Media systems are embedded in democracy and thus implicated in the current decline of democracy
In the interdisciplinary field of misinformation and disinformation studies, there has been no consistent answer to the question of ‘what can and should platforms be responsible for in the context of democratic decay’ (i.e., a context in which democratic institutions, structures, norms, and governance are eroding)? In this paper, Kreiss and Barrett take up this question in light of several relevant literatures on democracies in transition towards more authoritarian or ‘hybrid’ regimes, or more broadly, literatures examining the deterioration of core democratic processes, institutions, and governance mechanisms.
Our review of this literature reveals that we lack good theoretical and empirical understandings of media systems in relation to democratic decay, especially the roles played by platforms. To address this, the authors conceptually outline several indirect effects of platforms on democratic decay, focusing on their roles in shaping public opinion and political institutions. In doing so they bring two academic literatures together: 1) work on democratic decay that often fails to consider media and platforms, and 2) work on platforms that often focuses narrowly on public opinion and attitudes, overlooking institutional democratic processes
Political identities are communicatively constructed through candidates' attempts to woo constituents
This study develops the concept of identity ownership to explain how, in the course of electioneering, candidates perform their own identities to align with groups whose support they seek. We frame this from a communication perspective—media are increasingly central sites for constructing and conveying the identity of candidates and the groups of constituents they seek to represent. In developing this model, we seek to bring this identity-based framework more to the fore in communication research, as well as place communication at the center of studies of social identity. We argue that seeing political identities as dynamic and actively performed provides an opportunity to analyze communications based not only on their informational value but also on their identity value.
Social media professionals are shaping American political strategies
This article offers the first analysis of the role that technology companies, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google, play in shaping the political communication of electoral campaigns in the United States. We offer an empirical analysis of the work technology firms do around electoral politics through interviews with staffers at these firms and digital and social media directors of 2016 U.S. presidential primary and general election campaigns, in addition to field observations at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. We find that technology firms are motivated to work in the political space for marketing, advertising revenue, and relationship-building in the service of lobbying efforts. To facilitate this, these firms have developed organizational structures and staffing patterns that accord with the partisan nature of American politics. Furthermore, Facebook, Twitter, and Google go beyond promoting their services and facilitating digital advertising buys, actively shaping campaign communication through their close collaboration with political staffers. We show how representatives at these firms serve as quasi-digital consultants to campaigns, shaping digital strategy, content, and execution. Given this, we argue that political communication scholars need to consider social media firms as more active agents in political processes than previously appreciated in the literature.