Social Media and Civic Engagement. Scott P. Robertson

       History, Theory, and Practice

       Scott P. Robertson

      University of Hawaii at Manoa

       SYNTHESIS LECTURES ON HUMAN-CENTERED INFORMATICS #40

       ABSTRACT

      Social media platforms are the latest manifestation in a series of sociotechnical innovations designed to enhance civic engagement, political participation, and global activism. While many researchers started out as optimists about the promise of social media for broadening participation and enhancing civic engagement, recent events have tempered that optimism. As this book goes to press, Facebook is fighting a battle over the massive disclosure of user information during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, social analytics company Cambridge Analytica is being revealed as a major player in micro profiling voters in that same election, bots and fake news factories are undermining democratic discourse via social media worldwide, and the president of the United States is unnerving the world as a stream-of-consciousness Twitter user.

      This book is a foundational review of current research on social media and civic engagement organized in terms of history, theory, practice, and challenges. History reviews how researchers and developers have continuously pushed the envelope to explore technology enhancements for political and social discourse. Theory reveals that the use of globally-networked social technologies touches many fields including political science, sociology, psychology, media studies, network science, and more. Practice is examined through studies of political engagement both in democratic situations and in confrontational situations. Challenges are identified in order to find ways forward.

      For better or worse, social media for civic engagement has come of age. Citizens, politicians, and activists are utilizing social media in innovative ways, while bad actors are discovering possibilities for spreading dissention and undermining trust. We are at a sobering inflection point, and this book is your foundation for understanding how we got here and where we are going.

       KEYWORDS

      social media, civic engagement, social capital, digital cities, smart cities, urban informatics, digital activism, protest

      Contents

       Preface

       Acknowledgments

       1 Introduction

       1.1 Technology and the Public Sphere

       1.2 Civic Engagement

       1.3 Social Media

       1.4 Organization

       2 History

       2.1 Digital Cities

       2.2 E-Government Portals

       2.3 Open Government

       2.4 Smart Cities, “Civic Tech,” and Urban Informatics

       2.5 Hyperlocal Social Media

       2.6 Summary

       3 Theory

       3.1 Public Sphere

       3.2 Social Capital and Civil Society

       3.3 Networked Self and Context Collapse

       3.4 Uses and Gratifications

       3.5 Agenda Setting and Framing

       3.6 Structuration

       3.7 Actor-Network Theory

       3.8 Information Diffusion

       3.9 Summary

       4 Engagement

       4.1 Political Participation

       4.2 Candidates, Politicians, and Political Parties

       4.2.1 Audience and Microtargeting

       4.2.2 Agenda Setting and Framing

       4.3 Citizens, Constituents, and Voters

       4.3.1 Information Seeking

       4.3.2 Citizen-to-Politician

       4.3.3 Citizen-to-Citizen

       4.3.4 Social Watching

       4.4 Activism and Protest

       4.5 Summary

       5 Challenges

       5.1 Homophily and Polarization

       5.2 Equity

       5.3 Transparency and Trust

       5.4 Fake News, Misinformation, and Propaganda

       5.5 Summary

       6 Epilogue

       Bibliography

       Author Biography

       Preface

      At this moment, Facebook is fighting a battle over a massive disclosure of personal information about essentially all of its users during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign; the social analytics company Cambridge Analytica is being revealed as a major player in microprofiling voters in that same election; the role of Russian bots and fake news factories in undermining democratic discourse in social media worldwide is being revealed; and the president of the U.S. is unnerving the world as a frequent stream-of-consciousness Twitter user. It is basically impossible to keep up with the rapid changes that the internet in general, and social media applications in particular, are bringing to the arenas of political discourse and civic engagement. Meanwhile, the Pew Internet and American Life Project generates a new report on social media use just about every week, and every HCI, CSCW, sociotechnical, and digital government conference brings on a slew of papers on exactly the topic of this book. This has made writing about social media and civic engagement a challenging task.

      The first impression that many readers will probably have in browsing the contents is, “What about X?,” where X is the latest thing that happened after mid-2018. Consequently, my strategy here is to bring together research to date on the internet,