“Private social media companies are increasingly regulating the online (political) debate. This makes them a threat to the functioning of the democratic constitutional state. Due to a lack of transparency and independent research, the conditions under which these platforms regulate debate, as well as the effects, and effectiveness, of their policies remain unclear,” Casas Salleras explains the topic of his research.
“Challenges in analyzing large amounts of data complicate research breakthroughs. Using innovative multimodal and multilingual computational methods, I study the conditions under which online debate is regulated, as well as its effects on the political behavior of users. With this, I take the research on this important theme to a higher level.”
For this research, Andreu Casas Salleras will track the activity of politically interested social media users on 3 platforms: Twitter, FB, and YouTube, and 4 countries: the US, the Netherlands, Russia, and Iran. “I will study the reasons why accounts get suspended, as well as how accounts react to suspension, within and across platforms.”
“I’m incredibly happy and grateful for this Veni-grant,” says Casas Salleras. “Research time and resources are scarce, and without these types of grants, it is very hard for academics to develop relevant and much-needed research.”
“The project for this Veni builds on my expertise in social media and politics, and computational methods,” explains Casas Salleras. “In most of my research, I explore the many ways in which social media has shaped relevant political processes, such as political mobilization and representation. In addition, in all my research I use or develop novel computation methods, for example, automatic text and visual analysis. Those methods allow me to unlock relevant research questions that we wouldn’t be able to answer otherwise.”
Andreu Casas Salleras got a Bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Barcelona. He did his PhD in political science at the University of Washington. Before landing in Amsterdam, he was a Moore Sloan research fellow at the New York University.
Veni, along with Vidi and Vici, is part of the NWO Talent Programme. Veni is aimed at researchers who have recently obtained their doctorates. Within the Talent Programme, researchers are free to submit their own subject for funding. In this way, NWO encourages curiosity-driven and innovative research.