The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics

Introduction
Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Anders Olof Larsson, Jessica Yarin Robinson,
Tanja Bosch, and Kateryna Kasianenko

PART I
Concepts

1 Great Expectations: Network Media Logic and Politics in the Age of Generative AI
Ulrike Klinger and Jakob Svensson

2 A Perfect Match? The Populism- Social Media Nexus
Márton Bene and Krisztina Burai

3 Digital Dimensions of Propaganda: Technological, Doctrinal, and Organisational Shifts in Authoritarian Strategic Communication
Gregory Asmolov

4 Deliberation and Destructive Polarisation in Social Media
Tariq Choucair, Katharina Esau, Nicole Curato, Samantha Vilkins, and Sebastian Svegaard

PART II
Challenges

5 Studying Social Media and Politics: What Is ‘Social’ About Our Research?
Sahana Udupa

6 Can African Feminist Philosophy Inform a Holistic Multilateral Approach to Governing Social Media?
Nanjala Nyabola

7 The Global Village Is Here, Just Not Like We Expected: Transnational Politics on Social Media and the Rise of Networked Cosmopolitanism
Jessica Yarin Robinson

8 Alt- Platformisation: Evolution of Fringe Communication and Political Discourses Through and with the Web
Ashwin Nagappa and Ehsan Dehghan

9 Hyperconnectivity, Not Isolation: Why Concerns about ‘Echo Chambers’ and ‘Filter Bubbles’ Address the Wrong Problem
Axel Bruns

10 Authenticity in the Age of AI: Beyond the Alarmist Deepfake Discourse
Gunn Enli

PART III
Policies

11 The Truth- Keeping Moment: The Rise and Fall of Platform-Supported Fact-Checking
Silvia Montaña- Niño, Ned Watt, and Michelle Riedlinger

12 Public Speech, Private Governance, Public Values? Platform Policies on Political Advertising
Tegan Cohen and Shilpa Singh Jaswant

13 Who Do Parties Target? Worldwide Evidence on Political Microtargeting
Fabio Votta, Simon Kruschinski, Mads Fuglsang Hove, Natali Helberger, Tom Dobber, and Claes de Vreese

14 Social Media Data Access in the Post- API Age
Erik Borra, Stijn Peeters, Bernhard Rieder, and Martin Trans

15 Computational Infrastructures for the Collection and Study of Digital Platform- Based Political Advertising
Daniel Angus, Anatoliy Gruzd, and Philip Mai

16 When Private Affords Public: Politics on Platforms or Platforms for Politics?
Marcelo Santos, Sebastián Rivera, and Karen Gheza Correa

PART IV
Problems

17 Restating the State? Social Media Propaganda and the State–Non-State Nexus
Marc Owen Jones

18 The Influencer Theatre: Participatory Disinformation in the Influencer Era
Anna Beers

19 Navigating Coordination and Inauthentic Behaviour: Challenges and Innovations in Social Media Detection
Fabio Giglietto, Timothy Graham, and Nicola Righetti

20 Populism Across Two Continents: Assessing the Use of Populist Communication Styles on Facebook Across Ten Countries
Anders Olof Larsson, Laura Alonso- Muñoz, Márton Bene, Shelley Boulianne, Vicente Fenoll, Jörg Haßler, Darren Lilleker, Sara Machado, Alena Pospíšil Macková, Percy Peña- Vicuña, and Adriana Rodríguez-Sánchez

21 Harmful Visual Humour on Far-Right Social Media: Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Reactionary Memes
Kurt Sengul, Imogen Richards, Callum Jones, and Jordan McSwiney

PART V
Platforms

22 So Long Twitter, and Thanks for All the Tweets
Marco Bastos

23 Digital Public Opinion in China: Weibo Discourses from COVID-19 and Beyond
Weiwen Yu and Dechun Zhang

24 Instagram and Politics: A Systematic Literature Review
Shelley Boulianne, Samantha Mullin, and Stephanie Belland

25 Locating WhatsApp in Indian Politics: History, Media Ecology, and Ideology
Ram Bhat and Shakuntala Banaji

26 Telegram as a Developing Political Actor: Conceptualising Platform Actorness
Tetyana Lokot and Mariëlle Wijermars

27 Play, Protest, Repeat: Conceptualising Playful Activism on TikTok
Laura Cervi

28 Memetic Politics on TikTok: Key Ideas, Considerations, and a Tanghulu Case Study
Crystal Abidin and Jing Zeng

PART VI
Possibilities

29 Busting the Myth of ‘Leaderless’ Movements: Crowd- Enabled Elites in Digitally Networked Activism
Saif Shahin

30 Digital Resistance under Authoritarianism: A Comparative Study of Activist Publics Across Five Countries
Anna Litvinenko and Tamer Farag

31 Participatory War and Social Media: Discursive, Material, and Ethical Dimensions
Olga Boichak and Kateryna Kasianenko

32 Who Wins the Engagement Race? Examining Normalisation and Equalisation Theories Across 12 Ibero- American Countries
Vicente Fenoll, Márton Bene, and Isabella Gonçalves

Biography

Axel Bruns is an Australian Laureate Fellow and Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Gunn Enli is a Professor at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway.

Anders Olof Larsson is Professor of Communication Studies at Kristiania University College in Oslo, Norway.

Jessica Yarin Robinson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo’s Department of Media and Communication.

Tanja Bosch is Professor of Media Studies and Production at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, where she also holds the position of National Research Foundation Chair in Digital Media Sociology.

Kateryna Kasianenko is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) and Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC).