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Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor in Sociology at MacEwan University, joins the show to share insights from her research on how social media is impacting citizens' engagement in civic and political life. Dr. Boulianne discusses the findings of her meta-analysis studies, comparing the results of existing research in order to better uncover how social media is affecting citizens engagement with politics. You can follow her on Twitter @DrBoulianne.
Check out Dr. Boulianne's full research paper that we discuss in the podcast: "Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe".
Full Transcript:
[00:00:00] Michael Bossetta: Welcome to Episode 26 of the Social Media Politics Podcast, bringing you expert insights into how social media is changing the political game. I'm your host, Michael Bossetta, political scientist at the University of Copenhagen. You can follow us on Twitter @SMandPPodcast, and also our Facebook Page: Social Media and Politics Podcast.
[00:00:48] Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm going to be interviewing Dr. Shelley Boulianne, who is an Associate Professor of Sociology at MacEwan University in Canada. And as we alluded to a little bit in our previous episode, looking at social media use in the British elections, as academics we tend to really focus in on one aspect of social media and politics. We'll look at one platform for one specific case or one specific protest. And what's cool about Dr. Boulianne's work is she's been looking at, in some cases hundreds of studies, and looking at the findings of those and then seeing what are the similarities and differences between those studies. And what really do we know about the effects of social media on for example: people's likelihood to vote, or people's likelihood to engage in activism or community involvement?
[00:02:40] My guest today is Dr. Shelley Boulianne, Associate Professor in Sociology at MacEwan University. Dr. Boulianne is an expert on how digital media influences civic engagement and political participation and joins us via Skype from Edmonton Canada. Dr. Boulianne, Thanks so much for taking the time out and welcome to The Social Media and Politics Podcast thank you very much for inviting me. So as I mentioned, in your research you're interested in the influence of digital media on civic and political engagement. Could you lay out these concepts for our listeners? What exactly is civic and political engagement?
[00:03:12] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Sure. My working definition of civic and political engagement includes activities designed to influence government activities designed to improve community life and activities designed to express one's views about civic and political issues. So the type of activities that tend to link up with these studies are activities such as: voting, participating in boycotts, protesting in the streets volunteering in the community, talking politics, and then donating to political campaigns, charities, political causes.
[00:03:43] Michael Bossetta: And is it actions from only citizens or are there other actors that can engage in these type of activities?
[00:03:51] Dr. Shelley Boulianne: Well the research that I'm trying to summarize or is largely focused on surveys of citizens.
[00:03:57] Michael Bossetta: And speaking of that research you've done a number of really great what's called meta-analyses, looking at how social and digital media influence these type of engagement. So can you describe what a meta-analysis is and kind of how you go about conducting one?
[00:04:13] D