The Power of Images: A Computational Investigation of Political Mobilization via Social Media

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

General Abstract Social media have been described by some scholars as a "weapon of the weak." Any person in the world with a mobile device and network connection can now communicate with a potential audience of unlimited size. This project proposes the first large-scale study of the roll of images in the social media communications of advocacy organizations, social protest movements, and extremist militant groups. The team will collect social media communications in real time and exploit recent "deep learning" advances from computer science to automatically label millions of images for objects (crowds, animals, weapons etc.), entities (specific actors), and emotions evoked (fear, sadness, humor, etc.). The team seeks to assess whether, all else equal, these images promote political message engagement and diffusion. Technical Abstract Research in psychology finds that images are easier for individuals to process cognitively, and have a larger impact on consciousness than do words. Images should be especially important tools for traditionally marginalized groups that rely on outsider strategies to promote issue awareness and their views. This is new ground however, as there is no theory and no databases for studying the mobilizing effects of political social media communications. The research team will construct new social media databases for a wide range of political groups. The project will contribute new labeled political image collections to existing computer science image repositories. The team also proposes to offer national workshops on advanced image classification methods for social scientists, and will disseminate research findings to scholars and practitioners through conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications.