{"id":6126,"date":"2023-05-24T17:08:28","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/apsa2023\/?page_id=6126"},"modified":"2023-08-11T09:00:03","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T09:00:03","slug":"theme-panels","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/apsa2023\/theme-panels\/","title":{"rendered":"Theme Panels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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APSA Theme Panels<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

APSA Annual Meeting theme panels are a great opportunity for scholars to gather for sessions and workshops, create valuable connections and research partnerships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

APSA and the 2023 program co-chairs, Zolt\u00e1n B\u00faz\u00e1s, University of Notre Dame, and Felicity Vabulas, Pepperdine University, look forward to your participation in panels and sessions prepared by APSA\u2019s divisions and numerous related groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Browse the Online Program<\/span><\/a> for more event details \u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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119th Presidential Address: Global Governance Confronts the Onslaught of Disinformation<\/h4><\/div>
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Thursday, August 31, 6:30 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants:<\/strong>
(Presenter)<\/em> APSA President Lisa L. Martin, University of Wisconsin, Madison<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Plenary: Mis- and Disinformation in an Age of Human Rights<\/h4><\/div>
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Friday, September 1, 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Roundtable<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants:<\/strong>
(Moderator)<\/em> Beth A. Simmons, University of Pennsylvania; (Presenters<\/em>) Suparna Chaudry, Lewis & Clark College; Adela Levis, U.S. Department of State; Amanda Murdie, University of Georgia; Kenneth Roth, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; Jack Snyder, Columbia University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>Political communication can be fraught with mis- and disinformation, with crucial consequences for human rights. Misinformation related to covid-19, for example, undercuts the right to health. Election-related disinformation corrodes the right to free and fair elections. Falsehoods that amplify hatred against racial and ethnic, religious, or political minorities violate the right to non-discrimination and freedom of religion. At the same time, apparent attempts to fight mis- and disinformation could be employed against political opponents and critical journalists, undermining the right to assembly, free speech and freedom of the press. Our plenary panel will focus on rights and responsibilities in a world of mis- and disinformation. How can we conceive of and undertake our work and civic responsibilities in ways that lower the harm of mis- and disinformation? How should we rethink complex governance structures, political communication, democracy, algorithms, or freedom of expression, if at all? This panel aims to bring together a diverse group of political scientists, representatives of big tech, government officials, and members of nonprofits to grapple with problems and solutions posed by dis- and misinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Plenary: The Debate over \u201cNational Conservatism\u201d<\/h4><\/div>
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Friday, September 1, 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Roundtable

Participants<\/strong>:
(Moderator)<\/em> Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania; (Presenters) <\/em>Phillip Munoz, University of Notre Dame; Charles Kesler, Claremont McKenna College; Saurabh Sharma, American Moment; Emily Jashinsky, The Federalist; Carol Swain, Texas Public Policy Foundation; Lucas E. Morel, Washington & Lee University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>Surveys regularly show that modern academic disciplines and institutions are primarily populated by liberals, so conservatives often contend that their views are not well understood or represented in fields like political science. This plenary panel aims to deepen understanding of contemporary conservatism by focusing on the rise of \u201cNational Conservatism.\u201d The National Conservative movement has held a series of international conferences since 2019, and in 2022 over 80 leading conservative academics and public intellectuals from the U.S. and 10 other nations joined in endorsing a 10-point National Conservatism \u201cStatement of Principles.\u201d It rejects \u201cuniversalist ideologies\u201d such as \u201cliberal imperialism\u201d and \u201cglobalism\u201d in favor of \u201cupholding national traditions.\u201d Other conservatives have criticized the National Conservatives, some contending that the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of universalistic religious faiths deserve more allegiance than nation-states. This panel will include leading voices from inside and outside academia who represent both National Conservatism\u2019s adherents and its conservative critics, so that political scientists can better grasp the themes and debates characterizing conservatism in the U.S. and many other nations today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Breaking News: Examining CRT & DEI Mis(Dis)Information: The Intellectual, Policy, and Political Implications in the Academy and Beyond<\/h4><\/div>
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Friday, September 1, 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Roundtable<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Participants<\/strong>: (Presenters) Periloux Peay, University of Oklahoma; Loan K. Le, Institute for Good Government & Inclusion; Sergio C. Wals, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Jessica L. Lavariega Monforti, California State University Channel Islands; Courtenay W. Daum, Colorado State University; Liz Norell, University of Mississippi; Kaitlin Kelly-Thompson, Simon Fraser University<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Session Description:<\/strong> Over the past several years, both attention to and recognition of systemic inequities that create marginalization based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, ability and more have grown. Simultaneously, there is growing hostility to attempts to identify and ameliorate past and present inequities. This backlash has resulted in significant social and political attacks on explanations of those inequities (e.g., Critical Race Theory [CRT]), as well as efforts developed to ameliorate the inequities themselves (e.g., Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion [DEI] measures). This hostility is driven by mis- and dis-information campaigns, and a significant amount of ire is currently targeted at higher education (in particular, scholars that engage with DEI work and CRT), as well as professors from marginalized identity groups (regardless of the focus of their research). This roundtable will include a discussion of the current state of these attacks and their effects on scholars, higher education, and society as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Breaking News: Generative AI and the Future of Political Science<\/h4><\/div>
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Saturday, September 2, 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Roundtable<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants: <\/strong>(Moderator) <\/em>Julie George, Cornell University (Presenters)<\/em>: Josh A. Goldstein, Georgetown University; Todd C. Helmus, RAND Corporation; Michael R. Tomz, Stanford University; Filippo Trevisan, American University; Nicole Wu, University of Toronto; Baobao Zhang, Cornell University<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Session Description: <\/strong>One of the fastest changes in political science research, teaching, and practice over the past year has been the rapid ascendency of generative artificial intelligence (AI). Tools like Chat GPT stand to change the way we think about and \u201cdo\u201d political science. This panel engages with an emerging set of questions as we consider how AI will change the traditional landscape of political science. What are the ethical implications of generative AI in the classroom, in our careers, and throughout political processes? What are the threats that generative AI might pose to critical thinking? What opportunities could generative AI present for shattering worn-out practices, and how can we capture those benefits? Perhaps most importantly for the theme of the conference, how might generative AI create challenges for an increasingly polarized world that is rife with mis- and disinformation? And might generative AI provoke human rights concerns that upstage some of today\u2019s most difficult dilemmas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Breaking News: The Supreme Court and the Future of Affirmative Action<\/h4><\/div>
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Thursday, August 31, 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Roundtable<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants: <\/strong>(Moderator)<\/em> Paula D. McClain, Duke University (Presenters)<\/em> Jonathan Feingold, Boston University School of Law; Ricardo Ramirez, University of Notre Dame; Deondra Rose, Duke University; Richard Henry Sander, UCLA School of Law; Michele Siqueiros, Campaign for College Opportunity;  Janelle Wong

Session Description:<\/strong> The most anticipated Supreme Court rulings this summer include two cases pertaining to affirmative action\u2013students for Fair Admissions (SEFA) v. University of North Carolina and SEFA v. Harvard University. The oral arguments suggest that the court will strike down or at least weaken considerations of race in school admissions. This panel engages with a number of timely questions related to these rulings: Did the Supreme Court\u2019s rulings validate these expectations? To what extent do these most recent rulings depart from the court\u2019s precedent? What are the effects on student bodies, especially at elite institutions and HBCUs? How will universities respond to these rulings? Are there suitable race-neutral alternatives that will ensure the diversity of student populations? How do these rulings shape our understanding of racial discrimination? What are the implications beyond higher education?
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Author Meets Critics: Wendy H. Wong’s “We, the Data: Claiming Human Rights in the Digital Age”<\/h4><\/div>
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Author Meets Critics<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants:<\/strong>
(Chair)<\/em> Swati Srivastava, Purdue University
(Presenter)<\/em> Henry Farrell, Johns Hopkins University
(Presenter)<\/em> Ann Marie Clark, Purdue University
(Presenter)<\/em> Robert Gorwa, University of Oxford
(Presenter)<\/em> Heather M. Smith-Cannoy, Arizona State University
(Presenter)<\/em> Swati Srivastava, Purdue University
(Presenter)<\/em> Wendy H. Wong, University of British Columbia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:<\/strong>
This is an Author Meets Critics roundtable for Wendy H. Wong\u2019s new book, \u201cWe, the Data: Claiming Human Rights in the Digital Age,\u201d which will be published by MIT Press in 2023. The book provides an insightful argument that shows why human rights are critical to thinking about how data-intensive technologies, such as \u201csmart\u201d devices and artificial intelligence, are fundamentally changing how we exist. The rapid proliferation of technologies such as AI, and the growth of massive datasets about people has made all of us \u201cdata subjects\u201d and not stakeholders in the process of datafication. The global human rights framework, which provides a baseline for protecting human lives, is struggling with how to grapple with shifts created by data. As Wong argues, data are \u201csticky\u201d in the way gum gets stuck on the bottom of your shoe: easy to happen, difficult to remove. From facial recognition technologies to datafied daily behaviors, or the rise of platform governance to the effectively \u201cforever\u201d quality of data, data are posing massive challenges to how we practice fundamental human rights, such as the freedom of expression or freedom of association. Wong argues that we must go back to the foundations of human rights \u2013 autonomy, dignity, equality, and community (brotherhood) \u2013 to think through the design of human rights-respecting policy around emerging technologies. Finally, she argues that a new human right to data literacy is the key to creating more data stakeholders and overcoming the stickiness of data. A collection of senior (Clark, Farrell, Smith-Cannoy) and junior (Srivastava, Gorwa) scholars will respond to Wong\u2019s argument and suggest avenues for future research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book roundtable connects to the theme of rights and responsibilities in an age of mis- and disinformation in multiple ways. First, data flows are central to mis- and disinformation campaigns and intervention. Correspondingly, the roundtable will unpack the dueling rights of data subjects in relation to speech and information access that is at the heart of governance. Second, Wong\u2019s book is among the first political science studies of digital rights entirely within an international human rights framework. Its emphasis on global governance challenges and responses engages directly with questions relevant to the theme, namely: \u201chow can we rethink complex governance structures and grapple with the reality of power dynamics in an accurate and critical way, while taking a diversity of voices, perspectives and methodological approaches into consideration?\u201d Third, the roundtable features scholars who will extend and critique Wong\u2019s insights from perspectives rooted in technology governance (Farrell, Gorwa), human rights and global justice (Clark, Smith-Cannoy), and Big Tech power (Srivastava). These interlocutors will respond to the theme\u2019s call to examine how governments, civil society, and technology corporations all play a role individually and interact collectively to identify, mitigate, and protect digital rights as well as the trade-offs therein.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Celebrating 50 Years of Queer Scholarship at APSA Mini-Conference: Combatting Anti-Queer Narratives and Mis-\/Disinformation through Activism, Mobilization, and Expression<\/h4><\/div>
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Virtual Panel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Chair) Calla Hummel, University of Miami <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Discussant) Phillip M. Ayoub, University College London <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Activists and social movements have fought for decades to expand LGBTQ+ rights in countries across the world. LGBTQ+ social movements, activists, and politicians have borrowed and innovated dozens of strategies to expand rights and address local issues. Some movements and strategies have been remarkably successful, and many have faced backlash and setbacks. The papers in this panel address the mechanisms of LGBTQ+ rights expansion and their effects on political participation in communities around the globe. These projects address important themes and cases in LGBTQ+ activism around the world. As LGBTQ+ movements grow and activists manage organized backlash, the papers present key implications for civil rights and minority political participation more generally. Samer Anabtawi traces the history of queerphobic narratives that cast LGBTQ+ people as an outgroup and how those narratives continue to affect activism. Anabtawi develops the case of political homophobia and queer activism in Palestine to illustrate the impacts of dominant narratives on LGBTQ+ movements. Cassy Dorff, Tara McKay, and Lauren Chojnacki use a survey of LGBTQ+ elders in the American South to evaluate the lifetime political participation effects of victimization on LGBTQ+ people. They find that victimization increases political participation, especially when victimization is highly personal. Kristopher Velasco argues that the uneven progress of LGBTQ+ social movements is due in part to the different dimensions of personhood that specific rights and legislation address, and how legitimate those dimensions are in different contexts. Haley Norris examines the role of LGBTQ+ caucuses in enhancing minority power within national legislatures in the UK, the US, and Canada. Through network analysis, they find that caucuses enhance the descriptive representation of LGBTQ+ politicians and connect these representatives to transnational LGBTQ+ politics. Calla Hummel and Sarah Berens investigate remittances as a conduit for LGBTQ+ rights expansion. They find in interviews, survey data, and a survey experiment that when people receive remittances from LGBTQ+ family members, they increase their support for local LGBTQ+ rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracing the Impact of Queerphobic Narratives on Contemporary LGBTIQ+ Politics<\/h4><\/div>
