For a full overview of the dataset by series, see Appendix 2. 29 This process avoided including series that would have reinforced researcher biases and created a corpus of series identified in a systematic way. The final step involved identifying any political punditry podcasts from the “you might also like” recommendation section in the Apple Podcast app that appeared under the shows selected through the prior step and met the same inclusion criteria for political shows. 28 The next step involved identifying all talk-show-style series from these two top 100 lists that used the words “policy,” “politics,” “current events,” or “news” in their description or ones that, at the time of data collection, featured an episode on the first page (listing the eight most recent episodes) discussing political topics. The sample of popular political podcasters drew on data from two of Apple Podcasts’ top 100 lists – the first from mid-November 2020 (just after the 2020 election) and the second from mid-April 2021 (in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic). Although some apps allow users to share reviews of podcast series as a whole, audiences are unable to directly react to or share their thoughts about single episodes, an arrangement that makes it easier for false, misleading, or unsubstantiated content to spread with little oversight. Instead, the medium resembles a monologue, more like television or radio. 21 In podcasting, however, audience checks on the proliferation of unsubstantiated or false claims are not possible, particularly for individual episodes. 20 On social media, other users can push back on false or misleading claims by commenting directly on a public post or crowdsourcing labels that provide additional context. As a result, anyone with a podcast can operate as an expert on a subject of their choosing, regardless of their credentials (or lack thereof). Like Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, podcasting has few barriers to entry. Combining elements from social media and radio, podcasting has the potential to proliferate unsubstantiated and false claims widely for several reasons.
0 kommentar(er)
