The effect social media is having on the micro-foundations of our models of party systems and voting behaviour

我的研究方向是分析社交媒体对我们政党制度和投票行为模型的微观基础的影响。无论是通过获取政治信息的方式，还是通过执行政治话语的方式，社交媒体都从根本上改变了人们作为政治参与者的行为方式。这些变化对选民行为理论产生了重大影响，而选民行为理论又对政党制度变革理论产生了影响。在微观层面(或个人层面)，我希望借鉴情感智力等理论，这些理论分析人们如何决定喜欢或不喜欢某些政党或候选人。情感智力提供了一种投票行为的心理模型，通过情绪和间歇性的理性过程，倾向和焦虑随着时间的推移而发展，并通过投票来应对。社交媒体改变了人们接触政治新闻和话语的方式，改变了政治焦虑何时以及如何发展的趋势，以及信息来源(从假新闻到公众人物的推文)，从而在发生时告知断断续续的理性主义。在中观层面(或群体/社会层面)，人们的网络是如何形成的，如何形成正在因社交媒体而改变：人们更相互联系，更少集群化，因此人们的同质性或异质性不同(例如，通过选择，往往不那么地理上的同质性，但潜在的政治同质性更高)。对移民态度的研究表明，这一因素与对这一问题的态度有关，但对其他人口统计数据和其他信仰的暴露与所有政治观点的问题有关。同样在中观层面，政党的竞选方式和政治运动的组织方式也发生了变化：无论是通过有针对性的广告，还是通过临时运动和请愿。社交媒体也是人们政治表达和与政治媒体接触的巨大原始数据来源，并提供了实验方法的潜力。在宏观层面(或总体层面)，政治分裂是如何形成和转移的，因此自下而上发生了变化。无论是人们如何形成对问题的观点，他们的观点如何传播，或者他们是如何被动员起来的，这个理论都必须根据这一点进行重新评估。随着社交媒体道德和现代竞选技巧越来越成为聚光灯下的焦点，我们仍然对社交媒体对我们的政治产生了什么影响知之甚少。我希望通过我的研究为建立这种理解做出贡献。

My research direction is to analyse the effect social media is having on the micro-foundations of our models of party systems and voting behaviour. The way people behave as political actors has been fundamentally changed by social media, whether through the way political information is accessed, or how political discourse is carried out. These changes have significant ramifications for theories of voter behaviour, which in turn has implications for theories of party system change. At the micro-level (or individual level), I hope to draw on theories, such as affective intelligence, which analyse how people decide whether they like or dislike certain parties or candidates. Affective intelligence presents a psychological model of voting behaviour through an emotional and intermittently rational process, where dispositions and anxieties develop over time, and are coped with by voting. Social media has changed how people engage with political news and discourse, altering the trends in when and how political anxiety develops, and the sources of information (from fake news to tweets by public figures) to inform the intermittent rationalism when it occurs.At the meso-level (or group/social level), how people's networks are shaped and how they form is changing due to social media: people are more interconnected, less clustered, and because of this are differently homogenous or heterogeneous (e.g. often less geographically homogenous, potentially more politically homogenous through selection). Studies on attitudes towards immigration have shown the relevance of this factor to dispositions on that issue, but exposure to other demographics and other beliefs is relevant to issues across all of political opinion. Also on the meso-level, how parties campaign and how political movements organise has changed: whether through targeted advertising, or through ad-hoc movements and petitions. Social media also serves as an immense raw data source on people's political expression, engagement with political media, and provides potential for experimental methods.At the macro-level (or aggregate level), how political 'cleavage' divisions form and shift has therefore changed from the bottom up. Whether it's how people develop opinions about issues, how their opinions spread or how they are mobilised, the theory has to be re-evaluated in light of this. With social media ethics and modern campaigning techniques coming ever more into the spotlight, we still know little about what effect, exactly, social media is having on our politics. I hope to contribute to building this understanding with my research.