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Samer Anabtawi, University College London<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nefarious claims and harmful stereotypes against LGBTIQ+ individuals and communities often predate the visible emergence of an LGBTIQ+ rights movement. While queer- and transphobic discourses evolve over time, the early narratives that construct queer and transgender people as \u201coutgroups\u201d receive little attention in analyses of contemporary movement dynamics. A growing number of studies examine the historical legacies of marginalization and scapegoating by powerful political forces, yet much of this work focuses on the United States and Western Europe. In this paper, I will explore how early queerphobic discourses affect nascent LGBTIQ+ communities and queer activism. Specifically, I will examine the rise of political homophobia in Palestine beginning in the 1980s and trace its various impacts on queer Palestinians and the trajectory of queer and trans activism in Palestine and beyond. The study relies on archived documents, interviews, and thematic analysis to identify dominant narratives and their ongoing impacts on LGBTQ politics in the Arab region. This paper will contribute to a better understanding of the nuances and complexities of LGBTIQ+ rights movements in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Pride and Protest: Victimization and Political Participation of LGBTQ+ People<\/h4><\/div>
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Cassy Dorff, Vanderbilt University; Tara McKay, Vanderbilt University; Lauren Chojnacki, Vanderbilt University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a member of a minority group shapes political experiences, viewpoints, and behaviors. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people are more likely to vote compared to the general population. LGBTQ+ people also participate in high-cost political events, such as protests, more often than non-LGBTQ+ people despite greater personal risks and the presence of other physical and mental health disparities that traditionally dampen political participation. This article explores one potential reason LGBTQ+ people may be spurred to participate in costly political acts: victimization. Using a novel survey of 1,256 older LGBTQ+ people living in the American South, we provide evidence that experiencing victimization events such as harassment and discrimination can increase political participation. We further show that there is meaningful variation along two dimensions that affects participation outcomes within the LGBTQ+ population: how often the person was exposed to victimization events over their life-course and how proximate (or personal) the nature of those events were. Individuals who are exposed to more frequent, and more proximate events turnout to protest at rates higher than those with more infrequent and impersonal victimization events.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Logics of Queer Justice: Disaggregating Pathways for Rights<\/h4><\/div>
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Kristopher Velasco, Princeton University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All movements experience uneven progress and setback \u2013 resulting in contradictory policy environments. Consequently, it is important to disaggregate movements for internal comparisons to understand and overcome such contradictions. This is especially important for global movements to advance LGBT+ rights as countries commonly enact some progressive reforms yet maintain other discriminatory policies. Why? I argue that while articulated as a single cause, global LGBT+ advocacy advances distinct, though interrelated, dimensions of personhood: sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics, and sexual behaviors. Each dimension varies in its recognition as a legitimate form of personhood and this variation helps explain contradictory policy environments. Moreover, known strategies for advancing rights by conferring such legitimacy (e.g., transnational movements, international norms, human rights treaties) may be more amenable to some dimensions over others. I demonstrate this argument by comparing the adoption of rights based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and homosexual behaviors across 152 countries between 1991 and 2019. Results from seemingly unrelated regressions find that known transnational pathways for recognizing personhood and, thus, securing rights vary significantly across each dimension. Findings from this study illuminate why contradictory policy environments exist and how strategies to advance one aspect of LGBT+ rights may hinder others.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Role of LGBTQ+ Legislative Caucuses in the UK, US, and Canada<\/h4><\/div>
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Haley V. Norris, Rutgers University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caucuses are a way for marginalized groups to build institutional power. The role of both women\u2019s and racial\/ethnic minority caucuses have been studied in the American and Comparative contexts\u2014and research shows that these spaces facilitate information sharing, networking, and further marginalized group representation. The role of LGBTQ+ parliamentary caucuses is understudied. This paper traces the history and legislative power of three such caucuses in the UK, US, and Canada. Operating in different political systems and with unique histories of institutionalization, this comparative analysis will provide information on the ways that LGBTQ+ descriptive representatives and their allies work to bring LGBTQ+ issues to the forefront in legislative bodies. The first portion of the paper draws attention to this history and opens up future research on the gender and sexuality norms in caucuses. In the second portion of the paper, I evaluate the differences between international and domestic advocacy strategies to determine how LGBTQ representatives mobilize identity for different audiences. Of particular interest is the tool of \u201cgay diplomacy\u201d\u2014the use of sanctions against norm violating countries. One example of this is the recent case of American citizen Brittney Griner\u2019s detainment by Russian authorities. The UK and Canada both participate in Commonwealth activities\u2014making their international advocacy more institutionalized than it is in the US. Using these three cases, I seek to explore two questions: (1) How do LGBTQ representatives advocate for domestic versus international community issues; and (2) How do LGBTQ representatives challenge cisheteronormativity of the legislative space through their advocacy efforts in LGBTQ caucuses? The purpose of this paper is to document the interplay between domestic and international LGBTQ rights advocacy, furthering our understanding of how sexual orientation and gender identity have become a globalized rights project. This paper will contribute to queer scholarship critiquing homonormative representation, LGBT political science\u2019s empirical understanding of political representation, and comparative analyses of institutional norms.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Do Remittances Increase Support for LGBTQ+ Rights?<\/h4><\/div>
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Calla Hummel, University of Miami; Sarah Berens, University of Innsbruck<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Migrants send billions of dollars in remittances to family members every year. Many of those migrants are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans (LGBTQ+) people who migrated to countries with more protections for LGBTQ+ communities than their home countries. Researchers have studied the economic effects of remittances on migrants\u2019 home countries and are beginning to look at the social effects. Research shows that remittances influence voting, political engagement, and beliefs. Do remittances increase support for LGBTQ+ rights? We argue that relying financially on LGBTQ+ migrants pushes family members to re-examine their beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and the rights they should have in society. We theorize that LGBTQ+ migrants send social as well as economic remittances to relatives in their home countries. We hypothesize that social and economic remittances can travel through three pathways: 1) where relatives rely on LGBTQ+ migrants\u2019 remittances, they are more likely to accept their identities; 2) where relatives see LGBTQ+ migrants being successful in another country, they are more likely to support LGBTQ+ rights in the home country; 3) where LGBTQ+ migrants tell relatives about rights and protections in the host country, relatives are more likely to support similar rights in the home country. To evaluate the hypotheses, we use interviews in Miami, FL and Santiago, Chile, LAPOP data, and a survey with embedded experiments in Mexico. We find a connection between receiving remittances and support for LGBTQ+ rights. In interviews, gay and trans migrants explained that they carefully read about different laws and chose which country to migrate to based on countries\u2019 LGBTQ+ protections. They also recounted that when their families needed money and saw their success, they became more accepting of their gay and trans identities. We find a strong connection between receiving remittances and increased support for LGBTQ+ rights in LAPOP data \u2013 even after controlling for age, gender, religiosity, education, and location. We are currently developing a survey with embedded experiments to evaluate the proposed mechanisms. We plan to sample 2000 people in Mexico in early 2023 who receive remittances from either LGBTQ+ or heterosexual relatives and run a conjoint experiment on the LGBTQ+ policies that these families support.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Civic Education in an Era of Misinformation<\/h4><\/div>
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Created Panel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants:<\/strong>
(Chair) <\/em>Mary A. McHugh, Merrimack College
(Discussant)<\/em> Elizabeth C. Matto, Rutgers University, New Brunswick<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:<\/strong>
Middle and high school civic educators are faced with significant challenges. They must navigate a classroom environment where misinformation proliferates from a range of sources, including news, social media, and the students themselves. At the same time, positive youth development approaches seek to give students a responsible voice in decision-making. This panel assesses strategies that civic educators employ to deal with misinformation and promote responsible political engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confronting Misinformation in the Civics Classroom<\/h4><\/div>
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Diana M. Owen, Georgetown University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middle and high school civics, social studies, and American government teachers routinely confront misinformation in their classrooms from a range of sources. Given the nature of their subject matter, civics teachers often find themselves on the front lines of the battle against misinformation. They can combat misinformation by teaching students to become critical consumers of news. They can promote responsible civic engagement by educating students to be producers and disseminators of reliable information. Classroom curriculum interventions, online resources, and digital tools have been developed to assist teachers in helping students to identify false facts and build information literacy. At the same time, this role can be contentious as critics accuse teachers of indoctrination and even threaten their jobs. This study explores teachers\u2019 perspectives on misinformation as a problem for classroom instruction. An original national survey of secondary school civics teachers conducted by the Civic Education Research Lab (CERL) at Georgetown University in 2021 is employed to address the following research questions: To what extent do teachers perceive misinformation to be a problem in their classrooms? To what extent do teachers feel it is their responsibility to confront misinformation? What types of curriculum interventions and tools do teachers employ to deal with misinformation? How effective do teachers feel these tools are in combatting misinformation? This study builds on prior research from this study (Owen, et al., 2022) that found significant differences in teachers\u2019 perspectives on misinformation based on their personal, professional, and school characteristics. Most teachers consider misinformation to be a major problem in society and the classroom. Many feel a strong sense of responsibility to educate students about misinformation and adopt instructional strategies to counter the problem. They regularly use online resources and digital tools to educate students about misinformation. While teachers readily counter misinformation from news stories, they are more reluctant to correct falsehoods from social media and students. Reference: Owen, Diana, Mary Margaret Herring, Erin Moroney, Weijia Ren, and Zoe Chen Zhao. 2022. Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL and Virtually, April 4.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Does Digital Competence Matter for Civic Engagement? <\/h4><\/div>
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Frank Reichert, The University of Hong Kong<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital technology permeates all sectors of life, including civic and political spaces. Thus, it is often argued that individuals must develop the digital skills and competencies needed for successful participation in their roles as citizens in the digital era. The development of digital skills and competencies may be influenced by the uses of digital devices, especially during adolescence, when young people extensively engage with digital media. However, are digital competencies (or their absence) associated with civic communication and engagement? Is excessive internet use linked to specific patterns of civic communication and engagement? This paper examines these questions with data from a two-wave panel study of secondary school students in Hong Kong. Schools in four Hong Kong districts and intact classes within each school were randomly sampled. In 2019, seventh- and ninth-grade students from 14 schools participated in the study, and ninth- and eleventh-grade students from 11 of the same schools took part in the study in 2021. In each wave, over 1,000 students completed the study, with 600 students who participated at both times. Among other aspects, students reported their online and offline civic participation, the frequency with which they engaged in civic communication online and offline, and whether they used the internet excessively. Students also completed a reliable, age-appropriate, and comparable digital competence test based on the European Commission\u2019s Digital Competence Framework for Citizens. The statistical analysis examines the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between civic participation, civic communication, internet use, and digital competence through structural equation modeling and cross-lagged analyses. The results demonstrate the value of digital competence education for civic communication and engagement. The findings are discussed with respect to the potential of digital competence education for tackling depoliticization, as well as in the larger context of tackling issues such as polarization and the prevalence of biased information on the internet.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Democratic Experiments: High Schools as Practice Grounds for Civic Engagement <\/h4><\/div>
