♪ Welcome to "This Week In South Carolina."

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we continue to look at the ramifications of election 2024 both on how the geopolitical aspects of the election have played out as well as social media.

But first, we're gonna talk about geopolitical challenges and opportunities.

And to do that, I'm joined by Gerry McDermott, Gerry is Professor and Chair of International Business at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.

Gerry, great to be with us.

<Dr.

Gerry McDermott> Thank you very much for this opportunity.

<Gavin Jackson> So you are on a panel discussion this week talking about these challenges and opportunities that you know, we're now facing as a country, as a world.

Obviously, there's been a lot of leadership changes around the world, including America right now.

Things will look very different come Inauguration Day on January 20th, 2025.

So tell me how you see America kind of fitting into the global economy, geopolitical economy as well.

Well, America is the leader in the world economy.

First of all, that's a very key thing to say.

And, to understand that not only economically, it's important, but it's leadership in the shaping of these institutions, economic institutions.

It's the leader in collective security arrangements.

Right.

That's another big part of life for us.

So those are regional.

Those are global.

So the world basically, and this is in my conversations over the past year or so when people are looking towards the elections, world leaders are often wondering, so, what will happen with the U.S. leadership in areas like trade and finance and, and collective security?

That's what they're waiting for.

So they know that administrations change and there's a shift, always a shift in policy or emphasis.

But, right now they're looking with, a feeling of a little more uncertainty.

Because maybe some of the norms or, expectations are going to be broken.

And so that that's what's keeping people a little uneasy right now.

<Gavin Jackson> Yeah.

So we have certainty with we know who the next president will be, President Donald Trump, President elect Donald Trump.

But, what are the some of those uncertainties?

I mean, we talking about tariffs and trade?

I mean, there's been a lot of things discussed on the campaign trail.

There's a lot of that you think more to just posture and maybe provoke and make people think one way or another?

I mean, that's the instability kind of does have some ramifications in itself.

<Dr.

McDermott> But, you're asking, one thing is about what is the administration's strategy?

We don't know that because even the cast of characters who were there in the previous four year period, those people are no longer there and there's the new team in.

But there is a little bit of continuity on the trade side, so maybe we could start with that.

What do we know?

We know that, there's expectations.

And this was even if, Harris won that the U.S. was going to basically reopen negotiations, let's have it, or a bit of pushing around with, China right on the trade front.

And, you know, we could see this already happening.

This is happening in the E.U.

too, that is China is producing, let's say, really millions of electric vehicles at a very low price.

And they are waiting in ports around Europe right now, and they would love to sell them into the U.S and that's not happening either.

So, are there other types?

Yes, there are other types of products too, they want to be selling into.

And, so the U.S. is position is maybe we should ramp up, tariffs against China.

And that will then either allow us greater access to certain parts of their market, or they will cut down on their subsidies.

<Gavin Jackson> But when that happens it could result in a trade war, too.

Like you're saying, that could go elsewhere.

It could also shift where people get their goods.

I mean, even if we pivot away from E.V.s and we look at agriculture and maybe soybeans, which we saw a lot of ramifications of in the last Trump administration, You know, they'll go to Brazil and say, we don't need the American Midwest.

I mean, there are some really key lasting damages that could happen as a result.

<Dr.

Boatwright> Well, this is a really interesting point.

There's a couple of ways to look at this.

First of all, when we're thinking about China per se, and then we can get into the E.U., don't think about just final goods.

Think about what we call our global value chains.

So it's these intermediate goods.

It's, or parts of machinery or semiconductor systems.

Now the Chinese iron is leading in semiconductors and that's another conversation.

But the point is, is that it's not only final goods.

And we saw the disruption in Covid.

So during Covid, value chains across the world were disrupted.

And what that meant is that companies couldn't get the components or the subsystems that went into their final goods.

What did this do?

It delayed product.

It also increased their price.

<Vehicles> Yeah.

Vehicles were really jammed up.

But, it's your computer systems could be jammed up.

All of your domestic goods inside your kitchen or your T.V.s These are the type of things that could need lots and lots of components.

Look, even footwear.

Right?

You know, footwear, probably, there's a study.

I was looking at 200 people, probably work on a simple, sneaker.

Yeah, running shoe, right.

