Each year, through the generous donations of AoIR conference attendees, we are able to fund several travel scholarships for junior scholars to attend the conference. We want to recognize our scholarship recipients and share with you a little bit about them and their interests.
Patrícia Rossini
Who are you?
Patrícia Rossini (@patyrossini on twitter)
Where are you from?
Brazil. I’m currently based in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State.
What is your current area of study?
I am a PhD Candidate at the Communication Department of the Philosophy and Human Sciences School at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Broadly speaking, I am studying the interplay between political communication and technologies. My research focuses on online political talk, social networking sites, online campaigns, deliberation and political participation. Specifically, my dissertation aims at understanding how different discussion platforms such as social networking sites and news websites enable, constrain or shape the ways
people discuss political news online.
Describe the research you will present at AoIR 2016.
The paper that I will be presenting at AoIR 2016, ” Social Media, U.S. Presidential Campaigns, and Public Opinion Polls: Disentangling Effects,” is the product of a collective effort around a broader research agenda about digital campaigns in the U.S. This paper, specifically, looks at the interplay between public opinion polls and candidate’s campaign strategies on social media platforms. We analyze Facebook and Twitter messages of the 17 Republican and 7 Democratic candidates in the 2016 Presidential Primaries. Because social media is an important site of communication for campaigns, we seek to understand the influence of a candidate’s standing in the polls and strategic communication online. Prior research suggests that polls influence strategic communication on TV ads and suggest that competitiveness is a key factor for negative advertising. As campaigns tend to mirror what they do online and offline, we predict that a candidate’s standing in the race will shape the ways he or she communicates with the public. [PS-07: Politics: Social Media, U.S. Presidential Campaigns, and Public Opinion Polls: Disentangling Effects 6 Oct, 11:00 – 12:30]
Have you presented at AoIR in the past? If yes, what has been your experience? If #AoIR2016 Berlin is your first AoIR conference, what made you choose this conference?
#AoIR2016 will be my first AoIR conference. I have been following the event for quite a while and I am really looking forward to participate in Berlin. I wanted to attend to AoIR for two main reasons. First, I follow the work of several scholars who are regularly attending to the conference and it is, in my opinion, the best event of the field. Second, AoIR has a tradition of hosting workshops and activities targeted at young scholars and it represents an important venue not only to make professional relationships, but also to benefit from the knowledge of relevant scholars who are kind enough to mentor scholars who are beginning their careers in academia.
