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This review assesses the state of the newly emerging field of the study of postcommunist elections & voting by building & analyzing a database of 101 articles on the topic that have appeared in 16 leading academic journals (8 general political science journals & 8 postcommunist area studies journals) between 1990 & 2000. The database is then used to make inferences concerning both what is being studied by scholars & how it is being studied. The review systematically assesses which countries have been analyzed, the types of elections examined, the prevalence of comparative analysis, the division between quantitative & qualitative research, & the types of data used in quantitative studies. It then turns to substantive questions, examining both how scholars have explained postcommunist election results & voting decisions, & what they have used these elections to explain. 7 Tables, 2 Figures, 142 References. Adapted from the source document.

This study demonstrates that in a time of massive change characterized by the emergence of entirely new political systems and a fundamental reorganization of economic life, systematic patterns of economic conditions affecting election results at the aggregate level can in fact be identified during the first decade of post-communist elections in five post-communist countries: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. A variety of theoretical arguments concerning the conditions in which these effects are more or less likely to be present are also proposed and tested. Analysis is conducted using an original data set of regional level economic, demographic, and electoral indicators, and features both broadly based comparative assessments of the findings across all twenty elections as well as more focused case study analyses of pairs of individual elections

Over the last five years, widespread concern about the effects of social media on democracy has led to an explosion in research from different disciplines and corners of academia. This book is the first of its kind to take stock of this emerging multi-disciplinary field by synthesizing what we know, identifying what we do not know and obstacles to future research, and charting a course for the future inquiry. Chapters by leading scholars cover major topics - from disinformation to hate speech to political advertising - and situate recent developments in the context of key policy questions. In addition, the book canvasses existing reform proposals in order to address widely perceived threats that social media poses to democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

ObjectiveMacro‐level studies have consistently found a connection between economic crises and support for far‐right parties. However, research on the micro foundations for this electoral support has generally found little or no correlation between an individual's economic environment and far‐right voting. We test one possible explanation for this seeming paradox, namely, that determinants of far‐right identification differ across time and particularly in times of crisis.MethodsUtilizing traditional representative data from Eurobarometer surveys in a manner that strips away confounding issues generally found in the extant literature, we directly test whether individuals concerned about their personal economic situation, or that of their country, are more likely to identify with far‐right ideological beliefs during economic crises.ResultsUltimately, we find little evidence to support the claim that the Great Recession of 2007–2009 and its aftermath shifted the determinants of support for far‐right ideology, though prospective pocketbook concerns do increase the likelihood of identifying with the far right.ConclusionsWe discuss the implications of these findings and offer additional avenues for future research.

AbstractIn recent years, the connection between online and in particular social media and politics has become one of the central ones in contemporary societies, and has been explored very widely in political research and media and communication studies. Against such growing body of research, this Special Issue foregrounds the role of language as a key carrier of political ideologies and practices on social and online media. It aims to advance the scholarly understanding of contemporary political and democratic dynamics by postulating the need for a broader, problem-driven look at how political practices and ideologies are articulated on social and online media. It illustrates the value of a cross-disciplinary take that allows overcoming both the classic (e.g. qualitative vs. quantitative) and the more recent (e.g. small vs. big data) divides in explorations of the language of online and politics.

What factors enable and motivate citizens to form partisan identities? Popular accounts, as well as several major theoretical approaches, attribute a central role for policy and ideological concerns in shaping the partisan orientations of voters. Information about the policy aims of parties should therefore, on average, make it easier for an individual to find a party that best fits her views, especially if she had previously been less familiar with the parties. The evidence for this is mixed, however. Plenty of studies find a robust correlation between policy views and partisanship. Yet there is mounting evidence that citizens look to parties to decide where to stand on policy issues, suggesting that partisan identification precedes policy preferences. We bring new evidence to bear by investigating directly the impact of substantive policy information on the partisan identities of ordinary citizens. To do this, we carry out a pair of original experiments across six countries, five of which are relatively young or unstable party systems. One experiment informs citizens about the policy goals of the major parties; we find little to no evidence that such information affects levels of partisanship. The other experiment tests the impact of inviting citizens to evaluate and compare their own position to the positions of the major parties, a more direct test of the sort of reasoning posited in some theoretical accounts. We find that this reflective task in fact depresses levels of partisanship, perhaps especially among those who knew less about politics and parties from the outset. This suggests that thinking about policy differences and proximities pushes citizens away from partisan attachments they form in the ordinary course of life, perhaps because such thinking generates fresh doubts or focuses attention on facets of partisan choice that matter less in typical processes of preference formation.

Abstract
How successful is the Islamic State's online strategy? To what extent does the organization achieve its goals of attracting a global audience, broadcasting its military successes, and marketing the Caliphate? Using Twitter and YouTube search data, collected throughout 2015 and early 2016, we assess how suspected ISIS accounts, sympathizers, and opponents behave across two social media platforms, offering key insights into the successes and limitations of ISIS's information warfare strategy. Analyzing the tweet content and metadata from 16,364 suspected ISIS accounts, we find that a core network of ISIS Twitter users are producing linguistically diverse narratives, touting battlefield victories and depicting utopian life in the Caliphate. Furthermore, a dataset of over 70 million tweets, as well as analysis YouTube search data, indicates that although pro-ISIS content spreads globally and remains on message, it is far less prolific than anti-ISIS content. However, this anti-ISIS content is not necessarily anti-extremist or aligned with Western policy goals.

This paper considers two primary issues about big data: (1) big data as a sample, and (2) a particular type of big data-that is, social media data. We argue that if we can learn things from little data, then we certainly can learn from big data. We think that big data offers a tremendous opportunity that little data does not. We argue that having more data is an opportunity for, not a constraint on, testing theories of political behavior. Adapted from the source document.