeted at politicians and characterized by justified opinions. Interperso…
A wall of incivility? Public discourse and immigration in the 2016 U.S. Primaries
This study uses computational methods to investigate public incivility in Facebook comments to campaign messages during the primaries of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, focusing on candidates’ posts about immigration. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between campaign messaging strategies, such as advocacy and attacks, and the presence of incivility in public comments. We find that Trump dominated both in terms of number of posts…
Sobre a importância de examinar diferentes ambientes onlineem estudos de deliberação
Diversos autores conceituam a Web 2.0como uma "ecologia complexa" a fim de apreender as novas configurações da esfera pública nas sociedades contemporâneas. Contudo, raros estudos desenvolvem uma caracterização sistemática da especificidade das condições de comunicação nos ambientes digitais. Este artigo tem por objetivo caracterizar, numa base comparativa, três espaços de conversação online: blogs, sitesde redes sociais (como o Facebook) e plata…
Don’t talk to strangers? The role of network composition, WhatsApp groups, and partisanship in explaining beliefs in misinformation about Covid-19 in Brazil
The spread of disinformation has been a topic of heightened concern, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the response to a public health crisis relies on the ability for public officials to inform citizens. Using a representative two-wave panel of internet users in Brazil, we examine the relationship between pathways to information, WhatsApp use, and the persistence of misinformed beliefs about the pandemic. We find a strong relationshi…
Identifying how Covid-19-related misinformation reacts to the announcement of the UK national lockdown: An interrupted time-series study
COVID-19 is unique in that it is the first global pandemic occurring amidst a crowded information environment that has facilitated the proliferation of misinformation on social media. Dangerous misleading narratives have the potential to disrupt 'official' information sharing at major government announcements. Using an interrupted time-series design, we test the impact of the announcement of the first UK lockdown (8-8.30 p.m. 23 March 2020) on sh…
Conversação e deliberação sobre questões sensíveis: Um Estudo Sobre O Uso Das Razões Que Circulam Nos Media
A discussão informal tem despertado crescente interesse em estudos sobre deliberação. Contudo, são raros os estudos que examinam o engajamento das pessoas em contextos conflitantes. Este artigo investiga o modo pelo qual sujeitos de grupos sociais em conflito fazem uso de razões concorrentes que circulam nos media para negociar suas opiniões sobre uma "questão sensível": a redução da maioridade penal. Para tanto, foram realizados cinco grupos de …
Categorizing political campaign messages on social media using supervised machine learning
Scholars have access to a rich source of political discourse via social media. Although computational approaches to understand this communication are being used, they tend to be unsupervised and off-the-shelf algorithms to describe a corpus of messages. This article details our approach at using human-supervised machine learning to study political campaign messages. Although some declare this technique too labor-intensive, it provides theoretical…
Teaching Sign Language to Hearing Children as a Possible Factor in Cognitive Enhancement
We describe an educational experience designed to teach Italian Sign Language (LIS) to a group of hearing children. The hypothesis underlying this experience was that learning a visual-gestural language such as LIS may improve children's attentional abilities, visual discrimination, and spatial memory. To examine this hypothesis, we conducted two studies. The first involved an educational experience lasting two years with a group of hearing child…
Sobre a importância de examinar diferentes ambientes onlineem estudos de deliberação
Diversos autores conceituam a Web 2.0como uma "ecologia complexa" a fim de apreender as novas configurações da esfera pública nas sociedades contemporâneas. Contudo, raros estudos desenvolvem uma caracterização sistemática da especificidade das condições de comunicação nos ambientes digitais. Este artigo tem por objetivo caracterizar, numa base comparativa, três espaços de conversação online: blogs, sitesde redes sociais (como o Facebook) e plata…
Authority and Deliberative Moments: Assessing Equality and Inequality in Deeply Divided Groups
The notion of equality is central to public deliberation, but few researches have examined how participants construct interactions in face-to-face group discussion involving unequal conditions of authority. This study analyses discussion between slum residents and police officers in Brazil, focusing on both reciprocal and hierarchical relationships in the flow of deliberation. It contributes to explain that the expression of authority is far from…
Pax Technica: How The Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up
No abstract available
Conversação e deliberação sobre questões sensíveis: Um Estudo Sobre O Uso Das Razões Que Circulam Nos Media
A discussão informal tem despertado crescente interesse em estudos sobre deliberação. Contudo, são raros os estudos que examinam o engajamento das pessoas em contextos conflitantes. Este artigo investiga o modo pelo qual sujeitos de grupos sociais em conflito fazem uso de razões concorrentes que circulam nos media para negociar suas opiniões sobre uma "questão sensível": a redução da maioridade penal. Para tanto, foram realizados cinco grupos de …