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Richard M. Battistoni, Providence College<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so intrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of \u201ctelling\u201d and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory\u201d (Dewey, 1916: 38) It has been over 100 years since John Dewey published Democracy and Education, and we still grapple with questions he raised then, including whether the two words\u2014democracy and education\u2014even belong together. What does democracy in education mean? In what ways does democratic practice enhance students\u2019 education, academically, emotionally, and civically? Does a school\u2019s commitment to democratic student voice, as a central element of its mission, matter in the minds and lives of its students? If so, how does it matter? And what are the challenges involved in creating avenues for students to exercise democratic voice, to play a role in school governance? This paper proposes to take up the question of democracy in education, by examining one effort to implement democratic student voice in a small, experimental high school, in the context of a long history and literature that endorses \u201cdemocratic practice\u201d as a critical element in civic education and engagement. I and a colleague have examined data produced over the course of a years-long Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project intended to show the impact of centering democracy and student voice in a new high school\u2014and what happens when that dissipates. I am hoping to supplement this case study with findings from a policy scan of selected high schools across the country, ones that made a commitment at one point in time to democratic student voice as an element of their mission, but whose commitment may no longer be present. After examining the literature and history regarding student voice and participation in school governance as a positive influence in producing engaged civic practices, the study uses a model of student participation in school governance originally conceived in a UNICEF study published by Roger Hart (Hart, 1992). Hart sketched a continuum, or \u201cladder,\u201d of student participation in school governance. Drawing upon Hart\u2019s model, we identify three themes suggesting the ways student voice alternately \u201cinforms\u201d, \u201cshares\u201d, and \u201cwields\u201d power. These three levels of student voice\u2014intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional\u2014correspond to studies in the existing literature regarding the positive educational impact of democratic practices. The specific case study that informs this paper comes from a high school newly established in 2015 through the Carnegie Corporation of New York\u2019s Opportunity by Design (ObD) Challenge. Under the Carnegie ObD project, each school would be designed by local teams, including teachers, parents, students, and community members, but would be committed to integrating \u201cpositive youth development to optimize student engagement and effort,\u201d including \u201copportunities for students to contribute to the school environment and have a voice in decisions\u201d (Carnegie Corporation, 2013: 9). The Providence public school in question began with a mission guided by democratic principles, and a vision statement including the belief that \u201cstudents should have an essential role in shaping our school and guiding our ongoing development\u201d Two adult co-researchers worked with a group of students from the first graduating class of the high school. We first worked together to generate items to garner the experiences of this first graduating class. The co-researchers then sorted the items into the domains of experience that young people prioritized, including teacher-student relationships, democratic routines like grade and school-level meetings and student council, and school culture. During the senior year of the first graduating class (2018-2019), students on the YPAR research team conducted surveys and focus groups, producing data that was analyzed by the entire team. Two years later (Spring, 2021), a new YPAR team conducted a follow-up survey, to see whether data from the first graduating class held steady or had changed. The findings from this study and my subsequent policy scan will be informative: they will suggest how young people conceptualize \u201cstudent voice\u201d based on their lived experience; how they define \u201cdemocracy\u201d and grapple with the redistribution of power. They also contain potential lessons about the value of individual student voice within schools and of schools as democratic institutions, in a current context where democracy and student governance are not very high on the list of school civic learning priorities. They also suggest how democratic motivation\u2014based on students\u2019 perceived concerns and interests on a local level\u2014can help students navigate questions about misinformation and polarization, ideas that animate this year\u2019s conference theme.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Coalition Building in an Age of Mis\/Disinformation<\/h4><\/div>
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Full Paper Panel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants:
<\/strong>(Chair) <\/em>Erica S. Simmons, University of Wisconsin, Madison
(Discussant) <\/em>David J. Herrera, Brown University
(Discussant) <\/em>Debra Thompson, McGill University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:<\/strong>
Mis\/disinformation threatens to divide social movements. Particularly in contexts where movements are structurally divided or have a limited history of working together, the spread of mis\/disinformation can exacerbate existing intergroup distrust and power asymmetries, thereby impeding cooperation among movement actors. One important way in which activists can mitigate the problems of mis\/disinformation is by adopting networked organizing structures such as social movement coalitions. Coalitions can help disseminate reliable information, bridge gaps between disparate actors, and enhance strategic repertoires when faced with external threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This panel explores questions at the intersection of networks and mis\/disinformation in the context of social movements. The panelists present five papers on coalition formation in distinct movements across varying geographical and historical contexts. The papers vary in methods and issue area and offer a unique lens to understand the dynamics of collective action in the face of new types of threats from a network perspective.
Jeff Feng\u2019s paper addresses how queer, trans, and Two-Spirit activists face unique climate injustices and contribute vital tools for climate justice movements. Misinformation in the Western context paints a narrow picture of the LGBTQ+ community as predominantly White, wealthy, gay, and hedonistic consumers who do not care about the environment. As a result, mainstream LGBTQ+ organizations such as Pride parades prioritize the interests of White gay men above those of queer and trans people of color and ignore issues such as climate injustice. By contrast, Feng studies two 2017 protests in Washington, D.C\u2013a queer dance party for climate justice and a shutdown of D.C.\u2019s Capital Pride\u2013as moments when queer, trans, and Two-Spirit organizers contested LGBTQ+ misinformation by forging intersectional solidarity across movement issues, such as policing, climate, and war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethel Tungohan\u2019s paper analyzes migrant coalitions across Canada in a post-COVID landscape. She shows how migrant-led movements shined a light on misleading beliefs about health & work and systemic narratives about the sustainability of a capitalist status quo, in the wake of and post-COVID-19. Despite narratives suggesting a \u201creturn to normal\u201d post-COVID as a universally good outcome, migrant experiences in Canada reveal a reality of disregarded occupational & labor rights. Contesting this treatment, the migrant organizations in Tungohan\u2019s paper center intersectional solidarity to build connections with Indigenous organizations and movements for Black Lives and unmask shared precariousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federica Stagni\u2019s paper examines how alliances between Israeli-Palestinian organizations are sustained over time despite the extensive use of repressive and divisive tactics by the Israeli government. Specifically, she studies the case of #savesusiya campaign, which began in 2000 and has proven to be more successful than any other type of joint cooperation among any Israeli-Palestinian groups. Stagni maps key protest events and organizations associated with the #savesusiya campaign and conducts network analysis to show the role of inter-organizational relationships in sustaining cooperation over time. She also documents the extensive advocacy work of organizations in combating widespread misinformation from far-right NGOs that constantly discredited the campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley Anderson\u2019s paper examines how labor unions are paradoxically strengthened even as autocrats repress them. Studying labor movements and their contributions to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Anderson shows how external conditions typically unfavorable toward movements, such as the absence of allies in the Tunisian state and state-sponsored repression, spurred internal structural pivots. These changes enabled unions to weather autocrats\u2019 repeated attempts to weaken labor movements through misinformation. Anderson therefore shows how ostensibly unfavorable conditions for social movement coalition sustenance can have the unintended consequence of creating more resilient and powerful unions.
Rajkamal Singh\u2019s paper examines how Indian farmer organizations, which represent diverse caste, class, and ideological interests, formed and sustained large social movement coalitions despite several external threats. Singh shows that farmer organizations were embedded in multi-layered networks, which reinforced commitment and accountability, and helped mobilize resources to efficiently tackle smear campaigns, divisive framings, and other disinformation strategies used by the Indian government. He also documents several digital media strategies used by organizations in debunking propaganda, bridging gaps between ethnic groups, and mitigating police repression, which ultimately facilitated unprecedented successes for a group that has been historically failed by democratic channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coalition across Divides and the Interactional Maintenance Paradigm <\/h4><\/div>
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Federica Stagni, Scuola Normale Superiore<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study of social movement coalitions represents a promising subfield in the social movement literature. Over the years, scholars have investigated primarily how coalitions begin and end, paying particular attention to factors that facilitate the emergence of movement and campaign coalitions. The scholarship has thus alternatively studied the internal and external agents that affect the formation of movement alliances looking -among other aspects- at contextual, ideological, organizational and relational ones. Recently, as the last Social Movements Studies Journal\u2019s special issue (Zajak & Haunss, 2022) has shown, additional attention has been given to the study of successful alliances, although this remains a marginal field in the study of bridge-building efforts. However, the issue of maintaining cooperation among distinct activist groups that lasts over time is still largely understudied. This contribution aims to fill this gap. Through an in-depth empirical study of the long-lasting cooperation of Israeli-Palestinian activist organizations in the Palestinian region of the South Hebron Hills, this article singles out various factors that allowed the cooperation to survive intense repression and the menace of time. I specifically consider the case of the #savesusiya campaign, a context that represents the apex of decades of cooperation and solidarity between activists from the two sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Methodologically, this contribution relies on a triangulation of data-gathering and data-analyzing. After two months of preliminary fieldwork in Palestine (2019), I selected the region and the case I was interested in following. Then, I carried out a Protest Event Analysis (PEA) that mapped the organizations and groups of activists that actively participated in the campaign in the area. The research process included interviews with members of organizations, movements and independent activists who participated in the campaign. Twenty interviews were coded by utilizing the MaxQDA program. Finally, I had the chance to spend another two months in the field (2022), including an extremely valuable opportunity of living with the communities. I also accompanied and participated in the activists\u2019 meetings and actions, directly experiencing the strong personal links and relationships that distinguish Palestinian and Israeli activist groups in the region. During this period, I continued undertaking interviews bringing my total number up to twenty-five. In addition, I facilitated three focus groups in the village of Susiya.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Pride for Whom? <\/h4><\/div>
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Jeff L. Feng, Hamilton College<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pride parades have increasingly become corporate affairs and drifted far from their revolutionary roots in queer and trans liberation. In lieu of transformative politics, Pride organizations and privileged LGBTQ+ people seek individual acceptance and rights and reinforce race, gender, class, and settler advantages. Additionally, celebrations such as Washington D.C.\u2019s Capital Pride have invited the Dakota Access Pipeline-backing Wells Fargo into Pride, therefore suggesting that for privileged LGBTQ+ people to secure rights, they must sacrifice queer and trans people of color to climate and environmental injustice. Yet, queer, trans, and Two Spirit organizers forge what I call queer climate justice\u2014an intersectional, joyful, and coalitional praxis\u2014to bridge the queer and trans liberation and climate justice movements, disrupt misinformation that all LGBTQ+ people are wealthy and do not care about the environment or climate, and expand queer movement agendas. This paper analyzes a queer dance party for climate justice in front of Ivanka Trump\u2019s D.C. house in April 2017 and a shutdown of Washington D.C.\u2019s Capital Pride later that year in June. From semi-structured interviews with the protest organizers and content analysis of press releases, Tweets, and media coverage about the protests, I find that queer climate justice organizers reject corporate Pride and build intersectional coalitions by targeting multiple institutions, such as the Wells Fargo, the police, and defense contractors, and assert a revitalized coalitional Pride by dancing for the intersectionally marginalized within the LGBTQ+ community. I reveal the dangers of ignoring LGBTQ+ politics that enable climate injustice and explain the contributions of queer, trans, and Two Spirit activists toward climate justice and bringing Pride parades back to their roots.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Assessing Migrant Social Movements during and Post-COVID <\/h4><\/div>
