Annotated Bibliography

Poole, Keith T., and Howard Rosenthal. “The Polarization of American Politics.” The Journal of Politics, vol. 46, no. 4, 1984, pp. 1061–1079. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2131242.

This source written by Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal outlines how polarized recent politics have become, and how that impacts the everyday voter. In many cases, the "middle-of-the-road" perspective is challenged by the two party system and the role call voting technique. This source featured multiple charts illustrating cases of polarization privy to each state. This source uses senatorial and House representation to illustrate how polarization in Washington relates to polarization across the nation. This source will enable me to gain more insight into how polarization has affected actual legislation, although this lacks a sort of social media perspective that I will gain from other sources. I will use this research to help me maintain political knowledge throughout my essay, and this will help me see the legislative branch's effectiveness in representing the nation and their views.

Notable Quotes: 

"The middle-of-the-road voter is thus not a member of a silent majority desiring some radical social change, but a moderate individual seeking to avoid the wide swings in policy engendered by our political system, (1061).

"The heterogeneity of mixed delegations need not have occurred. If homogenous Republican states were "conservative" states, homogenous Democrat, "liberal," and mixed, "moderate," then the mixed delegations could have been as homogenous as the one-party delegations. Instead, the heterogeneity of mixed delegations suggests that these states are far from moderate in their representation," (1070).

Gounari, Panayota. “Authoritarianism, Discourse and Social Media: Trump as the ‘American Agitator.’” Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism, edited by Jeremiah Morelock, vol. 9, University of Westminster Press, London, 2018, pp. 207–228. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv9hvtcf.13.

This source written by Jeremiah Morelock discusses how President Donald Trump's authoritarian methods and social media presence has forced the far-right even further right. Morelock contributes his success to centralizing economic and political power, emphasizing terror while inciting racism, crafting ideological confusion, emerging as an authoritarian leader, and creating propaganda that distorts reality. He then expands by explaining how social media creates a one-dimensional platform, and thus creates politics to become more black and white. This causes for less intellectual discussion and more blind acceptance. This source will help me to connect the impact of social media and politics. This is a rare source in the sense that it directly talks about both Twitter and the government. However, one weakness is that it only discusses President Trump and not other officials.

Notable Quotes:

"The use of simplistic language to talk about complex social issues where 'the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations' is an attempt to downplay the importance of these issues," (218).

"The ideological confusion is further strengthened by Trump's self-branded persona: he is the guy-next-door who happens to live in a gilded loft in Manhattan," (221).

PARK, SUNGJIN, et al. “The Network of Celebrity Politics: Political Implications of Celebrity Following on Twitter.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 659, 2015, pp. 246–258., www.jstor.org/stable/24541861.

This source introduces and explains the concept of "celebrity politics." This is the idea that while celebrities hold little policy expertise, their status allows them to nevertheless have impact and respect concerning these policies in the public eye. It talks about the effect of certain stars connecting themselves to specific causes or candidates and using social media to amplify their opinion. It goes deeper by creating formulas and analyzing how these stars obtain and then spread their information. This source is very helpful for my research as it points out the pure unprecedented impact that social media has on society and how that carries over into politics. It also will help me gain insight on specific hot topics such as the Black Lives Matter movement and learn how it gained social media traction.

Notable Quotes:

"For these political celebrities, social media has become a particularly useful platform. Due to its unique "follow" and "retweet" features, Twitter is not only a social networking tool, but it also possesses broadcaster-like network characteristics, allowing it to function as a conveyer of news," (247).

"Social media (e.g., Facebook, Digg, and Twitter) has exploded as a category of online discourse where people network at an unprecedented rate. Taking advantage of this new technological invention, many celebrities express their stance on various public affairs matters via Twitter," (256).