“Social media has opened up ways for us to participate in politics.”

Alice Marwick is Associate Professor of Communication and a Principal Researcher at the Center for Information Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We discuss whether social media can build and sustain political movements, help politicians win elections, and how it has changed the way we interact with politics.

Hashtag Activism
Black Lives Matter is the epitome of ‘hashtag activism.’ #BLM is a native social media activist movement that started on the internet and builds support for itself there. #BLM combines traditional protest with online activism, allowing people to express support on social media without necessarily going to a protest. This has proven to reveal wide-spread support for #BLM, amplifying and mainstreaming the group’s cause. Low overhead actions like retweets, Instagram stories, and Facebook posts helped the movement grow meaningfully. 

Politicians on Social Media
Lawmakers are increasingly turning to social media as a campaign strategy. The most successful congressmembers, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are able to humanize themselves, put forth policies, connect with constituents, and build a broader base of support. Others, such as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, have struggled to gain a solid footing online. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the need for a powerful social media presence, which has been challenging for new candidates who cannot capitalize on in-person events to grow their online following.  

Social Media and Politics 
Social media has opened up new ways to participate in politics. Previously, gate-keeping legacy media controlled most of the coverage surrounding politics. Users can now directly analyze and interpret world events, policies, and politics. Unfortunately, social media also accounts for a vast array of misinformation, disinformation, and hyper partisanship. While social media can make us feel more involved and optimistic about what’s possible in demanding accountability and good governance, it can also feel overwhelming to be inundated with an endless stream of bad news. 


Find out more: 
Alice Marwick is an Associate Professor of Communication and a Principal Researcher at the Center for Information Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she researches the social, political, and cultural implications of popular social media technologies. Marwick is also a Faculty Advisor to the Media Manipulation project at the Data & Society Research Institute, which studies far-right online subcultures and their use of social media to spread misinformation.  

Her first book, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age (Yale 2013), draws from ethnographic fieldwork in the San Francisco tech scene to examine how people seek social status through attention and visibility online. Marwick was formerly Director of the McGannon Communication Research Center and Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and a postdoctoral researcher in the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England.

You can follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/alicetiara

https://comm.unc.edu/people/department-faculty/alice-e-marwick/
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300209389/status-update

Building Power Online: Alice Marwick

“Hitler was concerned with making people happy with National Socialism.”

Nathan Stoltzfus is the Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University and author of Hitler’s Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany. We discuss how Hitler used popularity, legitimacy, and ideology to build power for himself and the Nazi Party.

Legitimacy 

Hitler is one of the early modern autocrats for whom legitimacy was crucial to his claim to power. He recognized the importance of including the people and representing himself as presenting the will of the people. Being legitimately elected provided Hitler with a mandate to propagate Nazi ideology within Germany and beyond, and build a popular mass movement. Hitler’s example continues to serve as a model in fascist politics today. 

Popularity

Hitler enjoyed immense popularity, which he carefully cultivated and constantly orchestrated in public appearances. He built a reputation as a mythic Führer who could do no wrong. If something were wrong, his followers would commonly say that Hitler must not know about it because if he did, he would fix it. He portrayed himself as always striving for Germans on Germany’s behalf. General belief of Hitler's greatness was so impeccably maintained that it became nearly impossible to shake in the masses. 

Ideology 

Hitler firmly believed in the superiority of National Socialism as an ideology. In fact, he wanted to fundamentally change his society's norms to align with those of Nazism – such as the primacy of Aryans and euthanasia for useless eaters – and replace Christianity as the dominant belief system in Germany. By using propaganda and the aesthetics of consensus around National Socialist thought, he and his ministers worked to ensure Germans were deeply internalizing Nazi beliefs so they would be Nazis both in public and even in private when no one was watching. 

Find out more: 

Nathan Stoltzfus is the Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University and author or editor of seven books, including Hitler’s Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany and Resistance of the Heart. Resistance of the Heart was the Fraenkel Prize co-winner and a New Statesman Book of the Year and prize winner of Munich’s Besten Liste for nonfiction.