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Ethel Tungohan, York University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of this paper is to assess the trajectories of migrant activism across Canada during and in the aftermath of COVID. During COVID, there were multiple pressures facing migrant organizers, namely the reality that COVID presented numerous immigration, labour, and health challenges to migrant workers, especially front-facing migrant workers in essential industries. These multiple demands have ironically not led migrant organizers to reduce their capacity to advocate on migrant workers\u2019 behalf but have actually catalyzed their work. The realization that the status quo was not sustainable became widespread, as was the belief that migrant workers\u2019 rights could only truly be guaranteed through the abolition of capitalist structures that have disproportionately led to migrant workers to get sick and to die from COVID. With the provision of more state and civil-society funding opportunities for migrant-led projects, alongside an increased willingness to fight for migrants\u2019 rights, migrant organizing intensified. In the transition to post-COVID economies, migrant workers face new challenges. In fact, research shows that policymakers have forcibly tried to return to normal by pushing through with back-to-work policies that pay little regard to occupational health and safety and labour rights (Weiler, et al., 2022). Migrant workers, as precarious residents of Canada, have very little opportunity to contest these policies because of how their work permits are tied to their employers. In fact, incidents of migrant abuse appeared to have escalated during the post-COVID transition. As a result, migrant organizers are seeing the importance of building coalitions in the wake of COVID-19. Rather than organizing in silos, with migrant workers from different labour sectors and across different racial communities have begun to form short-term and long-term coalitions out of a sense of \u2018shared fate.\u2019 Despite differences in political ideology and in agendas, migrant organizations are using intersectional solidarities as the basis for their organizing work. In some instances, these organizations have even built bridges with Indigenous organizations and movements for Black Lives. By examining these various sites of coalition-building, this paper will analyze the viability of migrant coalitions in the post-COVID era, scrutinizing whether and to what extent notions of intersectional solidarities can lead to lasting partnerships.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A Study of Coalition as a Collective Action Strategy among Indian Farmers <\/h4><\/div>
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\n

Rajkamal Singh, University of California, Santa Barbara<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost every social movement entails some form of partnership between its constituents, with varying degrees of interaction and coordination. One of the most important forms of partnership are coalitions, wherein movement actors join hands to work on common tasks. However, coalition formation can be challenging, especially when structural divisions are politically salient among movement actors. What conditions facilitate the formation of coalitions among structurally divided groups? To answer this question, my project seeks to understand coalition formation in a particularly hard case, namely Indian farmers, who form more than one-third of the country\u2019s population. Farmers in India are a heterogeneous group ridden with deep structural divisions across caste, class, and ideology. These divisions have historically impeded collaboration between social movement organizations, on some occasions even leading to violent conflicts. Yet, in the recent past, Indian farmer organizations have been able to build coalitions that successfully forced the Indian state to implement concessions and reverse their anti-farmers policy agenda. Drawing on in-depth interviews (N=165), participant observations (N=18), and secondary sources, I argue that when organizations lose their capacity to mobilize traditional networks (e.g., caste or class networks), they become more open to collaborating with each other. Specifically, I show that coalitions between farmer organizations became possible after farmer organizations witnessed a decline in their ability to mobilize their caste and class networks. As a result, organizations (a) became open to farmers from regardless of their background to increase their organizational strength, which weakened the salience of caste and class divisions, (b) were no longer constrained by the interests of political elites who had previously aligned with farmer organizations, and most importantly, (c) became motivated to adopt alternative strategies of mobilization to increase their influence vis-a-vis the governments. These factors led to ad-hoc collaborations, which in turn enabled the formation of interorganizational networks. The Indian government\u2019s increasingly repressive and negligent approach further strengthened these networks and helped them coalesce into large-scale coalitions. Coalitions between divided groups, once formed, can be hard to sustain. Several factors such as competing interests, lack of trust, and past rivalries can easily disrupt cooperation. What factors allow divided groups to build durable coalitions then? I address this question in the second part of my project. Leveraging interviews of farmer leaders and field notes from public meetings and protest rallies organized by farmer coalitions, I show that two strategies helped sustain the farmers\u2019 coalition: (a) developing a common minimum agenda around demands that cut across most organizations, and (b) developing a tiered structure in which leadership is controlled by a committee whose mandate is determined by a majority of coalition members. These factors enable a shared commitment, maintain accountability, mitigate leadership rivalries, and allow members to mobilize on organization-specific issues without threats to their autonomy. As exemplified by the success of Indian case, coalitions help strengthen the organizational structure of movements, which helps in safeguarding the movement from repression and cooptation. Coalitions play a crucial role in achieving concrete political outcomes because they facilitate a united and powerful challenge that authorities cannot dismiss as routine opposition. Furthermore, as durable coalitions require extensive interaction between several movement actors, they enhance the strategic repertories of individual organizations and help forge new social ties, which are crucial resources for future mobilizations.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Role of Labor Movements: 2011 Arab Spring Uprisings in Tunisia <\/h4><\/div>
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\n

Ashley Anderson, University of North Carolina \u2013 Chapel Hill<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labor unions play a critical role in opposing authoritarian regimes; yet in the Middle East their impact has largely been overlooked. In this paper, I showcase the contribution of labor movements to pro-democracy uprisings in the context of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia. I will show how state-led efforts to exclude and repress the UGTT fostered radical alliances between union elites and opposition movements that politicized labor agendas. Most important, I demonstrate a symbiotic connection between unions\u2019 external and internal political environments, showing how the absence of influential allies in Tunisia enhanced unions\u2019 capacity for political mobilization by driving union elites to invest in internally democratic structures. I argue that internal democracy facilitates labor militancy by solidifying activist commitment, facilitating leadership accountability, and enabling unions to safeguard against autocrats\u2019 attempts to divide the labor movement through strategic misinformation and co-optation. Thus, a key, if paradoxical, insight of the paper is that when autocrats pursue corporatist strategies intended to isolate and depoliticize labor, they unintentionally strengthen unions by providing them with the autonomy and organizational cohesion necessary to effectively challenge the regime.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Concepts of Responsibility in American Politics: Protection, Policy, and Law<\/h4><\/div>
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Full Paper Panel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair) <\/em>Be Stone, CUNY-Graduate Center
(Discussant) <\/em>Haley V. Norris, Rutgers University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description<\/strong>:
The conference\u2019s theme, \u201cRights and Responsibilities in an Age of Mis- and Disinformation\u201d encourages us to interrogate the terms in which our political debates are conducted, including attempts to mislead and manipulate. It urges us\u2013\u2013as citizens or residents, as political science educators and researchers\u2013\u2013to take seriously our rights and responsibilities to address the threat that mis- and disinformation poses to democracy by eroding the basis for shared and generative political communication across differences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This panel brings together scholars working in a range of subject areas to present new work on how we conceive of and enact \u201cresponsibility\u201d in American Politics. The individual papers consider how culpability is conceived in public and legal discourse in the context of the opioid settlement cases; attempts to hold state institutions and institutional actors accountable for femicide; the media\u2019s responsibility for reporting on complex scientific issues regarding psychedelic drug policy; and how the international framework of responsibility to protect applies to U.S. anti-LGBTIQ+ laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These papers build upon a range of theoretical and empirical traditions in the study of American politics\u2013\u2013public policy, public law, American political thought, and international human rights applied to the U.S. case\u2013\u2013bringing usually siloed literatures into conversation with each other through shared analytical concepts of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Political communication corrosive to democracy has been an ever-present threat in the American political tradition, and these papers critically consider how our present moment is an extension of that history, as well as a deviation from it in an era of backlash against movements for racial, gender, and economic justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCulpability\u201d in the Opioid and Tobacco Settlement Cases <\/h4><\/div>
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Be Stone, CUNY-Graduate Center<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this project I investigate the concept of \u201cculpability\u201d in the opioid settlement cases in the U.S. These are a collection of civil lawsuits seeking damages from pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid epidemic. While these cases seek to determine corporations\u2019 \u201cliability,\u201d I use digital archival research and ordinary language analysis to examine related terms: \u201cresponsibility,\u201d \u201cfault,\u201d \u201cwrongdoing,\u201d and \u201caccountability\u201d in Congressional hearings, legal arguments, and news reports. I contrast this with evidence from the tobacco settlement cases, investigating how our conception of who should be held responsible when individual \u201caddictions\u201d reach epidemic proportions has changed in the last thirty years. My sense is that the debate about who is responsible for \u201caddiction\u201d epidemics will be a site saturated with meaning about collective, mutual, and individual responsibility; potent themes in the American political tradition.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Femicide, Institutional Responsibility, and State Impunity in the US <\/h4><\/div>
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Sumru Atuk, Ithaca College<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper explores femicide, i.e., gender-related murder of women, in the US as an intersectional and multidimensional policy issue rather than simply a criminal justice problem. In the contemporary US, over 2,000 women are killed annually, mostly by an intimate partner or an acquaintance. Women of color are disproportionately represented among femicide victims. Impunity\u2014e.g., the lack of proper investigation and prosecution of gender-based violence (GBV)\u2014is one of the major issues that lead to femicide (Threadcraft 2017). Attempts to address GBV and impunity in the US have historically focused on criminal justice-oriented legal reforms (e.g., mandatory arrest policies and harsher punishments). The history of the battered women\u2019s movement has revealed, however, that these responses reinforce carceral policies and legitimate state violence against people of color (Richie 2012). Furthermore, they divert attention from the role of social and economic policies and the importance of centering victims\u2019 needs in addressing GBV. It is important to break this pattern for the budding anti-femicide advocacy in the US to succeed. To this end, this paper asks: How can impunity be addressed without reinforcing a carceral system? In answering this question, I employ content and critical discourse analyses of relevant congressional records and complement this data with in-depth interviews with members of grassroots organizations. Drawing from Black feminist scholarship and femicide literature on\/from Latin America, I argue that institutional, rather than individual, responsibility should be at the center of the femicide debate. To do so, the American state should be brought (back) into the discussion of femicide, not simply in its capacity to punish but in its responsibility to prevent femicide. The discussion of impunity should include state impunity for enabling femicide (e.g., the lack of efficient firearm regulations and help-seeking options, and racist law enforcement practices). As such, this paper contributes to the efforts to overcome the impunity\/carcerality dichotomy and to devise policy solutions that serve intersectional needs. It also situates the US in the global discussions on femicide.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Media Responsibility, Psychedelic Drugs, and Implications for Policy and Society <\/h4><\/div>
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Rebecca Krisel, CUNY Graduate Center<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What responsibility do media actors have when reporting on complex, scientific, drug-discovery issues? How does this news coverage affect policy and society? By analyzing media coverage of psychedelics in mainstream U.S. publications since the 1990s, this study explores these important questions. The fast pace at which psychedelic drug policy is changing at all levels of government has led psychedelic watchdog groups such as Psymposia to sound the alarm about the overall lack of critical, investigative media reporting in mainstream news outlets addressing both the existing potential harmful effects of psychedelic use and instances of sexual abuse within clinical settings. Using sentiment analysis, this study quantifies how news coverage of psychedelics became increasingly positive in tone since the 1990s and investigates how the overwhelmingly positive news coverage may have negative consequences for: 1) maintaining objectivity in psychedelic psychiatric research, since research participants may have preconceived expectations of the effects of the trial treatments; 2) adequately warning the public about potential harms of using psychedelics, even in therapeutic settings; and 3) harm reduction measures designed to support those using psychedelics recreationally.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Genocidal Nature of Anti-LGBTIQ+ Legislation <\/h4><\/div>
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Ariel Gabriella Mekler, Graduate Center, City University of New York<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the fall of 2022, United States legislators introduced 155 anti-LGBTIQ+ bills. The bills disproportionately impact transgender individuals and continue to increase against the backdrop of an August 2022 U.S. country assessment by the United Nations independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity. Using a queer feminist framework, this interpretative project suggests that U.S. anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation exemplifies egregious international human rights law violations. Drawing on content analysis and archival research, it further argues that despite only ratifying five of the eighteen international human rights treaties, the U.S. must uphold the standards as outlined by the principle of universality and non-discrimination. Understanding the consequences of the domestic on the international and vice versa lends itself to generating better insights into the continuous transnational anti-LGBTIQ+ movements and the greater responsibility of states to protect the most marginalized.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Conspiracy Theories, Disinformation and State Phobia<\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Full Paper Panel   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair)<\/em> Nikita Dhawan, Technical University Dresden
