Welcome
The UCSB Political Communication Working Group brings together faculty and students from across the UCSB campus who study big questions in contemporary political communication. This interdisciplinary group meets regularly to share feedback on on-going research, discuss emerging issues in the field, and to foster collaborative projects. Our goal is to build and sustain a vibrant community of political communication scholars at UC Santa Barbara.
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Our faculty and students share connections across campus, with the Department of Communication, the Department of Political Science, the Center for Information Technology and Society, the Center for Responsible Machine Learning, and the Digital Political Inequality Lab.
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Spring 2025 Schedule: Select Fridays, Noon to 1:30 SS&MS 1310
Apr. 11: Kanu Pandey
Apr. 25: Julien Labarre
May 9: Stuart Soroka, UCLA
May 23: Sterling Lankford and Kylie Gaines
Jun. 6: Angie Sethi & Ela Schulz
Winter 2025 Meetings
Jan 17: Open Discussion - What the election and new administration may mean for political comm research
Jan 31: Lupita Madrigal
Feb 14: Yifei Wang and Dan Lane
Feb 28: Katie Elder
Mar 14: Nancy Molina-Rogers
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Fall 2024 Meetings
Oct 8: Welcome back, Introducing new people
Oct 22: Nancy Molina-Rogers, practice job talk
Nov 12: Postponed - Informal discussion of communication in the 2024 campaigns
Dec 3: Daniel Cervantes, dissertation prospectus on conspiracy theories in social media
Past Meetings 2023-2024 Academic Year
Oct 11: Start-up discussion - progress, goals, updates, new projects
Oct 25: Julien Labarre: Epistemic Vulnerability Across Media Systems
Nov 15: Muhammad Shaban (Riphah International University): The Role of Political Hate Speech in Promoting Extreme Ideologies and Manipulating Public Discourse for Social Approval in Pakistan
Nov 29: Inmaculada Gutiérrez (Universidad Complutense Madrid); Machine Classification of Democratically Corrosive Content in Social Media
Dec 13: Nancy Molina-Rogers, Discussion of Research Plans
Feb 23: Hannah Overbye: Work-in-Progress Presentation
Mar 8: Bruce Bimber & Julien Labarre: Coding Political Content in Social Media using Large Language Models
Mar 22: Open Discussion led by Bruce about a research agenda for AI in political communication
Apr 19: Dan Lane and Yifei Wang: current work
May 3: Sterling Lankford: Emergent Polarization: Partisan Political Identities and Artificial Intelligence
May 24 (changed from 17th): Kanu Pandey: current work
June 7: Ela Schulz: Conspiracy Theories in News Media and Social Media
June 11: Year End Celebration, 6pm Draftsmen Aleworks
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Past Meetings 2022-2023 Academic Year
Jun 3: End of Year Dinner at Bruce's House
May 22: Shanshan Lu presenting on social media and civil society in China
May 8: Rajkamal Singh presenting on collective action in India
Apr. 24: Dan Lane: Revisiting Digital Inequality
Mar. 1: Professional Development Discussion led by Dan and Bruce: Submitting to Journals
Feb. 1: Bruce Bimber: Update on Media and Democratic Attitudes Project + Guest Belén Casas Mas (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): Social Media Bots
Jan. 11: Daniel Gomez: Party Identity vs. Racial Identity in Social Media Messages
Dec. 6: Nancy & Hannah: Media Framing of Racial Violence
Nov. 10: Julien: A French Fox News?
Oct. 27: Bruce, Julien, Ilia, Daniel: Media and Democratically Corrosive Attitudes