So the point is, is that once you start to lay in a place like, lay into a company, a country like China, it's not just like their direct exports.

What's happening is that other value chains will be impacted.

Now, the question is, how does that adjust?

Well, there'll be increase of price and delays, but there will also be diversion.

And who's going to take advantage of it.

So if there's also a tit for tat going to your point right now.

So for instance what do we know.

We have a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico since 1994, right.

The NAFTA or U,S., it's M.C.A.

and we know also that Mexico is importing cars or you could say exporting into Mexico.

And under certain agreements, those cars and then they're building those cars too.

And so if they meet the content agreements, those cars can go into the United States.

Now, by the way, here's the interesting thing.

Go back to Japan bashing in the 1980s.

I don't know if you remember yourself, but Richard Gephardt and team were there in the mid early 1980s up on Capitol Hill, taking a sledgehammer to different Japanese like boomboxes.

Right.

This was the classic image because the Japanese were exporting heavily into the United States, and we weren't allowing that, being allowed into their markets.

So what happens?

There was a number of tariff issues and negotiations and that led to Japanese foreign direct investment heavily into the U.S.

So then, that was a very interesting adjustment over a 10 to 15 year period.

By the way, South Carolina's been a big beneficiary of that.

So what we're going to see also is that what has already started about ten years ago, Chinese companies are really launching into foreign direct investment around the world, including the United States.

Right.

But there's also a little bit more pushback because of the Chinese being our adversaries <Right> and all those issues.

That's the difference.

Yeah.

<Dr.

McDermott> And that is the new element.

But I don't think, my point is, is that when you look at the pros and cons of what could happen, look, Republican led states are benefiting from Chinese investment and Chinese technology.

<And E.N.V.

investment, too> Right, right.

No no no.

But I'm telling you like, you know, look at Georgia.

Look at Ohio.

They have great investments in renewable energy technologies with major Chinese companies.

No one's worried about that right now it appears and they're joint ventures, too.

So what I'm saying, in terms of the politics of that, is that you do have stakeholders inside the United States.

We're saying maybe we don't want to have the import competition, but in terms of joint investment, maybe there can be some movement.

<Gavin Jackson> So it's easier to say we're going to slap big tariffs on things versus actually realizing how it affects... <Dr.

McDermott> Yeah, you're going to have trade diversion.

I think the other thing that you're talking about, too, is if there is real impact on certain types of agro products, yes, then you can bet Argentina and Brazil are going to benefit tremendously.

<Gavin Jackson> When we talk about the E.U., how does that work, too?

I mean, we trade with the E.U.

heavily as well, and we're talking about 10, 20, 30 percent taxes on goods coming in here versus the 60 percent to China.

I mean, it's really almost isolationist to the point where it could drive up prices.

<Dr.

McDermott> So the E.U.

is a tremendous trading and investment partner.

Now I'm going to get to South Carolina a second.

But the E.U.

is a major ally right, or the countries are our allies.

And so our overlapping interests in terms of economics as well as security is centered around our relationships with E.U.

and E.U.

countries, including the U.K.

I think that every negotiation then with the E.U.

is really multi-dimensional.

So when you look at what are the discussions with the E.U., it's going to be yes, they may be talking about tariffs, but simultaneously there are security issues going on, movement of of capital are going on.

So what's going, when whenever you see these negotiations I always think about there's, there's a number of different balls in play.

So they may be giving on one thing but they're taking on another.

So this is a big thing that I think that's going to be discussed.

So I don't see it just as only about trade.

Right.

<Gavin Jackson> And we also heard from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently saying that he, you know, we're trying to figure out who, where things are going, what's actually going to stick, what's actually in play versus what's just bluster.

And he has said, it's too early to reach any judgment here.

Policymakers are going to wait longer to see what the actual effects will be.

When we talk about trade and tariffs.

But when you're talking about just global instability, we're looking also at these strategic partnerships like NATO on the European continent where there is a hot war.

Then you have the Middle East where there is Israeli conflict going on, too.

I kind of want to pivot to, you know, that kind of security issue when you're talking about the role of China, Russia, North Korea is playing and all that and how you feel America might maybe change its approach to these wars, to how we center ourselves on the global stage and how that could have ramifications.

<Dr.

McDermott> Let me bring some of this stuff back to home, right.