(Discussant)<\/em> Maria do Mar Castro-Varela, Alice Salomon University of Applied Science<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter have played a pivotal role in circulating disinformation, while failing to prevent online hate speech against minorities. These digital public spheres are also nidus for proliferation of state phobic conspiracy theories. In light of these considerations, the panel will draw on critical approaches to state theory and civil society to address the conference theme of \u201crights and responsibilities in an Age of Mis- and Disinformation.\u201d Instead of taking up for or against positions vis-\u00e0-vis the state, the papers in this panel will explore how states can be made accountable to its most vulnerable citizens in the era of neoliberal globalization in order to enable the rights of the governed. Herein the inherent contradictions in the functioning of the state will be engaged with: Violence and justice, ideology and emancipation, law and discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

State and State Phobia in an Age of Mis- and Disinformation <\/h4><\/div>
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Nikita Dhawan, Technical University Dresden<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should (online) hate speech be protected as free speech? Or should ethnic slurs and discriminatory sexist language be criminalized? Is it the responsibility of the state to protect vulnerable groups from discriminatory and harmful hate speech? Or are nonjuridical forms of opposition to hate speech preferable to state censorship? The paper will address the question if and when certain forms of hate speech should be proscribed. The recent rise in anti-state discourses, particularly on social media platforms, reflect Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s image of the state as monstre froid (coldest of all cold monsters). However, as Michel Foucault warns, state phobia is an important function of neoliberal governmentality. Against popular antistatist positions, the paper will engage with the Derridian\/Spivakian idea of the state as Pharmakon, namely as both poison and medicine. The paper will outline how regulation of hate speech by the state not only protects minorities from injury, but also enables vulnerable individuals and groups access structures of reparations. This would facilitate a more democratic and equal society, wherein the state bears the responsibility to right wrongs. This would be more than just protecting victims of (online) hate speech from offense; rather would entail guaranteeing them dignity as equal members in society.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Digital Political Communication and State Phobia in Germany <\/h4><\/div>
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Yener Bayramoglu, Manchester Metropolitan University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic led to constant negotiation and contestation over meanings and discourses as different actors such as politicians, medical experts, citizens and media institutions intervened into creating a trustworthy narrative about the spread of the disease. Within this framework, digital media emerged as a key player in shaping the narratives over the pandemic and creating new political communication strategies to combat the spread of mis- and disinformation. Drawing on a research project on digital conspiracy theories and hate speech in Germany, this paper will discuss how the fragility of knowledge in the early days of the pandemic created a new challenge for political communication that claimed truth. Of particular interest will be here a tweet by the German Health Ministry (BMG) that addressed rumours about public health measures as \u201cfake news\u201d. By implementing computational discourse analysis on 4875 tweets that discussed the BMGs initial \u201cfake news\u201d tweet, this paper will demonstrate how despite the novelness of the pandemic and digital technologies that were used to spread disinformation, the online backlash recycled past affective discourses, narratives and meanings drawing on collective memory in Germany. Not only older forms of racist and antisemitic narratives were foregrounded, but also Stasi violence in the GDR, Nazism and World War II were scavenged for images to ground the arguments not only against public health measures but also against the German state.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Toxic Communication and State Phobia <\/h4><\/div>
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\n

Maria do Mar Castro-Varela, Alice Salomon University of Applied Science<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the proliferation of social media democratized access to information, this simultaneously opened up the possibility of unregulated circulation of disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech. This is an area of great public interest on a global level, in which several reports demand more regulations from social media platforms to intervene in the spread of disinformation. Several studies have for instance explored the Russian and Brazilian bots and trolls disseminating anti-democratic, state-phobic and anti-scientific content on western social media platforms, highlighting the political and international character of digital disinformation. The interconnected nature of the online media ecosystem means that conspiracy theories are ubiquitous. A growing body of literature on disinformation, particularly in relation to post-truth politics, focuses on the manipulation of communication technologies that threaten democracies. The impacts of disinformation on people\u2019s behavior in pandemic times has been researched in multiple ways suggesting that it is paramount for national as well as international political institutions to develop strategies to regulate, intervene in and rebalance dissemination on the internet without censoring people or jeopardizing freedom of press and expression. To this end, the paper reflects on different ways to counter disinformation. Berlin based organizations such as \u201cTactical Tech\u201d counter the spread of disinformation by creating transdisciplinary artistic projects. Before the pandemic, the collaborative project \u201cNOHATE\u201d explicitly dealt with online hate comments regarding \u201cmigration\u201d and \u201casylum\u201d. The paper will present and compare different approaches on how to deal on- and offline with toxic communication, and reflect on the role of the state, when it itself becomes a target of disinformation and mistrust.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Countering Misinformation in the Global South<\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Full Paper Panel
Co-sponsored by Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair)<\/em> Natalia Salgado Bueno, Emory University
(Discussant)<\/em> Tamar Mitts, Columbia University
(Discussant) <\/em>John Marshall, Columbia University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>The prevalence of so-called fake news \u2013 false or misleading content purposefully produced to resemble news stories \u2013 and its potential to shape citizens\u2019 attitudes and behavior have garnered widespread concern. Among other issues, the intricate role of social media and the internet in facilitating the spread of misinformation and magnifying its global consequences in a rapidly evolving digital information society has become a prominent concern among policymakers, academic experts, and media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite such broad interest in the relationship between social media and disinformation, a large part of the scholarly and expert scholarship on this issue comes from advanced democracies. Such a restrictive focus has several consequences \u2013 we know far less about different social media applications that are considerably more prevalent in other parts of the world, the generalizability of scholarly evidence and the validity of policy recommendations to fight misinformation from a global perspective is somewhat shorthanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this panel, we bring together four different manuscripts from twelve scholars with expertise in political behavior and political communication to present novel research focusing on the issue of online misinformation in the context of the Global South. The panel contributes to literature in several directions. First, by focusing on new social media applications, like WhatsApp, which are not regularly investigated by the literature due to its higher prevalence in the Global South. Second, by bringing evidence of the effectiveness of measures to counter the spread of misinformation in different contexts, bringing evidence from five different countries (Brazil, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Kenya, Indian and Pakistan). Finally, by proposing novel theoretical frameworks to understand the effects of misinformation and its intricate relationship with the digital world, for example, discussing the importance of identity-based motivations for misinformation beliefs in more polarized societies from the Global South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The panel\u2019s first paper by Morgan Wack combines behavioral data from Twitter and survey experiments to understand the prevalence and how to remedy beliefs for election misinformation in Kenya\u2019s 2022 Presidential Election. Wack\u2019s work relies on a coded subset of Twitter data collected throughout Kenya\u2019s 2022 presidential election campaign to assess the prevalence and composition of misinformation related to electoral. As a follow-up, Wack shows results of lab experiments examining the effectiveness of prompt users to question various aspects of popular misinformation in Kenya, including its veracity, source, and social congruence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second paper, co-authored by Sumitra Badrinathan, Simon Chauchard, Niloufer Siddiqui, brings our panel to the issue of misinformation and its effects on vigilante violence. The paper looks at a joint experiment in India and Pakistan to measure the causal effect of misinformation on anti-minority vigilante violence, using a novel audio medium treatment. The authors find that countering misinformation significantly reduces support for vigilantism, even amongst the most polarized subgroups of our sample.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third paper by Jessica Gottlieb, Claire Adida, Richard Moussa offers a novel theoretical framework that highlights limitations of digital literacy intervention to increase individual capacity to identify misinformation online. The authors argue that these interventions ignore identity-based motivations to consume biased media, and therefore, have limited effects on context of highly salient identities. To test their novel framework, the authors propose three interventions that leverage insights on how social identity shapes behavior, and test each with an information experiment in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, a polarized country. Results indicate that a standard digital literacy intervention fails to curb the belief in and spread of misinformation, while our social-identity based interventions limited both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fourth paper by Tiago Ventura, Rajeshwari Majumdar, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua A. Tucker brings to our panel results from a novel field experiment measuring the causal effects of WhatsApp on exposure and beliefs to misinformation in the context of the 2022 Presidential election in Brazil. The authors conducted a field experiment that randomly assigns users to a Media-Constrained WhatsApp, in which participants were incentivized not to access any media, image, or video received during the weeks before the presidential election. Their results indicate that removing access to multimedia content on WhatsApp significantly reduces users\u2019 exposure to popular misinformation rumors. However, beyond a reduction in exposure, the paper uncovers null effects for changes in beliefs in misinformation rumors, as well as a reduction in aggregate polarization index or subjective well-being. This study contributes to the growing literature on the causal effects of reducing social media usage on political attitudes and behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond Fact-Checking: Examining the Efficacy of \u2018Social Truth Queries\u2019 <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Morgan Wack, University of Washington<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comparative efficacy of debunking interventions have yet to be fully explored in the Global South. Though recent work to fill this void have expanded the reach of fact-checking and social correction efforts, no current studies have assessed the broader applicability of these interventions to the specific types of misinformation and platforms prevalent in the Global South. To fill this gap, we first examine a coded subset of Twitter data collected throughout Kenya\u2019s 2022 presidential election campaign to assess the prevalence and composition of misinformation related to electoral integrity. Among the sample of 2,600 posts, we find that less than 45% of the 605 posts containing information with the potential to damage perceptions of election integrity could have been countered with traditional forms of fact-checking. Moreover, less than 20% of the misinformation identified could have plausibly been linked to an official fact-check produced during the election campaign. Use of a supervised learning model suggests that this trend is representative of the composition of our larger database of two million posts. To address the misinformation not currently covered by traditional fact-checking efforts we evaluate a novel method for democratizing debunking efforts that we call \u201csocial truth queries\u201d. Building on successful lab studies, these queries rely on user comments which prompt users to question various aspects of the accompanying information, including its veracity, source, and social congruence. Using an online experiment (N=4,300), we show that social truth queries substantially reduce belief in potentially harmful partisan misinformation but are less influential in shifting sharing determinations. Importantly, these effects are not limited to specific types of responses, enabling them to potentially address misinformation more quickly across diverse political and social contexts.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Misinformation and Anti-minority Vigilantism: An Experiment in India & Pakistan <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
\n

Sumitra Badrinathan, University of Oxford; Simon Chauchard, Leiden University; Niloufer Siddiqui, SUNY, University at Albany<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acts of vigilante violence, most often targeted against religious and sectarian minorities, have become increasingly common in India and Pakistan in recent years. Journalistic accounts often link anti-minority vigilantism to misinformation on social media, leading politicians and activists to call on tech platforms to deal with such false information. Yet, empirically, the precise link between misinformation and support for vigilante violence remains largely unidentified. In this paper we fill this gap by asking what role, if any, misinformation plays in support for vigilantism. On the one hand, false information with a call to action could directly result in collective violence, especially in contexts where such information is readily believed. On the other hand, citizens could be motivated to engage in violence as a result of long-standing societal cleavages, with misinformation playing little to no causal role. To answer these questions, we designed a jointly registered experiment in India and Pakistan using a novel audio medium treatment. We find that countering misinformation significantly reduces support for vigilantism, even amongst the most polarized subgroups of our sample. In addition, elite signaling and beliefs about state positionality do not move respondent beliefs. Our findings have key policy implications as they point to belief change as a potential way to curb collective violence even in highly polarized and tense contexts.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Reducing Misinformation in a Polarized Context: An Experiment in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
\n

