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Elevated levels of bacteria impact the use of the Little River watershed in Texas. The amount of bacteria entering the waterway could be reduced if landowners within the watershed received water-related information and adopted best management practices. However, landowners' access to water-related information is limited, perhaps, because the information is not targeted to them and their preferences. Therefore, to identify landowners' communication preferences for receiving water-related information, we assessed 275 landowners in the Texas Little River watershed using a paper questionnaire. Respondents preferred water-related information delivered via websites monthly and direct mailings quarterly, twice annually, and annually and least preferred social media platforms as a communication medium. Yet, we found no statistically significant differences between respondents' demographics and their preferred communication mediums. Furthermore, respondents identified Texas A&M AgriLife Extension as the most trustworthy source of water-related information. Water resource experts, therefore, should disseminate information using websites and direct mailings in partnership with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. Further research should be conducted using observations, focus groups, and interviews during the watershed-based planning process to understand reasons for landowners' communication preferences. [This research was supported by Texas Water Resource Institute and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality under the Clean Water Act Section 319(h) Nonpoint Source (NPS) Grant Program, Grant No. 131527 SRS M1502190.]

In this research, we explored how foundational issues can become subtext in political discourse by studying how statehood was debated in social media prior to two plebiscites in Puerto Rico. Historically in Puerto Rico, local parties are divided on this issue instead of along the more common conservative versus liberal division that is found in most parts of the United States. We collected the corpus of Twitter communication by members of Puerto Rico's Legislature for the term of 2017-2021. Using latent topic modeling techniques, we classified the political discussion along party lines. Surprisingly, statehood was not a major topic in our model when using the full corpus of data. However, when we filtered the data to include only those tweets discussing statehood and sub-sampled them by major party, the sub-topics within statehood communication became clear and coherent, as was the partisan divide. Ultimately, while there is a clear division about statehood between the parties, the issue has become so intrinsic to the political sphere in Puerto Rico that it no longer commanded significant attention in the political discourse during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wealth of research examines the relationship between digital media consumption and political participation. Research typically defines participation broadly and focuses on Western contexts. We seek to add to the understanding of this relationship by focusing more directly on the relationship between digital media consumption and the propensity to vote among young people in a less democratic context. To do so, we examine a set of Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) that have varying degrees of democratization. We test whether digital media consumption stimulates voting among respondents aged 18-30, and if this is contingent on how free and fair are the elections. Our results suggest that in the most democratic country, Kyrgyzstan, the relationship between digital media use and the propensity to vote is relatively flat while digital media use in less democratic countries, overall, is associated with a decrease in the propensity to vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cable news makes it possible for consumers to avoid information that challenges their predispositions, and the Internet makes it even easier. Cable news consumption is related to attitude extremity, but the extant literature is absent empirical examination of how the two may work together. Objectives: This study aims to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between media consumption and policy attitude extremity. In particular,, it asks how digital media consumption may combine with cable or traditional mass media to drive higher levels of polarization and attitude extremity. Methods: We use American National Election Studies and data reduction methods to model and measure the gathering of political information to compare the relationship between different forms of media consumption and policy attitude extremity. Results: Our results indicate that, independently, the consumption of both "partisan" cable news and "non‐partisan" political digital information have the same positive relationship to attitude extremity across four major issue domains (economy, federal spending, social issues, and foreign affairs) and that when combined into a single index, the relationship is stronger than their independent relationships. Finally, the results suggest that the combined effect is strongest among those who consume more liberal cable news. Conclusion: Our high choice media environment contributes to the polarized climate in the United States today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a considerable body of research suggesting that social media may be a primary vehicle for both the dissemination of politically dissident information and for organizing protest activity in contexts of weak governance. Researchers are beginning to focus on building a more nuanced understanding of how new media shape these processes. Using original survey data from the Philippines, we offer the first large N individual level study to directly examine the relationship between religion, social media exposure, and political protest. Specifically, we argue that the degree to which citizens support religious leaders' authority in politics can mitigate the effects dissident flows of information on social media have on their inclination to protest, at least in an environment characterized by hierarchical religious authority structures and limited religious endorsement of widespread protest. The evidence we present supports the theoretical claim that support for religious authority can at times dampen the link between critical social media and public protest. We discuss the implications of these results for the broader study of governance, technology and religious authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that people are motivated to avoid information that challenges their predispositions. They seek out attitude-consistent information, leading to more extreme attitudes. While research suggests that the Internet facilitates this selective exposure more easily than traditional media, there is little evidence that it contributes to issue attitude extremity, and even less outside the Western context. We seek to fill that gap using survey data from the Arab Barometer. Our results indicate that digital information consumption consistently predicts issue attitude extremity, but some part of that relationship is mediated by political attentiveness. These results have tangible implications for understanding the complex relationship between public opinion and governance in societies with limited or absent democratic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey research focused on the effects of social media (SM) on protest behavior outside Western democracies is limited. In response, we designed and conducted a large N face-to-face survey in the Philippines, where pro-government elite families control the traditional press, but the same constraints do not apply to SM. This helps us to isolate SM effects on protest behavior since the online environment in the Philippines is one of the few places where there is an open flow of information. Adding gradations to common indicators of SM consumption (by measuring general SM use, political SM use, and the exchange and consumption of dissident information on SM) helps clarify the mechanism by which SM influence protest behavior. Our results indicate that online exchanges of dissident information have a stronger connection to protest behavior than general or even political SM use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We investigate to what extent partisan political candidates in the United States pay attention to different issues in their campaign communication, and whether they