His work has been translated into German, French, Swedish, Greek, Turkish, and Russian. Stoltzfus has been a long-term member of the faculty of the National Judicial College. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1993, and has been a Fulbright and IREX scholar in East as well as West Germany, a Friedrich Ebert Stiftung grantee, a DAAD research scholar, a Humboldt German American Center for Visiting Scholars grantee, and a H.F. Guggenheim Foundation Scholar as well as a Florida State University “Developing Scholar.” His work has formed a basis for several films, and he has published in the Atlantic Monthly, the Daily Beast, Der Spiegel, The American Scholar, and Die Zeit.  His current book projects include the study of the memories of World War II as a basis for national myths and social cohesion.

You can follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nate_stoltzfus

http://nathanstoltzfus.net/books/
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-393-03904-7

Building Authoritarian Power: Nathan Stoltzfus

“Comey and the FBI were primarily concerned about Comey and the FBI.”

Devlin Barrett is a Washington Post reporter and author of October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election. We discuss how the FBI’s work culture and its transformation into a national security agency led to a series of monumental misjudgments, and examine how a similar future fate can be averted.

October Surprise

The term ‘October Surprise’ refers to a type of dirty trick that comes so late in the election calendar that a candidate does not have the time or space to respond, and voters don’t have the time to consider what it might mean. Comey’s letter to Congress a mere 11 days before Election Day 2016, announcing a renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, is one of the most significant October Surprises on record. Trump contracting COVID-19 in October does not fit the description because a political opponent or third party did not orchestrate it; it was merely a surprising event in October. 

Restoring Trust in the FBI

In the aftermath of 9/11, the FBI pivoted from criminal justice to national security. National Security agents soon came to run the bureau, instead of agents whose focus was on law enforcement, including in high-profile political cases. Comey’s security-focused inner circle lacked the insight of agents with such expertise, who might have cautioned him against his investigations and actions in 2016. To regain America’s trust, the FBI must reinvest in their public corruption and public integrity offices, demonstrating they have the leadership to stay impartial in elections, political investigations, and high-profile cases of public importance. 

Lessons from 2016

Though Comey’s ill-advised letter helped tip the scales in Trump’s favor, some of the onus falls on the voting public who were prone to believing in conspiracy theories and fake news stories. We need to bolster a healthy skepticism of our leaders, teach more civic engagement, and reemphasize the importance of critical thinking over blind devotion. Giving Americans the tools to rationally analyze news stories is vital to remedying our collective failure in 2016 and providing a better future for our democracy. 

Find out more: 

Devlin Barrett writes about the FBI and the Justice Department for the Washington Post and is the author of October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election. He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for National Reporting, for coverage of Russian interference in the U.S. election. In 2017 he was a co-finalist for both the Pulitzer for Feature Writing and the Pulitzer for International Reporting. He has covered federal law enforcement for more than 20 years, and has worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and the New York Post.

We’re starting a referral program this week! Refer us to your friends to get a free button or Moleskine notebook. Please use this link: https://refer.glow.fm/future-hindsight

https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/devlin-barrett/
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781541761971

You can follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DevlinBarrett

October Surprise: Devlin Barrett

“There are many different ways to civically engage.”

Maria Yuan is the founder of IssueVoter, a non-partisan civic engagement platform whose mission is to give everyone a voice in our democracy. It helps voters track bills before Congress, sends their opinions to their representatives, and puts together a personalized scorecard on the representative’s voting record. We discuss how we can create a healthier democracy through technology and civic engagement.

Civic Engagement Online and In-Person
Technology can make participating in democracy easier than ever before because it’s scalable and makes it possible for everyone’s voices to be heard. However, civic engagement must also be done with human connection and in person, like in community conversations, town halls, and organizing. IssueVoter uses its online platform to motivate users to perform civic engagement in the real world. Thirty percent of IssueVoter users say the platform is the reason they voted, showing that the more information the user has, the more he or she is motivated to take action. 
 
Fostering Accountability 
IssueVoter fosters civic engagement in between elections by making it easier for users to know what bills are being proposed in Congress, and sending their opinions on those bills to their representatives. Then, users are informed how their representatives voted. It turns out that representatives aren’t always in alignment with their constituents. Knowing how your elected representatives voted is key to holding them accountable. In fact, 33% of users have changed their voting decisions based on IssueVoter information. IssueVoter stresses the importance of primary elections to vote for candidates in line with your values. 
 
Policy Impacts Lives
We need to do a better job of connecting the dots between public policy and politics. Policies are created and enacted by the politicians we elect. All policies, ranging from healthcare to education, impact all of us, regardless of who we voted for or whether we voted at all. IssueVoter helps us understand how our elected politicians vote on policy matters and bills in Congress so that we know whether they are representing us and whether we should vote for them again.
 