Jessica Gottlieb, University of Houston; Claire Leslie Adida, UCSD; Richard Kouame Moussa, Ecole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure de Statistique et d\u2019Economie Appliqu\u00e9e<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Misinformation has deleterious and potentially destabilizing effects on democracy. As a result, scholars and practitioners alike are investigating strategies to reduce the belief in and dissemination of misinformation. A common strategy is a digital literacy intervention to increase individual capacity to identify misinformation online. This, we argue, ignores identity-based motivations to consume biased media. We offer a theoretical framework that highlights the limitations of strategies that ignore individuals\u2019 directional motives. We propose three interventions that leverage insights on how social identity shapes behavior, and test each with an information experiment in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, a polarized country. We find that a standard digital literacy intervention fails to curb the belief in and spread of misinformation, while our social-identity based interventions limited both. Our findings confirm that misinformation spreads at least in part because individuals are motivated to consume biased media, and caution against strategies that ignore these directional motives.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Effects of Deactivating Users from WhatsApp: An Experiment in Brazil <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Tiago Augusto da Silva Ventura, Center for Social Media and Politics; Rajeshwari Majumdar, New York University; Jonathan Nagler, New York University; Joshua A. Tucker, New York University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, WhatsApp has been the primary social media application in many Global South countries. Numerous journalist and scholarly accounts suggest that the platform has become a fertile ground for the spread of polarizing content and political misinformation rumors, with some going so far as to assert that WhatsApp could have impacts on electoral outcomes, episodes of violence, and vaccine hesitancy around the world. However, no studies so far have been able to show causal links between WhatsApp usage and these alleged changes in citizens\u2019 attitudes and behavior. To fill this gap, we conducted a field experiment that reduced users\u2019 exposure to media content shared on WhatsApp activity during the Presidential election in Brazil. Our field experiment randomly assigns users to a Media-Constrained WhatsApp, in which we incentivized them not to access any media, image, or video received during the weeks before the election on October 3, 2022. After conducting our Media-Constrained WhatsApp Deactivation for three weeks, we collect survey data from our participants to measure the effects of the deactivation on their ability to identify misinformation, levels of political polarization, and subjective well-being. Our results indicate that removing access to multimedia content on WhatsApp significantly reduces users\u2019 exposure to popular misinformation rumors. These effects are twice the size of a reduction in mainstream media exposure, which we also verified as an effect of the deactivation. However, beyond a reduction in exposure, we uncover results that provide support for a minimalist view of the effects of WhatsApp on attitudes. We do not detect significant effects for beliefs to the same misinformation rumors, as well as aggregate polarization index or subjective well-being. Our study contributes to the growing literature on the causal effects of reducing social media usage on political attitudes and behavior. We extend this literature by focusing on WhatsApp, the largest and most significant social media application in many Global South democracies.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Crisis, Disinformation and Authoritarian Narratives in Russia and China<\/h4><\/div>
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\n

Full Paper Panel
Co-sponsored by Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair) <\/em>Genia Kostka, Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin
(Discussant)<\/em> Alexander M. Libman, Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin
(Discussant) <\/em>Haifeng Huang, University of California, Merced<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>Crises are breeding grounds for disinformation, especially when authoritarian states see them as opportunities to elevate their soft power. Authoritarian narrative construction intensified in the crises of COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war around crisis origin, policy position and regime performance. The situation is further complicated by the collaboration between authoritarian states in countering liberal scripts as well as the blurred roles played by information transmission mediums like social media platform companies and key opinion leaders. The disinformation-based narratives reach citizens in authoritarian states and their counterparts in democracies, urging scholars to systematically explore its production, dissemination and influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The papers on this panel speak to this theme by examining the effects of authoritarian propaganda on global power competition, public opinion and economic development. The five panel papers jointly focus on disinformation and narratives of authoritarian states in times of crisis by drawing on mixed research methods of large-scale text data, media analysis, survey experiments and critical discourse analysis. Maria Repnikova and Keyu Alex Chen investigate Chinese media coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war and reveal the underpinning pro-Russia strategy and media discretion. Ma Ming, Alexander Libman and Genia Kostka analyze the framing strategies used by Russia and China in block-building narratives and the improvisations in the interpretation of key opinion leaders and the public through the comparison of social media platform data in the two countries. Audrye Wong explores how China uses information statecraft to improve its position and influence in global landscape by examining the Facebook posts data of Chinese state media and diplomats. Chen Kaiping and Chen Anfan empirically assess the implication of the state-imposed technological shift of social media platform on the public\u2019s political discourse and people\u2019s mobility patterns. Huang Haifeng examines the effects of propaganda on public attitude during disasters, using survey experiments conducted in March 2020. Our panelists hail from a diverse range of institutions across the globe, including those in Europe, the United States, China, and beyond, showcasing a rich tapestry of perspectives and expertise. Together, the papers will unpack what type of strategies authoritarian regimes use to increase their control of information and narratives in times of crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact-Checking as a Tool of Persuasion: Analyzing China\u2019s Official and Unofficial Rhetoric about the War in Ukraine <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Maria Repnikova, Georgia State University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, China\u2019s high-ranking officials proclaimed neutrality and support for peaceful solutions. Our analysis of China\u2019s state media coverage of the war, however, reveals the presence of a consistent bias toward Russia. Our study, drawing on reporting by China\u2019s core national outlets in both Chinese and English, including Xinhua News, CCTV\u2019s Xinwen Lianbo, and CGTN, uncovers a multifaceted pro-Russia tilt. Specifically, we find that Chinese media frame the West as the core responsible actor behind this conflict, deflate Russia\u2019s aggression and war crimes, highlight Russia\u2019s resilience vis-\u00e0-vis the West, and downplay Ukraine\u2019s successes on the battlefield. Rhetorically, pro-Russia leanings are communicated by drawing disproportionately on Russian sources, obfuscating footage from Ukraine, and using indirect language in referring to Russia-caused casualties. We further find that the global Chinese outlets, like CGTN, are more inclusive of Ukraine\u2019s perspective, and critiques of Russia than domestic Chinese outlets. We attribute it to the reputational concerns of CGTN.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Framing Strategies Used in Authoritarian Block Building: Russia and China <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
\n

Ming Ma, HKBU; Alexander M. Libman, Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin; Genia Kostka, Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authoritarian states are consolidating regional blocs to counter the global decoupling and sanction pressures. Extant literature notices authoritarian regimes have been constructing alternative narratives about international events aiming at building legitimacy for their position and actions, but we know little about how these state-sponsored narratives are formulated and spread in the online public sphere. By collecting large-scale text data about regional bloc building from the most popular social media platforms in Russia and China, the two leading authoritarian states of Eurasia authoritarian states, this paper adopts automatized text analysis and critical discourse analysis to interrogate the framing strategies used by authoritarian states, the rhetoric similarity and divergence between state authority, key opinion leaders and the general public as well as the dissemination effectiveness of these narratives. This study enriches our understanding of authoritarian regional alliance-building strategies and the dynamics of authoritarian propaganda from a comparative perspective.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Autocratic Advantage: Overseas Propaganda and Great Power Competition <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Audrye Wong, University of Southern California<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authoritarian regimes are increasingly using informational tools to reshape global narratives in support of their strategic goals \u2013 what I call informational statecraft. While Russia attempts to sow chaos in democratic systems, China\u2019s approach to informational statecraft is driven more by incentives to legitimize and consolidate its rise in international influence. Drawing on a corpus of English-language Facebook posts by Chinese state media and diplomats, this paper examines the content and timing of China\u2019s overseas propaganda and disinformation, using both automated text analysis and qualitative human validation. I find that China more commonly employs strategies of \u201cAutocratic Advantage\u201d \u2013 highlighting the capacity of centralized government to deliver better results \u2013 than \u201cDemocratic Dysfunction\u201d \u2013 how democratic institutional failings lead to poor governance outcomes, with the latter strategy opportunistically concentrated around key events in U.S. politics. At the same time, touting the success of China\u2019s model often entails subtly emphasizing distinctive traits of its political system and couching performance in the language of liberal values, rather than explicitly calling for authoritarianism. Moreover, disinformation is usually used on issues seen as threatening China\u2019s key national security interests. These findings underscore how authoritarian regimes can use informational narratives to gain geopolitical influence short of war.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Political Economy Outcomes of China\u2019s IP Address De-anonymization Policy <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Anfan Chen, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Kaiping Chen, University of Wisconsin-Madison<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authoritarian governments have adopted a variety of strategies to shape public opinion on digital platforms. Scholars have well documented strategies from hard and soft propaganda, to filtering and censorship of posts and comments in the past decade. However, little is known about how changes in the technological affordances and configurations of a platform might influence public discourse about pro and anti-regime contents. This paper takes advantage of the recent technological shift on Chinese social media platforms, especially Sina Weibo, where the Chinese government made users\u2019 IP locations disclosed on their homepage and whenever publishing a post or comment. This IP address de-anonymization policy was implemented site by site from March to May 2022, as the declared intention for the authoritarian regime was to combat mis(dis)information. This policy happens at the same time with the broader pandemic lockdowns, where different provinces take varying approaches (big vs. small scale lockdowns). One economic consequence is the huge shift in rural-urban migration. This new policy shift on Weibo during the pandemic allows researchers to examine the political economic outcomes of the pandemic control measures that were not able to be addressed previously. And our paper focuses on two questions: 1) how have nationalist narratives changed (i.e., in terms of volume and content) before and after the IP address policy? and 2) how can we use IP addresses-based location traces to capture people\u2019s mobility patterns before and after the lockdown to estimate the size of rural-urban migration? We collected all the posts and comments made by over 300,000 randomly sampled monthly active Weibo users from March 2022 to June 2022, when the de-anonymization policy was rolled out on Weibo. Using a difference in difference (DID) design and computational text analyses, our paper aims to reveal how this new information control strategy in China has on one hand changed public discourse toward more nationalist (pro-regime), but at the same time, poses authoritarian government at the risk of making social cues about the economic impact of COVID-19 lockdowns available to the public.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Disaster, Propaganda, and Resistance <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Haifeng Huang, University of California, Merced<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Propaganda is crucial for maintaining authoritarian rule, and no time is it more important than during crisis events like disasters, when citizens\u2019 trust in the government may be low and government competence may be particularly questioned. Moreover, during crises there will be competing narratives challenging the government and its narratives. But previous studies of propaganda focus on its effects during normal times; the effect of government propaganda about its performances during crises are not well understood. We also do not know how propaganda will fare against competing narratives. This research addresses these questions using two original survey experiments, conducted respectively in early March 2020, when China was still deep in the coronavirus crisis, and in mid-late March, when the crisis had let up. In both experiments, the respondents were reminded of some representative government propaganda, resistance narratives challenging the government, or cross-cutting communication involving both propaganda and resistance. With this unique dataset, the research will shed light on the effects of propaganda, resistance narratives, and the competition between the two on citizens\u2019 political attitudes.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Demand for and Consequences of Propaganda in Authoritarian Regimes<\/h4><\/div>
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Created Panel
Co-sponsored by Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair)<\/em> Samuel A. Greene, King\u2019s College London
(Discussant)<\/em> Jason Anastasopoulos, University of Georgia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>Each of these papers tackles questions concerning propaganda by authoritarian regimes. Some of these consider the effects of authoritarian propaganda on the mass public, including the attitudes they hold towards democracy, their government of the moment, and their actions towards the regime and government under which they live. Other papers consider the conditions under which members of the public outside of an authoritarian regime (say, Russian speakers in the Baltic), might actively seek out authoritarian propaganda over non-propaganda news sources. The papers in this panel draw on original evidence from contemporary and historical authoritarian regimes, including Russia, Belarus, and Chile under Pinochet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysis of Authoritarian Media\u2019s Effect on People\u2019s Conception of Democracy <\/h4><\/div>
