A Critique of Internet Polls as Symbolic Representation and Pseudo-Events

Kent, Michael L.; Harrison, Tyler R.; Taylor, Maureen

doi:10.1080/10510970600845941

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…2 Levay et al (2016) provides some empirical support for the compromise’s underlying reasoning: MTurk and probability samples are descriptively quite different, but the correlations among survey responses are similar after a modicum of statistical adjustment. And while it is commonplace in the popular media to conduct opinion polls using convenience samples of viewers or listeners (Kent et al, 2006), most descriptive work in political science uses explicit random sampling or reweighting techniques to target population quantities (Park et al, 2004). We would note, however, that even extremely idiosyncratic convenience samples (e.g.…”

Section: When Are Convenience Samples Fit For Purpose?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Validating the demographic, political, psychological, and experimental results obtained from a new source of online survey respondents

Coppock

McClellan

2019

Research & Politics

671

402

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Researchers have increasingly turned to online convenience samples as sources of survey responses that are easy and inexpensive to collect. As reliance on these sources has grown, so too have concerns about the use of convenience samples in general and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in particular. We distinguish between “external validity” and theoretical relevance, with the latter being the more important justification for any data collection strategy. We explore an alternative source of online convenience samples, the Lucid Fulcrum Exchange, and assess its suitability for online survey experimental research. Our point of departure is the 2012 study by Berinsky, Huber, and Lenz that compares Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to US national probability samples in terms of respondent characteristics and treatment effect estimates. We replicate these same analyses using a large sample of survey responses on the Lucid platform. Our results indicate that demographic and experimental findings on Lucid track well with US national benchmarks, with the exception of experimental treatments that aim to dispel the “death panel” rumor regarding the Affordable Care Act. We conclude that subjects recruited from the Lucid platform constitute a sample that is suitable for evaluating many social scientific theories, and can serve as a drop-in replacement for many scholars currently conducting research on Mechanical Turk or other similar platforms.

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Section: When Are Convenience Samples Fit For Purpose?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Validating the demographic, political, psychological, and experimental results obtained from a new source of online survey respondents

Coppock

McClellan

2019

Research & Politics

671

402

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“…Astroturfing online is not new in itself. Users of the Free Republic, an American conservative website, engaged in what was called "freeping," or targeting online polls to skew the results (Kent, Harrison, & Taylor, 2006). The Yes Men, documentary activists, often used a deceptive website, pretending to be the World Trade Organization, for example, to gain access to private industry events (Reilly, 2018).…”

Section: Bot or Bought? How Political Bots Work And The Problem Of Astroturfingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Bots: Disrupting Canada’s Democracy

Dubois

McKelvey²

2019

Canadian Journal of Communication

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Bots—automated online agents that mimic human behaviour—attempting to influence public opinion through social media, provide a useful case of the challenges for regulating disruptive technologies. This article articulates four problems associated with bots in politics: identification, evidence, attribution, and enforcement. It then explores policy solutions, arguing the solutions must align with the type of disruption bots contribute to. Les bots sont des agents automatiques en ligne qui imitent le comportement humain. En essayant d’influencer l’opinion publique au moyen des médias sociaux, les bots offrent un exemple pertinent de défis que constitue la réglementation des technologies perturbatrices. Dans cet article, quatre problèmes relatifs aux bots dans la sphère politique sont soulevés : l’identification, la preuve, l’attribution, et l’application d’une réglementation. Par la suite, des solutions politiques en ligne avec le type de perturbation causée par les bots sont proposés.

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“…The recent popular media debates surrounding the ubiquity of fake news constitute but one moment in a much longer history of examining, documenting, and contextualizing the proliferation of false news and information. Based on even a cursory overview of scholarship on propaganda (Ellul; Herman and Chomsky; Cunningham; Mirrlees), pseudo‐events (Boorstin; Davies; Kent, Harrison and Taylor), or more recent accounts of the broad proliferation of fake news (Rampton and Stauber; Farsetta and Price; Goodman and Goodman; Manjoo; Khaldarova and Pantti), the above controversy is but a continuation of deeply systemic patterns that bolster the transmission of information of questionable integrity and value. The growing complexity of fake news production and dissemination is further exacerbated by the wide range of actors currently cementing the form into a ubiquitous mode of public discourse—propagandists, hoaxers, hackers, partisans, and activists.…”

Section: Situating Fake Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

F for Fake: Propaganda! Hoaxing! Hacking! Partisanship! and Activism! in the Fake News Ecology

Reilly¹

2018

J of American Culture

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A Critique of Internet Polls as Symbolic Representation and Pseudo-Events

Cited by 19 publications

References 23 publications

Validating the demographic, political, psychological, and experimental results obtained from a new source of online survey respondents

Validating the demographic, political, psychological, and experimental results obtained from a new source of online survey respondents

Political Bots: Disrupting Canada’s Democracy

F for Fake: Propaganda! Hoaxing! Hacking! Partisanship! and Activism! in the Fake News Ecology

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