But, before we pivot to security, I was remiss and not mentioning something more particular to South Carolina in all these discussions, because this is about South Carolina, this program.

And I forgot to mention one thing.

South Carolina is consistently among the top five states in the Union for the last 25 years in every indicator of the internationalization of the economy.

That means trade.

That means jobs from trade, foreign direct investment, jobs from foreign direct investment, etc..

Right.

We're a leader in that.

So anything that disrupts international markets is a very big disruption for the South Carolina economy.

Right.

So that's one of the things that's going to be interesting to see how South Carolina is maneuvering in Washington to deal with these issues.

And don't forget our biggest markets are the E.U.

Mexico is another big, relation.

Canada and China is still a big player, too.

And Japan.

So.

But on the security arrangements So, I think the biggest issue just take a step back because there's so many issues, there's so many balls in the air right now.

We have many conflicts.

The biggest issue we can frame it like this.

How will people see a new administration in terms of its consistency and competence and its commitment to prior decades of security agreements and security relationships?

So, as told to me by high level people in Asia, particularly in Korea, they are watching, once the election was going to be made, if Trump was, and his team were going to be in the White House, All eyes are on how they react to certain issues with commitments to allies and in the Ukraine.

And the implications, and by the way, this is not just, you know, done in private conversation.

You find out that there a scenario planning happening and a number of think tanks on global security.

It goes like this: Will there be basically a proliferation of nuclear, weapons?

That would be the basic point that was rammed home to me many times.

And the reason why this is an issue potentially, is that if countries feel that the collective security arrangements, and particularly with the United States, are uncertain, they have to, you know, it's everyone for themselves.

And so there are already arrangements to acquire weapons even in secret.

And I think that's the biggest issue right now.

Do things fragment and create an uncertainty so that people start doing things that they would never think of doing before?

And that is the, that's the first thing that I think that everybody is looking at.

And I think the administration, it's team, you know, probably it sounds like, Marco Rubio who is the nominee for the secretary of state.

Yeah, I'm sure he and his team will be out there calming the waters to a certain degree, but also letting them know, whatever the new type of accountability issues, there will be towards allies from the United States.

So it'll be, it'll be an interesting dance for the first six months.

<Gavin Jackson> Yeah, I was gonna ask you for predictions, but I feel like you kind of maybe just kind of gave one when we were talking about the ramifications of posturing when it comes to these global strategic agreements.

<Dr.

McDermott> Right, and I think... <Gavin Jackson> We only have 30s left.

<Dr.

McDermott> The last thing is that what they say is they keep looking for the spring, late spring for certain tests.

You know, what happens with Russia is a test.

What happens in the Middle East is a test in terms of commitments.

And if they see wavering on these commitments, that's when people say, okay, we have to invest ourselves.

<Gavin Jackson> And same with the economy, too.

<Dr.

McDermott> Yeah.

Right.

Right, right.

So when are they going to be committed or do we have to change the game.

Everybody is going to be changing the game.

<Gavin Jackson> Encouraging words there.

But, we'll wait and see.

That's what we're doing right now.

We're talking about risk and uncertainty with Gerry McDermott.

Thank you so much sir.

We appreciate your time.

That's Gerry McDermott.

He's the Chair of International Business at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.

Thank you.

<Dr.

McDermott> Thank you very much.

Joining me now to discuss the power of social media and Election 2024 is Brandon Boatwright.

He is the Director of Clemson University's Social Media Listening Center.

Brandon, thanks for joining us.

<Dr.

Brandon Boatwright> Absolutely.

Thanks so much for having me.

<Gavin Jackson> So, Brandon, before we get into some of the findings and some of the work that y'all do, tell us just a little broad overview, broad overview briefly about what the Clemson Social Media Listening Center does, what you guys look for.

Sure.

Absolutely.

We're housed in the Department of Communication.

We're an interdisciplinary lab on campus that listens, measures and engages in social media conversations from millions of different sources of online conversation.

And that ranges from, you know, your conventional social media platforms like Twitter, X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, you name it from, from that standpoint.

But it also includes things like the blogosphere, and how, you know, impactful that can be.

Online videos, podcasts.

We're able to scrape any form of digital data, apply various metrics to it, and help us to understand and unpack what's happening there.

