Mapping social media networks of political actors and understanding the flow of information through them from elites to the wider public

在信息时代，社交媒体在政治和社会世界中传播和流动信息的作用日益普遍。更重要的是，社交媒体为政治行为者提供了一个开放的平台，让他们绕过传统形式的新闻和媒体，直接向更广泛的公众传播他们的信息和意识形态。当然，认为媒体环境在整个现代时期都保持不变是不公平的--电视和广播等新技术总是为传播信息创造新的平台--但社交媒体代表着一场全新的革命(Gainous&Wagner，2013)。具体地说，通过Twitter的视角审视社交媒体时代，其逻辑似乎倾向于简单而冲动的、具有实质性和前瞻性的过度话语的政治修辞(Ott，2017)。没有比特朗普总统的推特政治更恰当的例子了：克里斯(2017)的一项研究展示了他如何使用非正式、直接和挑衅性的沟通方式，通过他的推特平台将右翼民粹主义话语直接传播给美国公众。这项研究提案的目的是探索这些信息如何从社交媒体上的政治参与者流向更广泛的公众，并衡量其影响的程度和方向。具体地说，这个项目提出的问题是，这种来自社交网络的自上而下的信息流是如何导致英国日益严重的意识形态两极分化和政治分歧的。Engesser等人(2016)明确研究了民粹主义的传播和政治参与者使用社交媒体之间的联系：民粹主义滋生于社交媒体给予政治参与者公开和直接向公众表达其意识形态的自由，而且没有太多的疏忽。然而，我觉得无论是通过社交网络传播民粹主义话语，还是使用社交媒体来强调其他意识形态的传播，仍有许多需要探索的地方。潜在的研究问题：鉴于这项提议是为南安普顿大学提出的一个预先批准的项目撰写的，项目主题和研究问题基本上已经确定。然而，我想提出我个人对该项目的解释和方法，以及我认为需要回答的一些重要问题：-通过社交媒体将信息从政治参与者传播到更广泛的公众有什么不同，这种差异有多大？-在过去十年中，政治参与者使用社交媒体的增长在多大程度上对英国日益严重的意识形态两极分化做出了贡献？-公众舆论和观点在多大程度上影响了他们在社交媒体上关注的政治参与者和群体？-如果有的话，与右翼相比，意识形态左翼的政治行为者使用社交媒体向更广泛的公众传播信息的方式之间的差异？-与使用更传统的媒体形式相比，使用社交媒体向更广泛的公众传播精英的信息的影响是否被夸大了？

In an information era, the role of social media on the spread and flow of information across the politicaland social world is of increasing prevalence. More importantly, social media provides an open platformfor political actors to circumvent traditional forms of news and media outlets in order to spread theirmessage and ideology directly to the wider public. Naturally, it would be unfair to suggest that the mediaenvironment has remained static throughout the modern period - new technologies like the T.V and theradio have always created new platforms for information to be propagated - but social media presents anentirely new revolution (Gainous & Wagner, 2013). To be specific, examining the age of social mediathrough the lens of Twitter, its logic seemingly favours political rhetoric that is simple and impulsive overdiscourse with substance and forethought (Ott, 2017). There is no more pertinent example of this inaction than through the Tweet politics of President Trump: a study by Kries (2017) illustrating the way inwhich he used an informal, direct, and provoking communication style to disseminate right-wing populistdiscourse through his Twitter platform directly to the American public.The purpose of this research proposal is to explore the ways in which this information flows from politicalactors on social media through to the wider public, as well as measure the degree and direction of itsinfluence. Specifically, this project asks the question of how this top-down flow of information from socialnetworks is contributing to the growing ideological polarisation and political divide in the UK. Theassociation between the spread of populism and the use of social media by political actors has beenexpressly examined by Engesser et al (2016): populism feeds on the freedom afforded to political actorsby social media to articulate their ideology openly and directly to the public, and without much oversight.However, I feel that there remains much to be explored both regarding the spread of populist discoursethrough social networks as well as the use of social media to accentuate the spread of other ideologicalperspectives.Potential Research Questions:Given that this proposal is written for a pre-approved project put forward by the University ofSouthampton, the project theme and research questions have largely already been set. However, I wishto propose my own individual interpretation and approach to the project, along with some of thequestions I believe are important to answer:- How does the spread of information from political actors to the wider public through social media differfrom traditional forms of media, and how significant is this difference?- To what degree has a growth in the use of social media by political actors in the last decade contributed12 / 16to increasing levels of ideological polarisation in the UK?- How far does public opinion and perspective sway in relation to the political actors and groups that theyfollow on social media?- What, if any, are the differences between the way in which political actors from the ideological left usesocial media to disseminate information to the wider public, compared to those on the right?- Is the influence of using social media to disseminate information from elites to the wider publicoverstated in comparison to the use of more traditional forms of media?