My research examines politics, social media and campaigning in contemporary democracies. My interests cover the following areas:
- Politics
- Political parties
- Political campaigning
- Communications
- Voter behaviour
- Elections
- Digital technology and politics
- Advertising
- Satellite campaigning
- Targeted advertising
- Organic campaigning
- Technology policy
- Technology regulation
- Social media and technology
- Regulation
- Platform governance
- Algorithms
- Rights on the internet
Here are some useful links to my research presence.
Orchid Id ¦ Google Scholar ¦ Github ¦ YouTube
Below are a selection of my research outputs, alongside their domain for access.
Academic work
Academic publications
- How do political parties use Facebook and what does it offer to their campaigns? PhD Thesis. University of Bath. 2021.
Citation – Hotham, T., 2021. How do political parties use Facebook and what does it offer to their campaigns. Doctoral dissertation, University of Bath.
- What does a satellite campaign do? The use of Momentum in Labour’s 2017 General Election Facebook campaign. ArXiv. 2021. *Working Paper*.
Citation – Hotham, Tristan A. 2021. What Does a Satellite Campaign Do? the Use of Momentum in Labour’s 2017 General Election Facebook Campaign. SocArXiv. March 25. doi:10.31235/osf.io/hdqrg.
We have finally seen behind the parties data machine, A/B testing at the 2019 General Election. Election Analysis. Tristan Hotham, 2020.
Research in blogs
Trump v Biden: who is engaging the most followers on Facebook? The Conversation. 7th October, 2020. Article also seen via Channel News Asia.
Political Content on Social Media 2020. eMarketer. 28th March, 2020.
General Election 2019: what are the parties telling us via their targeted adverts? PSA News Blog. 11th December, 2019.
The digital campaign: Targeted advertising in the 2019 General Election. PSA News Blog, 6th December, 2019.
We need to talk about A/B testing: Brexit, attack ads and the election campaign. LSE Brexit Blog, 13th November, 2019.
- Facebook is restricting search results – is this taking transparency seriously. The Conversation. April 11th, 2018.
- Facebook risks starting a war on knowledge. The Conversation. August 17th, 2018.
Conference presentations
- Permanent satellite campaigning? Momentum across the 2017 General Election and 2018 permanent campaign. Political Studies Association Conference 2021, Belfast.
- Labour’s 2017 General Election campaign, what sets Momentum apart from the leader and party page? Political Studies Association Conference, 2021.
- Is it party leader pages or party pages that matter most on UK Facebook? Presentation given at the 2019 PSA Conference, Nottingham.
- Researching Facebook in troubled times. Presentation given at the 2018 SWDTP Conference, Bristol.
- Facebook and Big Data: Has it changed party campaigning in Britain forever? Presentation given at the 2016 EPOP Conference, Canterbury.
Non academic work
Books
Kodachrome Magnificence: A foray into a grandfather’s life through images of work and pleasure. Lulu, 20th March 2021.
This is a book about discovering your ancestors through the images they leave behind. My grandpa died when I was very young, but I am lucky he had a passion for photography as I can learn about his life through his eyes via his pictures. He created thousands of slides covering both work and pleasure, even better it was all in Kodachrome.
My grandfather worked as an architect and town planner, he designed buildings and planned housing developments. He was very influenced by European design, spending 26 years building people houses and making life better for thousands. He was also very well travelled, photographing the world in beautiful colour, from bullet ridden Beirut hotels to neon lit northern European backstreets he captured a world that is now lost.
This book gathers the best of his photography work, across hundreds of images as yet unseen to the world, we gain a glimpse into the world of post-war architecture, as well as what it was like to travel the world in the era before mass-tourism. Through high quality scans we can see through my grandfather’s eyes via the lens of Kodak’s Kodachrome.
You can purchase the book here via Google Books or below via Amazon.
Tristan Hotham 