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UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Campaign spheres in Latin America: How institutions affect digital media in presidential elections Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0026d2q5 Author Brandao, Francisco Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Campaign spheres in Latin America: How institutions affect digital media in presidential elections A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science by Francisco de Assis Fernandes Brandão Junior Committee in charge: Professor Bruce Bimber, Chair Professor Kathleen Bruhn Professor Matto Mildenberger Professor Michael Stohl January 2018 The dissertation of Francisco Brandão Jr. is approved. ___________________________________________ Kathleen Bruhn ___________________________________________ Matto Mildenberger ___________________________________________ Michael Stohl ___________________________________________ Bruce Bimber, Committee Chair December 2017 Campaign spheres in Latin America: How institutions affect digital media in presidential elections Copyright © 2018 by Francisco de Assis Fernandes Brandão Junior iii Dedication In memory of the students who lost their lives in Isla Vista, on May 23 2014, praying that God brings peace and heals their families, friends, this great community and country. Let there be light! To my mother, who always wondered what would be her life if she hadn`t dropped Graduate School to raise her children. To my wife and daughter, who were together with me in this journey. iv Acknowledgements Some might think it is a truism when graduate students write on their dissertations how much they owe to their graduate advisors for the satisfaction of getting the job done. But I couldn`t be more honest when I recognize the support, guidance, ethics and hard work of my advisor, Professor Bruce Bimber. I wouldn`t imagine this dissertation being done without his directions, comments and corrections, always delivered with kindness and generosity. Most of my questions and hypotheses were built upon the cornerstone of Professor Bimber`s prolific and pioneering writings. I also owe him the resources and training to have access to the social media data used on this dissertation, which can be considered pretty much 90% of the work. Professor Bimber`s conduct was not limited to this research, but also to many other precepts that are fundamental to my life as an academic, instructor, colleague and professional. I sincerely hope to keep and honor his teachings through my career. I am most grateful for the work and time of the committee members, Professors Kathleen Bruhn, Matto Mildenberger and Michael Stohl. With all their expertise and generosity, they provided many important comments that were important to keep this dissertation on the right track. I should acknowledge the hospitality, patience and always present assistance of the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory team at the UCSB Library. It is not an overstatement to say that, in the last two years, I spent more time at the Collaboratory than in v my office at the Political Science Department. A special deference goes to data services librarian, Shari Laster, and the Collaboratory director, Jon Jablonski. Humanities data curator Thomas Padilla changed the game after introduced me to Python. Together, these three data angels fixed many problems during data collection and parsing. Another multidisciplinary resource at UCSB, the Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) also deserves much of the credit for this dissertation. While attending CITS seminars, I could follow the old political science tradition of borrowing theories and methods from other disciplines. Professor George Legrady gave me the opportunity to code for the first time with the exciting data visualization language Processing and showed me how to organize large data sets with MySQL. Professor Alan Liu presented the broad landscape of Digital Humanities. I also learned greatly from Professors Dorothy Chun, George Michaels, James Frew, Krzysztof Janowicz, Miriam Metzger and Patrick McCrey. I am in debt with so many more that would be unfair to mention some and not the others. But I will take the risk and give my humble respect and consideration to Professors John Woolley, Cynthia Kaplan and Laurie Freeman, with whom I was honored to work as a teaching assistant at the Political Science Department. Before the defense, Professor Heather Stoll provided useful comments to my prospectus, especially on her expertise of political parties and representation. Professor Eric Smith introduced me to many forecasting models and public opinion theories that were discussed through this dissertation. I am most grateful to Professors Carlos Marcos Batista, David Fleischer and Paulo César Nascimento. They were responsible for introducing me to the field of Political Science, at the University of Brasilia, and gave me all the ground for my next steps at the University vi of California, Santa Barbara, where I wrote this dissertation. I will always remember with grace my colleagues who were together with me in the last four years, hoping to keep their friendship for many more years to come. If I would mention everyone, and explain how much help I got over the last four years, this Acknowledgments section would be longer than the empirical chapters. vii Funding Declaration This material is based, in part, upon work supported by the CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil, Process 2669-13-7. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CAPES Foundation. viii Vita of Francisco Brandão December 15th, 2017 Education University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA January 2018 PhD in Political Science; and in Technology and Society Fields: Comparative Politics/Political Communication University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil May 2008 Master of Arts in Political Science Area of Emphasis: Political Communication University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil December 2000 Bachelor of Science in Communication Area of Emphasis: Journalism Research Areas - Cross-cutting research interests in political communication and comparative politics - Primary research in political communication, especially social media - Secondary research interest in political parties and elections, especially participation - Other research interests in legislative studies and social network analysis Professional activities Chamber of Deputies, Brasília (2005-2013; 2017-now) Editor of the Chamber of Deputies News Agency and Press Secretary of the Chamber of Deputies São Paulo State Construction Union – SindusCon-SP, São Paulo (2001-2005) Press Secretary Newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, São Paulo (1995- 2001) Reporter and Editor ix Teaching experience University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA Instructor of Record, Comparative Political Communication (Upper Division), Summer 2017 Teaching Assistant PS 171: Political Communication (Upper Division), Spring 2017 PS 118: Comparative Ethnic Politics (Upper Division), Winter 2017 PS 12: American Government (Lower Division), Fall 2016 PS 171: Political Communication (Upper Division), Winter 2016 Higher Education Institute of Brasília – Iesb, Brasília Instructor of Record, Public Opinion and Elections (Graduate Division), Winter 2009 University of Brasília, Brasília Instructor of Record, Democratic Theory, Summer 2007 Articles and papers Brandão Junior, F.; Batista, C. M. E-participation in electoral campaigns: the Brazilian experience. International Journal of Electronic Governance, v. 2, p. 328-343, 2009. Brandão Junior, F.; Batista, C. M. E-Voting in Brazilian Electoral Campaigns. In: IPSA Santiago 2009 World Congress of Political Science, 2009, Santiago. Brandão Junior, F.; Batista, C. M. The use of websites, emails and virtual communities on 2006 elections (Palanques virtuais: o uso de sites, e-mails e comunidades eletrônicas nas eleições de 2006). In: 6º Congresso of the Brazilian Political Science Association (6º Encontro da Associação Brasileira de Ciência Política), 2008, Campinas. Brandão Junior, F. What Constitution-makers think about participation and the Brazilian Constitution. 2017, under review. x Abstract Campaign spheres in Latin America: How institutions affect digital media in presidential elections by Francisco Brandão The changes in the media environment brought up by digital media are expected to have profound effects on politics, from citizen’s participation to elites’ strategies. However, the literature has paid little attention to systemic and contextual factors that might constrain or limit the possibilities for collective action in this new communication context. Using a structural approach, I analyze presidential election campaigns’ use of Twitter in a study of 16 Latin American countries between 2012 and 2015 – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. To demonstrate the quality of the data set, I show that forecasting models with Twitter Volume can preview election results in most of the cases, and even give more accurate forecasting than polling data in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico. In order
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