The relationship between race competitiveness, standing in the polls, and social media communication strategies during the 2014 U.S. gubernatorial campaigns
Political campaigns have been systematically using social media for strategic advantage. However, little is known about how competitiveness affects the ways candidates communicate online. Our study analyzes how race competitiveness as measured by polling performance influences candidates’ strategies on Twitter and Facebook. We analyze all social media messages of Republican and Democratic candidates in states that held gubernatorial elections in …
Giordano Bruno and Bonaventura Cavalieri's theories of indivisibles: A case of shared knowledge
At the turn of the seventeenth century, Bruno and Cavalieri independently developed two theories, central to which was the concept of the geometrical indivisible. The introduction of indivisibles had significant implications for geometry – especially in the case of Cavalieri, for whom indivisibles provided a forerunner of the calculus. But how did this event occur? What can we learn from the fact that two theories of indivisibles arose at about t…
Deliberation Across a Space of Reasons: Assessing Epistemic Changes in Group Discussions
Most research dealing with deliberation focuses on individual-level data, and the epistemic dimension of deliberation is rarely analyzed. Drawing on Habermas’s “space of reasons” account, we offer a novel analytical perspective on the variation in the stock of reasons in a given discussion, and disentangle how it transforms throughout the process. On the basis of data from face-to-face discussions involving two embattled groups in Brazil (police …
Social Media, Opinion Polls, and the Use of Persuasive Messages During the 2016 US Election Primaries
Political campaigns' use of digital technologies has been a topic of scholarly concern for over two decades, but most studies have been focused on analyzing the use of digital platforms without considering contextual factors of the race, like public opinion polls. Opinion polls are an important information source for citizens and candidates and provide the latter with information that might drive strategic communication. In this article, we explo…
Disentangling Uncivil and Intolerant Discourse in Online Political Talk
This chapter takes up the popular argument that much online discussion is toxic and necessarily harmful to democracy. It offers a more nuanced theory by disentangling uncivil from intolerant discourse, arguing that the former should be understood as a rhetorical act that is not in itself problematic, and that the latter is the true threat to democracy. This framework allows scholars to understand the extent to which online discussions represent a…
A circulação da (des)informação política no WhatsApp e no Facebook
As eleições de 2018 no Brasil colocaram em destaque a circulação de informação política e os impactos da desinformação na formação da opinião pública. O declínio da confiança nas notícias veiculadas pela grande mídia foi terreno fértil para o aumento das fake news, que atuaram fortemente na produção de conteúdos sobre as campanhas. Nesse contexto, também chamou a atenção a utilização dos sites de redes sociais (SRSs) e o serviço móvel de mensagen…
Does Anyone Talk About the Issues Anymore? The 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidates' Messaging on Facebook and Twitter
As campaigns use social media to communicate with the public, this study investigates the dynamics of issue and image construction by the U.S. presidential candidates during the primary stage of the 2016 presidential campaign. Using computational techniques to classify candidate posts by message type and topic, we study all posts by the 17 Republican and 5 Democratic candidates from Sept. 1, 2015 through March 31, 2016. We ask whether candidates …
‘Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour’ and Other Online Influence Operations in Social Media Spaces
Recently, major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have announced efforts to counter "coordinated inauthentic behaviour." However, scholarly research continues to provide evidence that coordinated human and automated accounts covertly seek to undermine and manipulate public debates on these platforms. Given the difficulties in obtaining data from these platforms to study these influence operations, and the significant challenge o…
A wall of incivility? Public discourse and immigration in the 2016 U.S. Primaries
This study uses computational methods to investigate public incivility in Facebook comments to campaign messages during the primaries of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, focusing on candidates’ posts about immigration. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between campaign messaging strategies, such as advocacy and attacks, and the presence of incivility in public comments. We find that Trump dominated both in terms of number of posts…
Changing conceptions of mathematics and infinity in Giordano Bruno’s vernacular and Latin works
Argument The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of Giordano Bruno’s conception of mathematics. Specifically, it intends to highlight two aspects of this conception that have been neglected in previous studies. First, Bruno’s conception of mathematics changed over time and in parallel with another concept that was central to his thought: the concept of infinity. Specifically, Bruno undertook a reform of mathematics in order to accommo…