<Gavin Jackson> Yeah.

What's the need for that?

Is it just because the media landscape has become so fragmented over the past, you know, 5, 10, 15 years that you need to start kind of getting a better gauge on what's going on out there, especially when we talk about politics?

<Dr.

Boatwright> Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you know, the need for social listening transcends any discipline, you know, with the work that we do on campus, right.

Even though we're housed in Communication, the work that we do in social media bleeds into, public health, nursing, sociology, even environmental sciences, you know, you name it.

We work with faculty to study, you know, the, adoption rates of electric vehicles in the southeastern United States.

We work with clinicians in health care settings to determine, you know, what are some of the ways in which people are responding to viral challenges on TikTok that one of them getting into the hospital.

So there's a wide range of applications for this, and it's because we can do so much with social media data.

And as you mentioned, the landscape changes.

It's fragmented so much, so having a tool to be able to sift through just the cacophony of everything that's happening online, you know, is is really critically important to folks at Clemson and beyond.

<Gavin Jackson> And I think this, I know you're talking about a broad range of applications here, too, but when we're talking about politics and look at the election, it seems like so much of that also was happening on different platforms, like, you know, the streaming platform Twitch or, you know, even like YouTube or even on Telegram.

Does it become harder to get into some of those conversations, or are you still looking pretty much at those big ones that are happening on platforms like Twitter or X, as we should say, and and places like Facebook?

<Dr.

Boatwright> Sure.

No.

It's a great question.

And it's something that we obviously have to account for.

You know, when we talk about the social media landscape shifting, we're not just talking about how people use it.

We're talking about, you know, the extent to which certain platforms allow data to be accessed.

So certain platforms like Snapchat, Twitch, you know, we don't get as much data from those platforms just by nature of the data that's there.

But, you know, from what we are able to gather, we look at behavioral trends, we layer that on top of, demographics, psychographic information to help us get a better picture of how people are responding to, and engaging with political commentary.

One of the things that was really noteworthy and important, just in this last cycle, was looking at how young men, you know, gravitated toward podcasters and influencers, and how much that actually impacted their, you know, information processing throughout the cycle.

<Gavin Jackson> Yeah.

And talk to us a little bit more about some of those insights, some of those initial insights.

We're a little bit more than two weeks out from the election.

What were some of the big takeaways, some of the big trends, some of the things that y'all found through your social media listening throughout the election cycle?

<Dr.

Boatwright> Yeah.

So, you know, on social media, you know, it's it's really common to see, you know, mainstream news, platforms generating a lot of engagement and that's something that we see, traditional, election night or let's say a debate night or something along those lines, but something that's always interesting or has interested me, throughout this past cycle is the prominence of influencers in these spaces who have actually outgrown, the engagement rates that historical legacy media have started to, you know, see more of a trajectory in that direction.

Right.

So things like, you know, Joe Rogan as a podcaster, and the importance of his channel and his endorsement of, President elect Trump, you know, certainly spoke to that.

And I think that there's a lot to be said about, again, kind of this resistance to, mainstream narratives.

And now we're taking more of a you know, influencer, opinion leadership.

<outside approach> Yeah.

<Gavin Jackson> Which I think can be a little worrisome, too.

I mean, you're talking to someone who's in, you know, you could say, quote unquote mainstream newsroom.

You know, obviously we uphold a certain set of ethics.

And, you know, standards.

And that's not always the same thing from your other podcasters or other folks who are not in journalism, per se.

And that's not a bad thing.

Of course.

We want a diversity of voices here, but it's also worrisome because you don't know who's supporting those people.

You don't know how much of the content that they're getting could be, from some other sources.

Maybe it's A.I.

generated.

That is probably something also that you all are looking into in terms of just the growth of how information is out there now, in terms of even misinformation and what is coming, you know, from people like those in the typical mainstream media press to those who are trying to make it work, and maybe using A.I.

generated content that we don't know anything about.

<Dr.

Boatwright> Yeah, absolutely.

You know, and when social media and Twitter in particular kind of came about, we we had this, you know, kind of pie in the sky vision of, oh, it is going to be this democratic space, right?

And in a sense, it can be, you know, with everything kind of all things being, you know, ethical, right, and all things being true.