systematically deliver messages using different types of sentiment. Methods: We analyze the 267,538 tweets issued by candidates for the U.S. Congress during the 2018 midterm elections using a combination of latent topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and regression analysis, estimating both issue emphasis and the emotional tone of communications. Results: We find that candidates discussed a small number of distinct issues. Sentiment analysis reveals that the emotions used to convey these topics varied considerably more than interparty emphasis. Moreover, we observe that Democrats and Republicans discussed the same topics in very different ways, with Democrats—the out‐party at the time—proving more negative in their messaging. Conclusions: When partisans discuss those issues their respective parties "own," there are asymmetries in the emotion they use to communicate about these issues. The concept and measurement of issue ownership are complicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use original survey data from China to examine gender differences in exposure to, and the exchange of, information critical of their respective governments via the Internet and social media. Existing research suggests that men, generally, tend to be more politically engaged than women. We set out to test whether this extended to dissident political engagement in the Chinese context, and if it translated into variation in support for protest across gender, and across political context. Compared to other Asian nations, China has relatively high gender equality. Yet, due to the social, cultural, and political structures in China, we expect that women will be less active online, less likely to consume critical media, and less likely to engage in political dissidence than their male counterparts. We did find that men were more likely to be critically digitally engaged in China. However, we found that while critical digital engagement was positively related to support for protest, this effect was actually stronger for women in China. We offer some speculation regarding these counterintuitive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive online media use refers to the act of merely reading and observing political information on a users' feed. Alternatively, active use refers to the conscious decision to share information, comment, challenge, fact check, or engage in related activity. We argue that these types of social media use have fundamentally different relationships to offline political participation. We use original survey data from Malaysia and the Philippines to test two propositions: (1) active political use, such as online protest or resistance, substitutes for offline protest and (2) passive users who encounter critical information and do not engage in active use will participate in offline protest. Our results confirm these expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In political regimes where traditional mass media are under state control, social networking sites may be the only place where citizens are exposed to and exchange dissident information. Despite all the attempts, complete control of social media seems to be implausible. We argue that the critical information that people see, read and share online undermines their trust in political institutions. This diminishing trust may threaten the legitimacy of the ruling regime and stimulate protest behaviour. We rely on original survey data of Kazakhstani college students to confirm these expectations. The data are unique in that they directly measure exposure to critical/dissident information, as opposed to simply assuming it. The analysis leverages Coarsened Exact Matching to simulate experimental conditions. This allows us to better identify the consequential mechanism and the attitudinal precursor by which social media influence protest in an authoritarian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of authoritarian regimes to maintain power hinges, in part, on how well they are able to manipulate the flow of information to the masses. While authoritarian states have had success controlling traditional media, the growth of social media over the last decade has created new challenges for such regimes. The Russian experience offers an example of how an authoritarian regime responds to this potential threat. Because of the massive demonstrations surrounding the 2011-2012 Duma elections, the ruling Russian government suspected that social media provided a significant impetus for the demonstrations. Social media, through its dissemination of opposition blogs, could have helped drive negative attitudes about the governing party. As such, the government responded by employing strategies to tighten their grip on the digital flow of information. We use survey data to demonstrate that exposure to blogs via social media at the time of the demonstrations led many to believe that the elections were fraudulent. Ultimately, we contend that Russian fears concerning the importance of social media for the fomenting of opposition movements is well grounded. Social media can drive support for opposition in an autocratic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study synthesizes two theoretical literatures to explain gender differences in Twitter usage and effectiveness among US Congressional candidates. The first suggests that candidates in perceived disadvantaged positions, females in this case, innovate to improve their chances of success, and the second, that female politicians often adopt stereotypically masculine behaviors to be successful. On the basis of these theories, we hypothesize and confirm that female candidates are more likely than males to integrate Twitter into their campaigns, but our results are less conclusive regarding a difference in the likelihood that females use negative campaigning tactics via Twitter. Our results also indicate that those females who use Twitter more than their male counterparts tended to do better electorally, but this difference is conditional. Female Republican candidates who tweeted more increased their vote share, but the opposite is true for Democrats. We speculate that this differential effect may be a product of different audiences for social media in each party’s electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a debate in the extant literature concerning whether the Internet stimulates political participation. We examine both whether Internet use encourages traditional participation, such as campaign- and election-centered acts, and nontraditional participation, including protest/resistance-centered acts in the East Asian context. In doing so, we are also able to explore the Asian Values hypothesis, which purports that East Asians have a cultural predisposition toward civic obedience. We theorize that because of the increased probability of being exposed to a dissident flow of information, more frequent use of the Internet leads to the development of negative attitudes about government and results in less obedience, and more nontraditional participation. Conversely, we suggest that Internet use should be negatively associated with traditional participation because dissidents are likely to see it as futile. The results confirm these expectations, suggesting the Asian Values hypothesis is not robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online social networking sites are rapidly becoming a central component of the modern political campaign. We build a theoretical framework to explain how and why state party organizations are incorporating social networking sites - Facebook in particular - into their strategy to support their candidates. After offering some descriptive evidence documenting this outreach effort, we estimate a series of models to explain both some factors that contributed to the effectiveness of state parties' efforts to reach the public through Facebook in the 2010 state elections and how well the efforts complemented their larger effort to gain seats in their respective state legislatures. The results indicate, first, that Republicans seemed to do a better job of reaching the public through Facebook, that active use of Facebook by both parties attracted potential voters to their profiles, and that increased party expenditures also attracted people. Second, the results indicate that a growing Facebook following across the course of the election provided a larger electoral benefit for Democrats than Republicans. We offer some theoretical speculation to account for this inherent paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]