Exploring the Relationship Between Campaign Discourse on Facebook and the Public’s Comments: A Case Study of Incivility During the 2016 US Presidential Election
Social media is now ubiquitously used by political campaigns, but less attention has been given to public discussions that take place on candidates’ free public accounts on social media. Also unclear is whether there is a relationship between campaign messaging and the tone of public comments. To address this gap, this article analyzes public comments on Facebook accounts of candidates Trump and Clinton during the US election presidential debates…
Characterizing Disagreement in Online Political Talk: Examining Incivility and Opinion Expression on News Websites and Facebook in Brazil
This paper examines the ways people engage in political conversation triggered by exposure to political news in two different informal platforms in Brazil: Facebook and news websites. We analyze the extent to which disagreement is associated to discursive traits that are commonly associated with deliberative behavior, such as directly engaging with others, and trying to justify one’s views, and negative traits, such as incivility. The contributio…
Staying in Their Lanes: Issue Ownership in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaigns on Facebook and Twitter
Prior research has identified issue-ownership across partisan lines, with Republicans seen to focus on issues such as taxes and national defense, and Democrats more likely to focus on social issues and welfare. Given the complexities of the primary race, with candidates aiming to differentiate themselves within their own party, we ask whether the candidates in both parties engage in creating “lanes” by owning specific policy topics. Use supervise…
Flexible versus structured support for reasoning: Enhancing analytical reasoning through a flexible analytic technique
Structured analytic techniques (SATs) help the intelligence community reduce flaws in cognition that lead to faulty reasoning. To ascertain whether SATs provide benefits to reasoning we conducted an experiment within a web-based application, comparing three conditions: 1) unaided reasoning, 2) a prototypical order-based SAT and 3) a flexible, process-based SAT that we call TRACE. Our findings suggest that the more flexible SAT generated higher qu…
More than “Fake News: The media as a malicious gatekeeper and a bully in the discourse of candidates in the 2020 U.S. presidential election
While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on seve…
Identifying how Covid-19-related misinformation reacts to the announcement of the UK national lockdown: An interrupted time-series study
COVID-19 is unique in that it is the first global pandemic occurring amidst a crowded information environment that has facilitated the proliferation of misinformation on social media. Dangerous misleading narratives have the potential to disrupt 'official' information sharing at major government announcements. Using an interrupted time-series design, we test the impact of the announcement of the first UK lockdown (8-8.30 p.m. 23 March 2020) on sh…
Political Messaging Over Time: A Comparison of US Presidential Candidate Facebook Posts and Tweets in 2016 and 2020
Political campaigns have a temporal nature, which means that the strategic environment shapes the nature of candidate communication, especially the stages of campaigning-from surfacing to the general election. As social media platforms have matured and political campaigns have normalized their use of those platforms in this decade, this study examines the 2016 and 2020 US presidential campaign communication on Facebook and Twitter using data from…
More Than Just Shouting? Distinguishing Interpersonal-Directed and Elite-Directed Incivility in Online Political Talk
Online political talk is often deemed toxic to democracy due to the pervasiveness of incivility. This study challenges this perspective by examining the discursive and contextual conditions related to interpersonal incivility in contrast with incivility targeted at political elites on Facebook comments and news websites. Findings suggest that much of the vitriol online is targeted at politicians and characterized by justified opinions. Interperso…
Beyond Incivility: Understanding Patterns of Uncivil and Intolerant Discourse in Online Political Talk
This article takes up the popular argument that much online discussion is toxic and hence harmful to democracy, and argues that the pervasiveness of incivility is not incompatible with democratically relevant political talk. Instead of focusing on the tone of political talk, scholars interested in understanding the extent to which digital platforms threaten democratic values should focus on expressions of intolerance. I demonstrate the validity o…
Introduction: The Idiosyncratic Nature of Renaissance Mathematics
Ever since its foundation in 1540, the Society of Jesus had had one mission—to restore order where Luther, Calvin and the other instigators of the Reformation had brought chaos. To stop the hemorrhage of believers, the Jesuits needed to form a united front. No signs of internal disagreement could to be shown to the outside world, lest the congregation lose its credibility. But in 1570s two prominent Jesuits, Cristophorus Clavius and Benito Perera…
Social Media and Politics (32 works) · Political science (28 works) · Politics (25 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Public relations (18 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Media Studies and Communication (15 works) · Social media (15 works) · Computer Science (13 works)