But when you add in things like artificial intelligence, nefarious actors, and the proliferation of content that is designed to be intentionally misleading, or, you know, the fact that a lot of folks just don't have a digital media literacy to recognize when something is not true and they unintentionally spread information.

But the important thing here is that social media provides such low barriers to entry into the conversation that when people plug in and spread information, whether intentionally or unintentionally, anyone has the ability to become an influencer, depending on what you share and how it resonates and kind of what network you fall into.

And I think we certainly saw that in play this election cycle, too, when we're talking about, you know, one Facebook post that went incredibly viral, even so much, that was part of the debate when we talking about, you know, Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio, which was false, like completely debunked.

The woman who even made the post said, I didn't actually do this.

Like, this is not true.

But it kept going.

And then I'm sure you also probably saw a lot of other stuff happen surrounding major events, like that first assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

We even saw things happening with disaster, hurricane disaster relief, most recently with Russian bots there.

I think, the F.B.I.

even said that there were several false claims that they made two videos using F.B.I.

insignia, and they were, talking about voter fraud in some of the key swing states.

I mean, can you point to some of those moments, some of those big moments in what you see happening in real time on when you're listening and watching these things happen?

I mean, I'm sure the misinformation just completely outweighs the truth.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there are telltale signs when you're doing like large scale data analytics like this, when you actually kind of look over the metadata, which is just, you know, all of the data that we get when we analyze conversations, we're not just looking at what people are saying, but we're looking at, you know, timestamps of when things were posted and when you can find that, you know, certain messages are being amplified because they're being posted by accounts that look the same, act the same, you know, kind of in one minute, equal intervals.

It's pretty easy to identify, like these are quote unquote bot like accounts.

You know, inauthentic is a more accurate term.

But, you know, it's exactly right.

The fact that people can go online, create information that is, you know, factually just not true with no checks against it.

And what's fascinating is that, you know, there are people in positions of power who take that information and do not fact check it and then continue to spread that information.

And that's, you know, something that we've seen throughout this election cycle and, and even earlier as well.

<Gavin Jackson> Yeah.

You saw that with Elon Musk, you know, in July, for example, sharing on his platform an A.I.

generated fake audio clip of Vice President Kamala Harris celebrating Biden's decision to drop out of the race, calling herself a diversity hire.

That post was viewed over 100 million times.

And of course, like we said, it was not fact checked.

There was not a label on it.

So what's the what's the key here?

I mean, is it really just, again, double checking your homework before you share something or even saying, oh, you know, I heard this.

I mean, people really need to verify things before they even start casually mentioning, you know, some things that they might have saw online.

But is it more than that?

Is it more also regulations?

Do we need to see, just people to become more media literate?

What do you think the solution is to this because it seems like we're just racing to the bottom here?

Yeah.

Well, you know, there's there's no perfect solution.

You know, these these social media companies and the ecosystems that they have built, creates this sense of whac-a-mole.

You know, one problem comes up before we can have a chance to, you know, address another.

And to that extent, I don't necessarily believe that we can rely on things like regulation or, you know, social media companies to be able to moderate content at the pace of which it is generated.

What I think is important is for us to, be able to have more intentional conversations about how we process and consume online information.

The importance that we place on teaching our kids about what it is that they're looking at online, and how to recognize things that are real and false.

But also, again, you know, doing our due diligence ourselves, not just consuming one piece of content and assuming it to be true.

You know, if we had one, you know, tweet that we saw from the other end of the political spectrum, I'm not going to look at that potentially and say, oh, I think that's right.

Just because someone said it.

So why do we not kind of challenge our own understanding and challenge our own confirmation biases when we look at social media content as well?

<Gavin Jackson> Yeah, definitely need to be aware of that.

All the echo chambers that we can exist and got to get out of those and read some different sources, maybe read a newspaper, or watch E.T.V.

I don't know.

<Dr.

Boatwright> Absolutely, absolutely.

I think that's a great way to go about it.

<Gavin Jackson> Yeah.

Well that's Brandon Boatwright.

He's Director of Clemson University's Social Media Listing Center.

Brandon, thank you so much for joining us this week.

<Dr.

Boatwright> Thank you, Gavin.

Appreciate it.

<Gavin Jackson> And thanks y'all for watching.

That's our show for this week.

For South Carolina E.T.V.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well South Carolina.

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