{"id":934,"date":"2024-11-12T16:04:13","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T16:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=934"},"modified":"2024-11-19T13:55:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T13:55:15","slug":"from-platform-politics-to-partisan-platforms","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-6-digital-campaign\/from-platform-politics-to-partisan-platforms\/","title":{"rendered":"From platform politics to partisan platforms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Prof. Philip M. Napoli<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy and Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He teaches and conducts research on media regulation and policy issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email: philip.napoli@duke.edu<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Talia Goodman<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public Policy student at Duke University. She is a senior studying the evolution of fact-based journalism and its impact on modern media coverage of politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email: talia.goodman@duke.edu  <\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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64. Reversion to the meme: A return to grassroots content<\/a> (Dr Jessica Baldwin-Philippi)
65. From platform politics to partisan platforms<\/a> (Prof Philip M. Napoli, Talia Goodman)
66. The fragmented social media landscape in the 2024 U.S. election<\/a> (Dr Michael A. Beam, Dr Myiah J. Hutchens, Dr Jay D. Hmielowski)
67. Outside organization advertising on Meta platforms: Coordination and duplicity<\/a> (Prof Jennifer Stromer-Galley)
68. Prejudice and priming in the online political sphere<\/a> (Prof Richard Perloff)
69. Perceptions of social media in the 2024 presidential election<\/a> (Dr Daniel Lane, Dr Prateekshit \u201cKanu\u201d Pandey)
70. Modeling public Facebook comments on the attempted assassination of President Trump<\/a> (Dr Justin Phillips, Prof Andrea Carson)
71. The memes of production: Grassroots-made digital content and the presidential campaign<\/a> (Dr Rosalynd Southern, Dr Caroline Leicht)
72. The gendered dynamics of presidential campaign tweets in 2024<\/a> (Prof Heather K. Evans, Dr Jennifer Hayes Clark)
73. Threads and TikTok adoption among 2024 congressional candidates in battleground states<\/a> (Prof Terri L. Towner, Prof Caroline Mu\u00f1oz)
74. Who would extraterrestrials side with if they were watching us on social media?<\/a> (Taewoo Kang, Prof Kjerstin Thorson)
75. AI and voter suppression in the 2024 election<\/a> (Prof Diana Owen)
76. News from AI: ChatGPT and political information<\/a> (Dr Caroline Leicht, Dr Peter Finn, Dr Lauren C. Bell, Dr Amy Tatum)
77. Analyzing the perceived humanness of AI-generated social media content around the presidential debate<\/a> (Dr Tiago Ventura, Rebecca Ansell, Dr Sejin Paik, Autumn Toney, Prof Leticia Bode, Prof Lisa Singh)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Social media platforms have now played a prominent role in three U.S. presidential elections. In 2016, the core narrative<\/a> was the way in which platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were essentially asleep at the switch and thus foreign actors were able to disseminate disinformation and politically polarizing content. In 2020, the platforms worked to avoid<\/a> a repeat of 2016; however, their efforts failed to prevent the circulation of domestically-produced election disinformation that became a driving force<\/a> behind the January 6th<\/sup>, 2021 insurrection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both elections, despite frequent (and unsubstantiated)<\/a> accusations of anti-conservative bias, the notion of the platforms themselves as overt political actors was more a case of concerned speculation than verifiable fact. With the 2024 election, however, we have officially entered the era of partisan platforms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We of course begin with the transformation of Twitter to X under the ownership of billionaire and far-right activist<\/a> Elon Musk. Musk purchased<\/a> Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. He took the company private and quickly initiated a wholesale remaking of the platform that included the dissolution<\/a> of much of the company\u2019s trust and security workforce. The platform quickly became awash<\/a> with disinformation and hate speech. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subsequent actions were more overtly political, particularly as the 2024 presidential election approached. Musk lifted<\/a> the platform\u2019s ban on political ads. He also ordered his engineers to ensure<\/a> that his posts, which became <\/a>increasingly focused<\/a> on far-right rhetoric and disinformation, reached the bulk of X users, regardless of whether they followed Musk\u2019s account. In addition, an analysis<\/a> of the platform\u2019s curation algorithm found that it places right-wing political content in front of users, regardless of their preferences. Musk even hosted a campaign event for Trump on X \u2013 an act that has resulted in a complaint<\/a> to the Federal Election Commission that the event represented a corporate campaign contribution that violated campaign finance laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is no surprise, therefore, that in the days before the election, X was\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0as Musk\u2019s \u201cpolitical weapon.\u201d After Trump\u2019s victory,\u00a0many experts<\/a>\u00a0contended that X\u2019s concerted efforts on behalf of the Trump campaign played a role in influencing some voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overt politicization of X is not the only indicator of how social media platforms have become partisan. Another key trend over the past four years has been the general fragmentation of the social media space \u2013 in particular, the <\/a>rise of overtly right-leaning platforms<\/a> such as Gab, Parler, and Rumble. The growth of these platforms owed much to the actions of the more mainstream platforms in the wake of the January 6th<\/sup>, 2021 insurrection, when platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube deplatformed<\/a> thousands of accounts, including those of Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, Trump responded to his banishment from mainstream social media by creating his own partisan platform<\/a>, Truth Social. Truth Social became Trump\u2019s primary mode of social media communication throughout the 2024 election cycle. It has also become his most valuable<\/a> asset. Research<\/a> has shown that the platform has a tendency to favor right-leaning over left-leaning posts in its content moderation practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The notion of a sitting president being the majority shareholder of a major social media platform flies in the face of the kind of separation of powers that seems essential to preserving the integrity of our democracy; and yet, there are no regulatory guardrails preventing this situation. Surprisingly, in the aftermath of Trump\u2019s electoral victory, this topic of a sitting president owning a major social media platform is not receiving any substantive discussion in the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, it is worth noting ongoing concerns<\/a> about TikTok, and whether its ownership by a Chinese company provides a mechanism for the Chinese government to monitor and influence the social media feeds of millions of American TikTok users. In April of 2024, such concerns led President Biden to sign a bill<\/a> banning TikTok within a year, unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested itself of the app. ByteDance is challenging the ban<\/a> in court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Trump has reversed<\/a> his initial stance in favor of a TikTok ban; and so even if the ban is upheld in court, it remains to be seen<\/a> whether it would actually be put into effect under the next Trump administration. Canada\u2019s recent decision<\/a> to order ByteDance to close its offices in Canada due to national security concerns is a reminder that concerns about the utilization of TikTok as a tool for political influence by its owner persist globally, even if evidence of the overt politicization of the platform remains less apparent than in the other cases discussed above. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partisan platforms have, over the past four years, evolved from an unsubstantiated concern of the far right to, ironically, an important tool of the far right and a key component of our contemporary political reality. As with previous media forms, such as talk radio and cable news, it is the conservative side of the partisan spectrum that is most aggressively exploiting the medium as a political tool. The 2024 election marks the key moment in which these partisan platforms truly began to make their presence felt. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. Philip M. Napoli James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy and Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He teaches and conducts research on media regulation and policy issues. Email: philip.napoli@duke.edu Talia Goodman Public Policy student at Duke University. She is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1017,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-934","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom platform politics to partisan platforms - Election Analysis - United States<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-6-digital-campaign\/from-platform-politics-to-partisan-platforms\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From platform politics to partisan platforms - Election Analysis - United States\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Prof. Philip M. Napoli James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy and Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He teaches and conducts research on media regulation and policy issues. Email: philip.napoli@duke.edu Talia Goodman Public Policy student at Duke University. 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