Check out NYU Florence student Natalia Ramirez’s profile of Professor Joshua Tucker here and find out how to apply to become an undergraduate research assistant at the SMaPP lab at NYU!

Join us for the Social Media and Political Participation conference, being live streamed now!

NYU Florence student Natalia Ramirez interviewed Professor Cristian Vaccari in the lead up to this Friday and Saturday’s Social Media and Political Participation conference.

In your opinion, is social media expanding the range of voices in political discourse, or concentrating it?

To some extent both, especially if compared with the mass media age when the production and gatekeeping of mediated messages was a monopoly in the hands of owners, editors, and journalists. Now more people can express their voice in public space than used to be the case in the past. That being said, there is no question that the Internet and social media are environments where attention is scarce and visibility is highly concentrated, so a very select few social media users will get most people´s attention and the vast majority will get close to zero.

Read the full interview here. Join us this Friday and Saturday for the conference. It will be live streamed here. Rsvp at lapietra.dialogues@nyu.edu.

by Scott Cairns, NYU ’15

People have been meeting in book clubs, fantasy football leagues, and at their children’s soccer games long before the advent of the internet, so to say that social networks did not exist before the digital age would be a lie. It wasn’t, however, until online social networks became a ‘must-have’ that a massive protest movement like the Arab Spring or the worldwide Occupy movement really could become possible. The difference in the size can only be explained by people who previously were not involved in any ‘real world’ (non-digital) social network coming together and mobilizing across the world. It made such a difference in Egypt that a newborn baby in Egypt was christened ‘Facebook’ by his parents.

The difference, in my opinion, is the sheer amount of little social networks that one can belong to on the internet, rather than in person. From personal experience, I can tell you that it is impossible to be in two places at once. No matter how much one enjoys cooking and mystery novels, he or she cannot be at a book club AND a cooking class if they both meet once a week on Friday night. What he or she CAN do, however, is follow favorite authors on Twitter and ‘like’ them on Facebook, effortlessly and simultaneously connecting to others with the same interests. Chain about twenty or more of these little online book clubs and cooking classes together and the numbers begin to add up fast. Social clubs are not exclusive on the internet: you can belong to as many social networks with as many like-minded individuals as you like online, where people are meeting not once a week but 24/7.

Eva Anduiza of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a speaker at this coming Friday’s conference on Social Media and Political Participation touches on this a bit in the abstract of her upcoming paper, ‘Connective Action and European Mass Protest,’ where she talks of the internet’s potential to create ‘individual linkages through the personalization of collective frames.’ Essentially, Twitters and Facebooks are the ultimate personalizers of the social experience. Like a large scale version of online dating, everyone is now simultaneously friends with or followers of people just like them with the same interests, opinions, and dreams for their country or world.
—
To learn more about our upcoming conference on Social Media and Political Participation, click here.

To join the conference conversation on social media, click here.

To learn more about the latest research at NYU in the field of social media and political participation, click here visit the online lab of NYU Professor and conference organizer Joshua Tucker.

 By Ann Schmidt, NYU ’16

As social media’s presence in society increases and connects people, its effects in the political realm have become a point of interest and importance for political analysts. The potential effects that social media could have, or already have, are extremely interesting and will shape the future of society through connections and communications in ways that weren’t even imaginable just 20 years ago.

One of the most interesting effects of social media in the political realm involves the power that social networking has to get people more politically involved. This issue will be addressed by Eva Anduiza and Alexey Makarin at the conference on May 10^th and 11^th.

The potential of this power that leaders could have to change and shape society would open many doors because as people find they are more willing to work for a cause they can connect with, the more power the leaders of that cause hold. I see this as being a potential for a globalization of politics like no other in the past. Unity is something that people feel as they use social media and that feeling of unity is something that is, and will continue to be, extremely useful in the political realm.

By Max Fiedziukiewicz, NYU ’16

How often do you use your computer? An hour a day? Maybe two? Perhaps five? We live in a time that has completely forgotten the stone ages, those barbaric days, when the Internet wasn’t around, and your phone reminded you of an oversized brick. For people in my generation, life without the Internet seems impossible. Sometimes we forget to recognize the kind of sweeping force with which the Internet came and changed the game. Professor Tufekci from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill will come to remind us how the Internet has changed politics and whether that it is a good or bad thing, or both. Interested in the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall-street movements? Then come join us this Saturday at 9am to hear how the Internet has done more then just influenced our social communications.