Social Identity, Power, and Mis- and Disinformation

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel makes the argument that identity and power are central to information broadly, and especially mis- and dis-information. Social differences – including race and ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual and gender identity – shape social power, and therefore the workings of social and political systems and governments. This panel argues that the foremost task of scholars is to understand how mis- and disinformation is embedded in and shaped by social and political systems, as well as structured by differential distributions of social and economic power among social groups. And, scholars must analyze how information and mis- and disinformation in turn shape political systems and social structures. As such, any consideration of expressive rights and responsibilities must be understood within an analysis of unequal social power, and balanced against the normative ends of equity and justice required by multi-racial, pluralist democracies.

This panel brings together diverse analytical and methodological approaches to discuss this theme in empirical contexts that include variations in information quality and social identities on Twitter; social media and movement-building among Black youth; social identity appeals in campaign advertising; informational priming of racial threats; and, pro-social information on norms against political violence.

Chair: Daniel Kreiss (University of North Carolina)
Discussant: Vince Hutchings (University of Michigan)

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Individual Presentations

• How Political Content Quality Is Distributed across Race, Gender, and Ideology - Deen Freelon, University of Pennsylvania

• Making a Revolution: The Radical Possibility of Digital Black Space Making - Jenn M. Jackson, Syracuse University

• Can Social Norms Reduce Violent Views? - Lilliana Hall Mason, Johns Hopkins University

• Political Identity Ownership: Style in Social Media Political Advertising - Shannon C McGregor, University of North Carolina

• The Salience of Racial Threat and its Attachment to Democratic Backsliding - Andrew I Thompson, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• Daniel Kreiss University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Discussant

• Vincent L. Hutchings University of Michigan, Ann Arbor