Find out more: 
Maria Yuan is the Founder of IssueVoter, an innovative non-profit and non-partisan platform that offers everyone a voice in our democracy by making civic engagement accessible, efficient, and impactful. 
 
The time between elections is when the work that impacts our lives gets done. IssueVoter answers the question, “The election is over, now what?” Individuals use IssueVoter to get alerts about new bills related to issues they care about, send opinions to their Representative before Congress votes, and track how often s/he represents them. In partnership with companies, organizations, and candidates, IssueVoter encourages year-round civic engagement with their employees, customers, members, or constituents.
 
Maria’s political experience includes introducing and passing a bill as a constituent, working in a State Representative’s office in Texas, and managing and winning one of the most targeted races in Iowa – an open seat in a swing district. Maria earned degrees from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania and The University of Texas at Austin. Maria’s writing has appeared in Huffington Post and The Hill, and she has spoken at SXSW, The Social Innovation Summit, Shearman & Sterling, UBS, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania.

https://www.fearlesscommunicators.com/maria-yuan/
https://issuevoter.org/
 
You can follow IssueVoter on Twitter at https://twitter.com/issuevoter
 
We’re starting a referral program this week! Refer us to your friends to get a free button or Moleskine notebook. Please use this link to get your personal referral code: https://refer.glow.fm/future-hindsight

Lasting Civic Engagement: Maria Yuan

"Keynes was trying to find a sort of policy glue that would help societies hang together."

Zach Carter is the author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, which was just selected as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. We learn about Keynes, his economic theories, and potential future applications of his principles in today's uncertain world.

Keynes's Goals

Keynes concerned himself with his day's most significant problems: WWI and WWII, the rise of fascism and revolution, and the Great Depression in the United States. He believed that assuaging fears about an uncertain future was most important, and that a more equal society would also be more secure from deflation, deprivation, and dictatorship. He aimed for policies that would grapple with crisis and uncertainty. 

Economics as Politics

Keynes firmly believed that economics was an extension of politics and government, not a separate entity that existed outside of the governmental sphere of influence. Governments needed to manage their economies to ensure success, by controlling wages and working conditions, as well as setting interest rates and fiscal policy. Economics and monetary policy were political tools to achieve healthy and stable societies. 

A Keynesian Future

A Keynesian in the incoming Biden administration would prioritize solving the problems of climate change, COVID, and economic inequality through a large-scale project like FDR’s New Deal. Together with traditional infrastructure spending, decarbonizing our economy would require massive public works efforts similar to the New Deal’s WPA, creating millions of new jobs, buoying the working class, and mitigating income inequality. 

Find out more:

Zachary D. Carter is a senior reporter at HuffPost, where he covers economic policy and American politics. He is a frequent guest on cable news and whose work has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, and The American Prospect, among other outlets. He is also the author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, which was just selected as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly.

Carter began his career at SNL Financial (now a division of S&P Global), where he was a banking reporter during the financial crisis of 2008. He wrote features about macroeconomic policy, regional economic instability, and the bank bailouts, but his passion was for the complex, arcane world of financial regulatory policy. He covered the accounting standards that both fed the crisis and shielded bank executives from its blowback, detailed the consumer protection abuses that consumed the mortgage business and exposed oversight failures at the Federal Reserve and other government agencies that allowed reckless debts to pile up around the world.

Carter graduated from the University of Virginia, where he studied philosophy and politics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

You can follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/zachdcarter

https://bookshop.org/books/the-price-of-peace-money-democracy-and-the-life-of-john-maynard-keynes/9780525509035?aid=11259&amp;listref=rebuilding-america-53e78cef-56ce-449c-b7d7-3f1103c8f95e

https://www.zacharydcarter.com/

We've started a referral program! Refer us to your friends to get a free button or Moleskine notebook. Please use this link to get your personal referral code: https://refer.glow.fm/future-hindsight which you can then forward to your friends.

Season 12

A Keynesian Future: Zach Carter

Future Hindsight is where civic engagement meets civil discourse. In conversations with experts, every day citizens, and activists, we explore the ways in which we all have the power to shape our society. Investing in the social contract is an obligation and an opportunity.

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