The Digital Architectures of Social Media Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics Bossetta, Michael 2019 Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Bossetta, M. (2019). The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics. Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. 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LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Bossetta Michael university of copenhagen FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES faculty of social sciences UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN · DENMARK DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2019 · ISBN 978-87-7209-249-2 MICHAEL BOSSETTA The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics in Contemporary and Participation of Social Media: Platforms Architectures Digital The The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics Doctor of Philosophy 2019 · Michael Bossetta DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Bossetta Michael university of copenhagen FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES faculty of social sciences UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN · DENMARK DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2019 · ISBN 978-87-7209-249-2 MICHAEL BOSSETTA The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics in Contemporary and Participation of Social Media: Platforms Architectures Digital The The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics Doctor of Philosophy 2019 · Michael Bossetta The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics Michael Bossetta Center for European Politics Department of Political Science Faculty of Social Sciences University of Copenhagen Dissertation submitted for the degree of: Doctor of Philosophy March, 2019 Doctor of Philosophy 2019 © Michael Bossetta ISBN 978-87-7209-249-2 Printed by SL grafik, Frederiksberg, Denmark (slgrafik.dk) The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Platforms and Participation in Contemporary Politics Michael Bossetta Center for European Politics Department of Political Science Faculty of Social Sciences University of Copenhagen Dissertation submitted for the degree of: Doctor of Philosophy March, 2019 Contents Chapter I: Introduction and Structure ............................................................................................ 1 Chapter II: Theoretical Concepts and Critiques ......................................................................... 12 Chapter III: Methodological Approach ........................................................................................ 26 Chapter IV: The Digital Architectures of Social Media ............................................................. 30 Chapter V: Engaging with European Politics through Twitter and Facebook ........................ 50 Chapter VI: A Typology of Political Participation Online .......................................................... 63 Chapter VII: Political Participation on Facebook during Brexit ................................................ 79 Chapter VIII: Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 95 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 97 Summary Social media platforms (SMPs) influence the communication of virtually all stakeholders in democratic politics. Politicians and parties campaign through SMPs, the press use them to distribute political news, and many citizens read, share, and debate political issues across multiple social media accounts. When assessing the political implications of these practices, scholars have overly focused on the commonalities of SMPs, rather than their differences. By treating social media as a coherent genre, scholars interested in SMPs’ impact on politics have oversimplified an increasingly fragmented social media landscape. While we know politicians and citizens use social media to campaign, we know very little about how this campaigning differs across platforms. The implications of this oversight are both theoretical and methodological. Theoretically, scholars lack an overarching conceptual framework to inform cross-platform research designs. As a result, the operationalization of social media variables across platforms is often inconsistent and incomparable, limiting the attribution of platform-specific effects. This dissertation provides a theoretical correction to the study of social media and politics through a focus on platforms’ digital architectures. Digital architectures are defined as the collective suite of technical protocols that enable, constrain, and shape user behavior in a virtual space. The dissertation’s central argument is that the digital architectures of SMPs mediate how users enact political processes through them. Focusing primarily on citizens’ political participation, but also politicians’ campaigning, I show how these processes manifest differently across platforms in ways that can be attributed to their digital architectures. Moreover, I demonstrate how both politicians and citizens manipulate the digital architectures of platforms to further their political agendas during elections. To mount these arguments, the dissertation adopts a conceptual, exploratory, and interdisciplinary approach. Its main theoretical contribution, the digital architectures framework, brings together fragments from literatures spanning archeology, design theory, media studies, political communication, political science, social movements, and software engineering. Methodologically, the study combines qualitative and quantitative methods to address the research questions of four individual research articles (Chapters 4-7). The main empirical cases included in the dissertation are the 2015 British General Election, the 2016 Brexit Referendum, and the 2016 U.S Presidential Election. The structure of the dissertation is as follows. Chapter 1 introduces the dissertation’s overarching research questions and design. Chapter 2 situates the digital architectures framework within the existing literature by critiquing existing theoretical approaches to social media and political participation. Chapter 3 outlines the main challenges in studying participation on social media, as well as summarizes the dissertation’s methodological approach. Chapter 4 presents the digital architectures framework through a systematic, cross-platform comparison of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. In this chapter, I illustrate how the digital architectures of these SMPs shaped how American politicians used them for political campaigning in the 2016 U.S. election. Shifting focus from politics to citizens, Chapter 5 examines how the digital architectures of social media structure citizens’ political participation. Chapter 5 characterizes the various styles and degrees of political participation through SMPs, and it shows how the architectures of Twitter and Facebook lead to different manifestations of online participation in the context of European politics. Building on the Chapter 5’s conceptual work, Chapters 6 and 7 use digital trace data to empirically investigate citizens’ participation on Twitter and Facebook, respectively. Chapter 6 offers a new theory of online political participation by conceptualizing it as a process, rather than as an activity. Chapter 6 develops a typology of political participation and applies it to citizens’ use of Twitter in the 2015 British General Election. We find that a small number of highly active citizens dominate the political discussion on Twitter, and these citizens tend to promote right-wing, nationalist positions. Chapter 7 finds similar patterns in citizens’ political participation on Facebook during the 2016 Breit referendum. sing metadata to chart the commenting patterns of citizens across media and political Facebook pages, Chapter 7 reveals that eave supporters were much more active in political commentary than emain supporters. owever, this phenomenon is, again, due to a small number of active citizens promoting right-wing, nationalist positions. Few citizens commented on both media and campaign Facebook pages during the referendum, but those who did