ISESS seminar hosted by Jacob Groshek
21 10 2024
Kategoria: Aktualności Wydziału, Konferencje i spotkania naukowe
Centre of Excellence in the Social Sciences would like to invite you to the ISESS seminar hosted by Jacob Groshek from Kansas State University.
The Interdisciplinary Seminar in Empirical Social Science will take place on October 23 from 13.15 to 14.45.
The title of Jacob Groshek’s presentation is “Rural and Radical, Terror on X, and Social Science in the Paid-API Era”.
Please come in person to the Old Library of the University of Warsaw / Main Campus/ Room 308 (Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28).
The seminar will not be broadcast online. Registration is not required. The seminar will be conducted in English.
Abstract
In order to better understand cleavages in public opinion, this talk reports briefly on three interrelated media research endeavors.
First, Rural and Radical is a book project where we argue that the 2024 U.S. election is a battleground of not just facts versus misinformation but also a contest of censorship versus transparency. This book highlights the contemporary hybrid media system and the role it plays in bringing constituents together as well as the mechanisms by which democracy can be fractured and polarized with a specific focus on the rural Midwest. Using several years of data, we examine the mythology of filter bubbles and the impact of misinformation in the heartland with qualitative interviews that explore attitudes and beliefs prevalent in red-state America, and couple those findings with AI and algorithmically filtered social media data analyses. Through research on a large geographical space that is routinely ignored but crucial to political outcomes in the US, it becomes clear that partisan hybrid media outlets fuel a growing distrust of media systems and political actors that may well contribute to a second Trump presidency.
Next, Terror on X is a working conference paper from the Midwest Political Science Association that examines a year’s worth of international news coverage of terrorist attacks on X (formerly Twitter). In this comparative approach, we use computational modeling to track the volume and sentiment filtered through millions of posts on X from three elite newspapers in the US and the UK in 2023. Here, we build on prior research using World Systems Theory to identify how the location of a terrorist attack and the identity of the perpetrator committing the attack affect media coverage of terrorism. In doing so, we update a wide swath of literature to incorporate not only extensive changes to the platform formerly known as Twitter (now X) but also media coverage of the ongoing conflicts in the Ukraine and Israel as well as which perpetrators are more often labeled as terrorists in domestic and international incidents.
Finally, Social Science in the Paid-API Era references an open special issue call for the journal Media and Communication where we address how social media data now is increasingly hard to source. Once-free APIs and academic research platforms are mostly decommissioned or locked down by exorbitant paywalls and may also require technological expertise to access and analyze data. This situation has become more dire in recent months and has further bifurcated social media researchers into data “haves” and data “have nots”—and our field is currently adrift as to what the most viable portals and best practices for acquiring social media data are, which has resulted in isolated data vaults and fragmented efforts. Through this special issue and our own efforts at the Institute for Representation in Society and Media, we attempt to move at the pace of data to help manage an existential crisis for our field.
Bio
Link to the website: https://jacobgroshek.
I have a long list of research, teaching, and industry appointments, which currently include Executive Director of the newly-formed Institute for Representation in Society and Media, the Chair of Emerging Media at Kansas State University, and as President of Metro Boston NFL Flag Football. I am also affiliated faculty with the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University (Denmark) and served as Associate Director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Boston University. In addition, I have also been a leading Digital Experience Management consultant at the International Data Corporation and member of the faculty at Boston University (tenured), the Toulouse School of Economics (France), the University of Melbourne (Australia), and Erasmus University (The Netherlands).
I earned my Ph.D. in media research at Indiana University Bloomington, where I specialized in applied analytics for international, political, and health communication networks and advanced econometric methods. Topically, my areas of expertise now address online and mobile media technologies as their use may relate to sociopolitical and behavioral health change at the macro (i.e., national) and micro (as in individual) levels. My work also include analyses of sports and media marketing content along with user influence in social media campaigns that drive engagement, participation, and revenue.
Put simply, I put my academic research to the test everyday with media marketing analytics efforts that build programs and drive millions in ongoing, annual revenue across industry verticals. Looking for a consultant? I make it easy deploy and engage a blend of interpretive as well as relatively advanced AI-driven statistical tools for network analysis, forecasting, and explaining where and how the use of media has shaped public opinion and global events, in particular as it relates to political and health decision making.
If you are wondering, no – social media and fake news did not elect Trump, and in nearly all cases people are not trapped in ideological filter bubbles, based on the evidence my colleagues and I found in this study and this study.
A mostly up-to-date selection of my peer-reviewed publications appear below. Many are open access, but for those articles that are behind paywalls, please feel free to message me for access as well as with feedback and questions, or for media and speaking requests. I truly love what I do, and I look forward to hearing from you to help make the world a better place.