The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election
Abstract
Digital Architectures and Affordances
Network Structure
Functionality
Algorithmic Filtering
Datafication
Data Collection and Method
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat Compared
Network Structure
Network structure | |||
---|---|---|---|
Searchability | Connectivity | Privacy | |
High | Personal: Dyadic Public page: Unidirectional |
Personal: Closed Public page: Open |
|
High-medium | Unidirectional by default Dyadic (by changing privacy) |
Open by default | |
Medium | Unidirectional by default Dyadic (by changing privacy) |
Open by default | |
Snapchat | Low | Dyadic by default Unidirectional (by changing privacy) |
Closed by default |
Functionality
Functionality | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hardware | GUI | Supported media | Broadcast feed | Cross-platform integration | |
Desktop, smartphone, tablet, smartwatch | High complexity (e.g., News Feed, public pages, groups, events) | Text (63,206 characters) Images Video (45 min) Hyperlinks Hashtags |
News Feed | None supported | |
Desktop, smartphone, tablet, smartwatch | Medium complexity (can be broadened with dashboards) | Text (140 characters) Images Video (30-s) Hyperlinks Hashtags |
Home timeline and Highlights (opt-in) | None supported | |
Same as Facebook | Medium complexity | Text (2,200 characters) Images Video (60-s) Hyperlinks (in bio) Hashtags |
Friend feed and Explore feed | Posting allowed to Facebook and Twitter | |
Snapchat | Smartphone exclusively | Low complexity, simple layout | Text (31 characters) Images Video (10-s) |
Story feed and Discover feed | None supported |
The unique thing about Snapchat is it has to be done right there. You can’t upload a photo, you can’t edit a video; it has to be physically from that device. So, you were seeing stuff that was coming right from, you know, where Marco was at that exact moment. It wasn’t coming back to headquarters and getting filtered or edited in any way.
Algorithmic Filtering
Algorithmic filtering | ||
---|---|---|
Reach | Override | |
Heavily filtered (relevance) | Pay to promote User-diffusion (sharing) |
|
Moderately filtered (chronology) | Pay to promote Index via hashtags User-diffusion (retweeting) |
|
Moderately filtered (chronology) | Pay to promote Index via hashtags |
|
Snapchat | None | No algorithm to override |
Datafication
So I say, these are Trump supporters, these are people who love to reduce taxes, these are gun supporters, these are the religious rights—all based on survey data and database data that I have and that I’ve brought in. From there, we’re then segmenting audiences for the purposes of our media teams to buy digital ads or to buy television, but also for creative teams to be able to craft messages: the ads, the types of things we’re saying to people. Those two things then come together, we spend money to do paid media, and then we go back in the field and we’re consistently polling to see if what we’re doing is working and how effective it is.
Datafication | |||
---|---|---|---|
Matching | Targeting | Analytics | |
Highly developed “Custom” and “Lookalike” audiences | Extremely sophisticated Several ad formats |
Complex, real-time analytics (walled-garden) | |
Moderately developed “Tailored Audiences” | Moderately sophisticated Few ad formats Tagging journalists |
Open API Dashboards |
|
Same as Facebook | Same as Facebook | Same as Facebook | |
Snapchat | Least developed “Snap Audience Match” (opt-out) |
Least sophisticated Ads in stories (opt-out) |
Rudimentary in primary, improved in general election |
We value those relationships and there are some very, very smart people working at these companies that are helping us to execute the strategy that we’re coming up with, and in some cases even help us form the strategy that we’re coming up with, because they understand their platforms better than anyone does . . . almost daily, we’re speaking to our teams [at Google, Facebook, and Twitter] that actually help to facilitate all of the advertising.
Discussion and Conclusion
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
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