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Jianbing Li, University of Kansas; Rigao Liu, University of Kansas<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The propaganda machine of authoritarianism does not always depict democracy as a negative enemy that threatens its survival. Instead, existing studies show that citizens in authoritarian countries tend to overestimate the level of democracy in their countries. Taking the conventional wisdom from media effect theory in communication science that media influences peoples\u2019 political attitudes, we aim to explore the question: if authoritarian states utilize media to influence its citizens\u2019 attitudes toward democracy, how is this effect processed? To answer this question, we propose two mechanisms: devaluation and misconception. The former hypothesizes that authoritarian media depict democracy to be a negative trait and the latter hypothesizes that authoritarian media changes citizen\u2019s foundational understandings of democracy with misconceptions. We divide the misconception mechanism into two channels: \u201cThis is democracy\u201d, in which media guides people to believe undemocratic traits to be democratic, and \u201cThis is not democracy\u201d, in which media guides people to believe democratic traits to be undemocratic. To testify the mechanisms, we use data from World Value Survey, Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House, comparing peoples\u2019 evaluation and understanding of democracy. Our results show that, as authoritarian state\u2019s control over media increases, citizens are more likely to hold a positive view of democracy, which is contrary to the devaluation mechanism. The study also provides a mixed result to the misconception mechanism, showing that as state control over media increases, people are more likely to misunderstand military overturning regime as democratic, yet less likely to misunderstand religious authorities\u2019 interpretations of laws as democratic.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

An Informational Dictator\u2019s Dilemma: Responses to Censorship in Russia & Belarus <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Samuel A. Greene, King\u2019s College London<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The management of public opinion is broadly understood as key to the ability of contemporary authoritarian leaders to maintain their power. Thus, autocrats are increasingly seen to prefer a strategy of persuasion to outright coercion, and a burgeoning literature on \u2018informational autocracy\u2019 has shed considerable light on the tools available to authoritarian regimes seeking to ensure that their messages and messengers win out. Less is known, however, about how citizens of authoritarian regimes respond to the restrictions placed by leaders on their ability to consume news. This paper addresses this question by delving into the cases of Belarus and Russia, where authorities have deployed a range of tactics: hounding and marginalizing some media outlets, coopting others, and outright shuttering still others. Drawing on a series of original media audience surveys \u2013 in Belarus in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and in Russia in 2019, 2020 and 2021 \u2013 the paper suggests that news consumers make context-specific decisions about how to cope with top-down information control, navigating the remaining media landscape and relying heavily on cues from their social circles. Further, the evidence suggests that autocrats are most effective at promoting pro-regime news consumption when their interventions are least heavy handed.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Anxiety and the Demand for Authoritarian Propaganda <\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Jacob Tucker, Princeton University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern authoritarian states rely on propaganda to solve the problem of authoritarian control and are often successful at sustaining very high levels of public popularity (Guriev and Treisman 2022; Matovski 2021; Greene and Robertson 2019). While the dominance of media control in authoritarian states is an intuitive explanation for popularity, the puzzle of modern authoritarianism is that the state must maintain public interest, trust, and reliance on state media in a technological environment where the total control of historic totalitarian regimes (e.g. Kenez 1985; Linz 2000) is impossible. The most technologically capable states like China can rely more on censorship, flooding, and other techniques to limit exposure to alternative forms of information (Roberts 2018), but most regimes lack either the capability or will to engage in near total censorship and instead choose to obtain dominance by winning the competition in the information space (Soldatov and Borogan 2014) and some do so with notable success. For example, prior to Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a number of independent news sources were allowed to operate in the country, but their viewership was very limited. Outside of Russia, many Russian speakers in Latvia choose to rely solely on Russian state-owned sources of information, even using VPNs to continue accessing Russian state propaganda after it was blocked by the Latvian government in early-2022. The extent to which the audience of authoritarian propaganda will trust it over alternative forms of information suggests the need for scholars to understand the mechanism of this attachment. In this paper, I propose that managed anxiety is a core mechanism that sustains attachment to propaganda that operates in two primary ways. First, anxiety about continuing threats functions as an attention mechanism. By feeding anxiety-inducing narratives each time that a viewer tunes in, propagandists increase the probability that they will return to seek out more information soon. Second, anxieties about the threat of foreign actors and their interference in national politics allows propagandists to decrease trust in alternative sources of information by branding them as agents of these nefarious foreign actors intent on spreading disinformation. I examine the theoretical implications of repeated interactions with anxiety-inducing propaganda and its interaction with the social spread of information and emotions, the distance between propaganda narratives and ground-truth, among other elements of modern authoritarian propaganda by formalizing the theory. I then test the theory observationally using survey data collected during Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in combination with a large corpus of media data. I follow-up this observational evidence with a novel survey experiment. The theory has important implications for the study of authoritarian regimes for both scholars and policymakers. Beyond providing an answer to the puzzle of demand for propaganda, the theory points toward the challenges that alternative media outlets will face in authoritarian environments. I demonstrate that ignoring these challenges risks the dismissal of new information provided by other sources and may even cause backlash effects that inadvertently strengthen the hold of state-owned propaganda on its existing audience. Outside of the authoritarian space, the theory offers an explanation as to why news outlets in democratic states that use similar tactics can over time move an audience to believe in substantial forms of disinformation while rejecting disconfirming information from other sources.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Authoritarian Indoctrination through Selective Repression <\/h4><\/div>
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Sergi Martinez, European University Institute<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does highly targeted authoritarian repression affect political behavior? While coercion tends to backfire, I hypothesize that focusing repression on opposition leaders might substantially diminish opposition movements\u2019 human capital and limit their development. This is particularly relevant due to leaders\u2019 high social status: liberal professionals, doctors, or civil servants frequently have such a role. Repressing them means purging the catalyzers of alternative ideas, which ensures authoritarian regimes\u2019 monopoly on narratives and socialization processes. To test this claim, I combine digitized records of individual trials executed by the Fascist war court during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939) in Galicia with original postwar archival data on political behavior in authoritarian and democratic elections and at the municipality level. Results suggest that focusing repression on civic leaders enhances support for autocratic proposals and the regime\u2019s successor parties. In line with the indoctrination hypotheses, repressing schoolteachers and professors emerges as the driver of the main effect. The main results stand when employing worldwide cross-country data on types of repression and turnout in non-democratic elections or examining Pinochet\u2019s legacy on democratic behaviors in Chile. This paper contributes to the existing literature on dictatorships and socialization by paying attention to a second-order effect of violence and connecting two tools previously treated as separate and complementary: repression and indoctrination.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Democratic Innovations against Misinformation<\/h4><\/div>
<\/span><\/div><\/div>
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Created Panel
Co-sponsored by Democratic Innovations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair)<\/em> C. Daniel Myers, University of Minnesota
(Discussant)<\/em> Kevin J. Elliott, Murray State University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>Can deliberative democratic innovations help combat misinformation? The promise of a better-informed public is central to the claims of many new democratic processes motivated by deliberative theory. But what kind of information do these processes promote, especially when misinformation is rampant? The papers in this panel describe democratic innovations in Brazil, France, and the UK, the potential for these innovations to produce better-informed citizens, and the implications of this for democratic legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citizen\u2019s Assemblies, Impartiality, & Influence: The French Climate Convention <\/h4><\/div>
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Dimitri Courant, Princeton University; Simon Baeckelandt, Universit\u00e9 de Lille<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legitimacy of a deliberative mini-public is not quantitative and aggregative, unlike elections or votes, but qualitative. In accordance with the theories of deliberative democracy, it is the quality of the procedures and the respect of democratic principles that matter. A \u201cgood deliberation\u201d is aiming to fight mis- and disinformation by guarantying fair and factual debates. But do mini-public experiments really follow these theoretical imperatives? Are impartiality, fairness and equity really practiced in contemporary deliberative processes? This might be more difficult for citizens\u2019 assemblies since they are the longest and most ambitious type of deliberative mini-publics, spanning over months or even years and invested with official mandates from political decision-making institutions. Furthermore, respecting impartiality could be even harder for climate assemblies, as climate policies are an \u201copen problem\u201d and not a binary or clear cut one. In order to tackle this important issue, we conduct a qualitative analysis of the French Citizen\u2019s Convention for Climate (CCC), based on a complete ethnographic direct observation of the whole process and dozens of in-depth semi-directive interviews with key actors (citizens, organizers, facilitators, experts, stakeholders). We will try to draw pragmatic and normative lessons from the procedural successes and failures of the CCC. Can we say, as the CCC co-chair did, that \u201cneutrality is impossible\u201d? But then what are a biased deliberation and a skewed civic engagement worth? Can they be considered legitimate? Are mis- and disinformation possible in citizens\u2019 assemblies, even if these processes are supposed to be the ultimate example of sound and objective debates? The objective of this paper is to identify criteria of legitimacy and procedural impartiality for the deliberation with the help of a fine ethnography of the Citizens\u2019 Convention for Climate. We propose a framework for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate interactions and influences within citizens\u2019 assemblies. On the one hand, three criteria are highlighted and operationalized: pluralism, transparency, and fairness. On the other hand, we construct a typology of six \u201cmodes of influences\u201d in a mini-public: procedural, classic, semi-formal, discursive, informal, and external.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Civil Society against Disinformation: Using Collective Intelligence in Elections <\/h4><\/div>
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Thamy Pogrebinschi, WZB Berlin Social Science Center; Mariana Borges Martins da Silva, Oxford University; Maria Dominguez Costa Pinho, The Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While disinformation became one of the greatest challenges to democracy in recent years, usual measures to contain it such as platform regulation and media literacy seem insufficient to refrain the dangers misinformation poses to political processes, in particular elections. Whilst there is high expectation that both legislative and regulatory bodies will be able to curb the political damage caused by disinformation, the role of other counter-information actors and responses remain less known. Citizen-led initiatives aimed at fighting disinformation are rising in Europe and elsewhere. While research on the topic grows together with the number of civil society organizations and initiatives designed to tackle disinformation, very little is still known as to how citizens can counteract misinformation directed to disrupt political processes and institutions, in particular elections. Looking into Brazil, a country highly impacted by disinformation in previous years especially due to the leadership of far-right authoritarian president Bolsonaro, this paper seeks to examine the part played by citizens in fighting disinformation in electoral processes. We turned to Brazil\u2019s 2022 presidential election to observe how its civil society engaged to avoid the spread of disinformation. We mapped and analyzed over 70 citizen-led initiatives launched in the months preceding the election and identified five strategies advanced by civil society to fight disinformation in the electoral process and beyond. We conclude that, by mobilizing collective intelligence using digital technology, civil society can expand the fight against disinformation beyond usual measures such as fact-checking.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Mind the Gap: Using Creative & Deliberative Approaches to Target Misinformation <\/h4><\/div>
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Marta Wojciechowska, King\u2019s College London; Suzanne Hall, King\u2019s College London; Zara Regan, The Policy Institute; Tianne Haggar, King\u2019s College London; Hannah Piggott, King\u2019s College London<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deliberative processes \u2013 such as citizen assemblies, deliberative polls or citizen juries \u2013 can offer more inclusive and better-informed ways of developing public policy. It has been argued that such processes provide participants with relevant and balanced information and can include members of previously disempowered groups (Beauvais & Warren, 2019; Smith, 2009). While participants can be initially misinformed, deliberation has the potential to correct existing misconceptions (Himmelroos & Rapeli, 2020). Further, thanks to the direct involvement of the citizens, deliberative processes have been argued to build trust and lead to results that are considered legitimate by the broader population (MacKenzie & Warren, 2012; Parkinson, 2006). However, the current deliberative practice tends to be expert-led. Expert-led processes can result in the exclusion of some forms of lived experiences and in incomplete information employed during the development of policy solutions. On the other side, the direct involvement of people with lived experiences during the deliberative processes, especially when the policy issue concerns a public response to a crisis, can raise a range of distinct challenges. These challenges concern working with participants affected by the hardship, researchers\u2019 responsibilities, and the possibility of employing deeply personal experiences to identify workable public policy solutions. Based on the results of the mixed-method research project on the costs-of-living crisis in London (GB), this paper analyses the potential of employing peer research in deliberative processes to target misinformation at the time of crisis. In particular, we analyse the potential of peer-review research approaches to: \u2013 Gain a better understanding of the experiences of those experiencing hardship \u2013 Counter misinformation among peer researchers about the available help \u2013 Counter misinformation during the deliberative events by employing the results of peer research as evidence \u2013 Increasing the completeness of information employed for policy development, regarding complex policy issues \u2013 Increase in public legitimacy and wider support for the identified solutions As a case study, we employ the results from the research project on the understanding of the lived experience of the cost-of-living crisis in three London local councils. The project involved three stages: (1) a peer research stage (digital ethnography and peer interviews) by the people affected by the crisis, (2) a series of three deliberative workshops with the broader public employing results from the peer review stage to identify policy responses, (3) a policy roundtable involving stakeholders from the local and national government. To understand whether there is wider support for these responses we also employed a cross-sectional longitudinal survey representative of the Great Britain adult population.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Digital Surveillance, Misinformation and Disinformation in Africa <\/h4><\/div>
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Created Panel
Co-sponsored by Division 53: African Politics<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair)<\/em> Evans Tindana Awuni, University of Erfurt
(Discussant)<\/em> Evans Tindana Awuni, University of Erfurt
(Discussant) <\/em>Maria Nagawa, Duke University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>Innovations in information and communication technologies have engendered dramatic growth in access to information and citizen engagement in politics across Africa. However, expanded online access has also opened the door to new modes of political interference by foreign actors \u2014 as well as the spread of mis- and disinformation. Government efforts to crack down on such activities frequently risk curtailing civil liberties more broadly speaking, especially in contexts where government actors have also adopted new technologies for enhanced surveillance of their citizens. The panels on this paper engage with these tensions and other governance challenges facing African governments and citizens in our current age of mis- and disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three papers grapple with these challenges as they present themselves in Africa\u2019s largest economy (Nigeria). Fashagba examines the spread of political disinformation using both traditional and new media in the context of the first power alternation in the history of the country. Bello also considers the role of both new and \u2018old\u2019 media in spreading hate speech in Nigeria, highlighting the challenges of curtailing it in a democratic setting. Olaniyan illustrates the tension between national security concerns and citizen rights to information following Twitter\u2019s deletion of a tweet by President Buhari\u2019s and the reprisal ban of the microblogging firm by Nigeria. Guiatain grapples with similar issues in Burkina Faso, which has experienced two coups d\u2019\u00e9tat in less than one year. He argues that information monitoring by the government\u2014ostensibly to fight against the djihadist insurgency\u2014entails curbing freedom of speech in the name of national security. Finally, Czuba zooms out to take a view of the continent, studying what drives the adoption of digital surveillance technologies across countries. Analyzing an original dataset that contains all instances of government digital surveillance in sub-Saharan Africa undertaken for political purposes, he finds that authoritarian governments facing widespread popular discontent and well-organized opposition movements, although many other autocracies as well as some democracies, such as Kenya and South Africa, also surveil citizens\u2019 online activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papers: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dis-Information as a Strategy for Political De-Marketing in Nigerian Democracy <\/h4><\/div>
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Joseph Olayinka Fashagba, Federal University Lokoja<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper examines the utility of strategic political communication using the traditional and modern media to disseminate dis-information by the newly formed opposition All Progressive Congress (APC) in months leading to the 2015 general election against the then ruling People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP). The dis-information succeeded in making members of the public have a dim view of the then ruling PDP, and thereby eroded the support base of the party, while couching the APC in a messianic tone. The strategy was effective as evidenced by the fact that the ruling PDP did not only lose the presidential election but also the majority seats it had controlled for sixteen years in both chambers of the national assembly. In this paper, we examine some content of the Dis-information employed, the personnel involve, the nature of (dis\/mis)information and how it shaped the 2015 general elections and its outcome. The data for the study is generated from secondary sources, especially from newspapers and online repository. The data will be analyzed qualitatively, using descriptive and explanatory analysis. The paper will argue that, dis-information disseminated against the PDP, starting from 2013 till March 2015 when the general election took place succeeded in eroding the support base of the then ruling party, projected the APC as the best thing to happen to Nigeria and triggered the first power alternation in the history of Nigeria.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

From Handshakes to Gunshots: Media and the Politics of Hate Speech in Nigeria <\/h4><\/div>
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Akeem Olalekan Bello, Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democracy provides a veritable platform for people\u2019s involvement in governance. However, the freedom associated with democratic norms and values has been linked to the upsurge of disunity and conflicts in Nigeria and many parts of the world. It has been observed that political engagements among different political divides in Nigeria have been unhealthy with some pockets of violent manifestations. It is, however, getting more worrisome with the emergence and prevalence of hate speeches among politicians. For instance, violence between herdsmen and farmers, religious disagreements, political appointments, terrorism, and even the fight against corruption; are spontaneously given political, religious, and ethnic coloration through the media. Hate speeches have become an instrument of electioneering by political opponents in place of issue-based rivalry among political parties, good leadership-followership interactions, progressive ethnic competition, harmonious religious relations among citizens, socioeconomic development, and others. These dispositions are being propelled by the media. Social media, for instance, has suddenly become an instrument of disunity among Nigerians, while the print media is more sensational than factuality. This changing contour in Nigeria\u2019s political engagements is energizing individuals and groups to use violence in ventilating their disagreements to hateful attitudes directed against them, which is creating serious challenges to governance at all levels. How did Nigeria get to this level? Who are the major culprits? What are the instances? What is the way out? Relying on John Stuart Mill\u2019s tolerance theory, the foregoing questions were answered based on data from primary and secondary sources.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nigeria\u2019s Twitter Ban and Discourses on Social Media and National Security <\/h4><\/div>
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Azeez O. Olaniyan, Federal University, Oye Ekiti<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter\u2019s deletion of President Buhari\u2019s tweet and the reprisal ban of the microblogging firm by Nigeria raise questions on social media, national security, and control demands. The decision of Twitter to delete the post of President Buhari where he threatened to unleash violence on separatist movement in his country raises the issue of meddlesomeness of the media tech in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. The reprisal bans of Twitter by Nigeria equally raises the issue of government control of social media, which invariably underlines the tension between national security concerns and citizen rights to information in a democratic setting. In the wake of the Twitter ban, the Nigerian government imposes some conditions to be met by the tech firm, and intensified its planned digital surveillance law that will allow monitoring of the contents of social media communication in Nigeria. The Nigerian move triggers debates on twitter and social media control in other places of the world. Social media plays a vital role of citizen empowerment to participate in governance. However, the increasing rate of spread of fake news and seeming meddlesomeness of social media providers in internal affairs of a country raise some concerns bordering on national security, which threatens orderliness. This paper engages in a rigorous review of events that led to Twitter ban in Nigeria and the whole desire of the state to regulate social media. It situates the study within the global discourse on social media control and the place of citizens\u2019 rights in the face of national security concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Social Media, Mis-\/Disinformation and Military Transition in Burkina Faso <\/h4><\/div>
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Jean-Baptiste Guiatin, Universit\u00e9 Thomas Sankara, Ouagadougou<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In less than one year Burkina Faso has experienced two coups d\u2019Etat, the self-proclaimed objective of which is to fight against the djihadist insurgency. However, from the government\u2019s perspective this seems to entail some sort of information monitoring. Using a qualitative methodology based on semi-directed field interviews I argue that this information monitoring means curbing the freedom of speech in the name of national security.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Societal Pressure and Government Digital Surveillance in Sub-Saharan Africa <\/h4><\/div>
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Karol Czuba, Nazarbayev University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Government adoption of digital surveillance technologies, from facial recognition to mobile device hacking software, in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has increased substantially in the wake of improved internet access on the continent. While a growing literature in Political Science has explored the effects of such surveillance on repression, cooptation, and public goods provision in other parts of the world, few scholars have studied the phenomenon in the African context; as a result, available evidence is limited, unsystematic, and largely descriptive. In this paper, I contribute to the existing literature by providing more systematic evidence of government digital surveillance in SSA and explaining the adoption of the technologies that make surveillance possible. I argue that, while such technologies are attractive to all governments, authoritarian regimes vulnerable to societal pressure face especially strong incentives to acquire these relatively costly tools because they help to suppress political mobilization that is particularly threatening to such regimes. To substantiate this claim, I analyze an original dataset that contains all instances of government digital surveillance in SSA undertaken for political purposes (as opposed to, for example, to support public health measures) reported in media sources and publicly available government and inter- and non-governmental organization documents catalogued in online archival repositories. I find that authoritarian governments facing widespread popular discontent and well-organized opposition movements, notably those in Ethiopia and Uganda, employ digital surveillance tools with the highest frequency, although many other autocracies as well as some democracies, such as Kenya and South Africa, also surveil citizens\u2019 online activities. Digital surveillance is almost always targeted at real or perceived government adversaries\u2014opposition politicians, political activists, journalists, and bloggers\u2014usually inside the country but sometimes in the diaspora, rather than indiscriminately at all citizens. Surveillance allows governments to monitor targets\u2019 activities and obstruct political mobilization. The experience of being surveilled meanwhile elicits fear and thus limits both political speech and organization. Accordingly, government digital surveillance serves a primarily repressive role; there is no evidence of a relationship between the use of surveillance technologies and cooptation or provision of private or public goods in SSA. Because intelligence and other law enforcement agencies in SSA generally lack the expertise required to develop the sophisticated digital surveillance tools, they purchase off-the-shelf solutions such as zero-day software exploits, which are expensive but readily available to government customers, from private companies\u2014some of them linked to foreign governments\u2014such as China\u2019s Huawei and Israel\u2019s Circles and NSO Group. As such, the use of digital surveillance is neither associated with nor requires a high level of state capacity. These findings show that the advances in digital surveillance technology amid increased internet adoption present governments with new tools that facilitate regime survival even in conditions of low state capacity. Simultaneously, government reliance on external technology providers entrenches SSA\u2019s dependent status in global economic and political relations.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Disinformation Control: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?<\/h4><\/div>
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Roundtable<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participants<\/strong>:
(Chair)<\/em> Clifford Bob, Duquesne University
(Presenter) <\/em>Joseph Oliver Boydbarrett, Bowling Green State University
(Presenter)<\/em> Danielle K. Brown, Michigan State University
(Presenter) <\/em>Deen Freelon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(Presenter) <\/em>Hans K. Klein, Georgia Institute of Technology
(Presenter) <\/em>Daniel Kreiss, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
(Presenter)<\/em> Steven L. Livingston, George Washington University
(Presenter) <\/em>Shannon C. McGregor, University of North Carolina
(Presenter)<\/em> Kevin Narizny, Lehigh University
(Presenter) <\/em>Piers Robinson, Organisation for Propaganda Studies
(Presenter)<\/em> Gerald Sussman, Portland State University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session Description:
<\/strong>At least since the 2016 Presidential election, policymakers and civic leaders have warned that the U.S. is facing an onslaught of misinformation, disinformation, mal-information and the like. The harms, it is said, are enormous\u2013everything from undermining trust in core political institutions to affecting the outcomes of campaigns and elections. In response, government, foundations, and academe have rushed to implement a variety of \u201cdisinformation control\u201d measures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notwithstanding the uproar, the evidentiary basis for worries about disinformation\u2013as well as claims about the virtues of disinformation control\u2013remain deeply contested and highly politicized. This roundtable, convening scholars with widely varying perspectives on the issues, will address a range of critical questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n