scholarly journals Analysing Twitter semantic networks: the case of 2018 Italian elections

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tommaso Radicioni ◽  
Fabio Saracco ◽  
Elena Pavan ◽  
Tiziano Squartini
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Structural Evolution ◽  
Semantic Networks ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Run Up ◽  
The One ◽  
Sharing Patterns

AbstractSocial media play a key role in shaping citizens’ political opinion. According to the Eurobarometer, the percentage of EU citizens employing online social networks on a daily basis has increased from 18% in 2010 to 48% in 2019. The entwinement between social media and the unfolding of political dynamics has motivated the interest of researchers for the analysis of users online behavior—with particular emphasis on group polarization during debates and echo-chambers formation. In this context, semantic aspects have remained largely under-explored. In this paper, we aim at filling this gap by adopting a two-steps approach. First, we identify the discursive communities animating the political debate in the run up of the 2018 Italian Elections as groups of users with a significantly-similar retweeting behavior. Second, we study the mechanisms that shape their internal discussions by monitoring, on a daily basis, the structural evolution of the semantic networks they induce. Above and beyond specifying the semantic peculiarities of the Italian electoral competition, our approach innovates studies of online political discussions in two main ways. On the one hand, it grounds semantic analysis within users’ behaviors by implementing a method, rooted in statistical theory, that guarantees that our inference of socio-semantic structures is not biased by any unsupported assumption about missing information; on the other, it is completely automated as it does not rest upon any manual labelling (either based on the users’ features or on their sharing patterns). These elements make our method applicable to any Twitter discussion regardless of the language or the topic addressed.

scholarly journals Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (28) ◽  
pp. 7313-7318 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Brady ◽  
Julian A. Wills ◽  
John T. Jost ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker ◽  
Jay J. Van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Social Media Networks ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Network Methods

Political debate concerning moralized issues is increasingly common in online social networks. However, moral psychology has yet to incorporate the study of social networks to investigate processes by which some moral ideas spread more rapidly or broadly than others. Here, we show that the expression of moral emotion is key for the spread of moral and political ideas in online social networks, a process we call “moral contagion.” Using a large sample of social media communications about three polarizing moral/political issues (n = 563,312), we observed that the presence of moral-emotional words in messages increased their diffusion by a factor of 20% for each additional word. Furthermore, we found that moral contagion was bounded by group membership; moral-emotional language increased diffusion more strongly within liberal and conservative networks, and less between them. Our results highlight the importance of emotion in the social transmission of moral ideas and also demonstrate the utility of social network methods for studying morality. These findings offer insights into how people are exposed to moral and political ideas through social networks, thus expanding models of social influence and group polarization as people become increasingly immersed in social media networks.

scholarly journals Information, Opinion, or Rumor? The Role of Twitter During the Post-Electoral Crisis in Côte d’Ivoire

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511876573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Schreiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cote D'ivoire ◽  
Côte D’Ivoire ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Media Freedom ◽  
Cote D’Ivoire ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Côte D'ivoire ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The One

On the African continent, the use of Internet and social media has been growing at an incredible speed in the past decade. Social media have thus been used in an array of instances such as election periods, natural disasters, and political crises. However, previous research on social media has barely taken a look at the use of social media during war. By investigating on the use of Twitter during the post electoral crisis in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010/2011, this study wants to emphasize the potential of social media for the development of democracy in the context of crisis, war, and limited media freedom. Through a content analysis of Twitter and qualitative expert interviews with Ivoirian bloggers, this study found that Twitter was mainly used for political debate and crowdsourcing information. The crisis turning over to a civil war, the network was used in particular by a small group of active citizens and bloggers, operating as technically versed opinion leaders, to provide humanitarian help for the population caught in the crisis. Results further showed that mobile devices played a crucial role for the use of Twitter within the country and indicated that the post electoral crisis considerably contributed to the discovery of Twitter in Côte d’Ivoire. A central finding is that Twitter, on the one hand, was used for diffusing false information and expressing verbal violence and, on the other hand, it served to verify information and throwback rumors.

What Is Urgent Publishing?

APRIA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-43
Author(s):  
Florian Cramer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
New Form ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

Publishing is increasingly being challenged through instantaneous social media publish- ing, even in the fields of scholarship and cultural, philosophical and political debate. Memetic self-publishers, such as the right-wing 'YouTube intellectual' Jordan Peterson and his left-wing counterpart Natalie Wynn, seem to tap into urgent needs that traditional publishing fails to identify and address. Does their practice amount to a new form of urgent publishing? How is it different from non-urgent publishing on the one hand and from propaganda on the other? Which urgencies can be addressed by urgent publishing? What is the role of artists and designers in it?

Influence of social media will grow in Madagascar

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Narratives ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Political Weapon

Significance The situation has exposed several scandals, putting President Andry Rajoelina and his entourage on the political defensive. Social media has become a potent political weapon in the hands of ruling elites as a way to shape political narratives and discredit opponents. Impacts Rajoelina will struggle to hold together his circle of political allies in the run-up to the 2023 elections. Opposition groups will have difficulty capitalising on government divisions due to their own fragmentation. Social media will play an increasingly central role in driving political debate.

Down the bot hole: Actionable insights from a one-year analysis of bot activity on Twitter

First Monday ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Luceri ◽  
Felipe Cardoso ◽  
Silvia Giordano
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
Run Up ◽  
One Year ◽  
The U.S

Social media represent persuasive tools that have been progressively weaponized to affect beliefs, spread manipulative narratives, and sow conflicts along divergent factions. Software-controlled accounts (i.e., bots) are one of the main actors associated with manipulation campaigns, especially in a political context. Uncovering the strategies behind bots’ activities is of paramount importance to detect and curb such campaigns. In this paper, we present a long term (one year) analysis of bots activity on Twitter in the run-up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. We identify different classes of accounts based on their nature (human vs. bot) and engagement within the online discussion and we observe that hyperactive bots played a pivotal role in the dissemination of conspiratorial narratives, while dominating the political debate in the year before the election. Our analysis, in advance of the U.S. 2020 presidential election, reveals both alarming findings of human susceptibility to bots and actionable insights that can contribute to curbing coordinated campaigns.

scholarly journals CONCEPTS – LOCATIONS – EMOTIONS: SEMANTIC ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE TEXTS

2021 ◽  
Vol XLIII-B4-2021 ◽  
pp. 31-37
Author(s):  
N. Anastopoulou ◽  
M. Kavouras ◽  
M. Kokla ◽  
E. Tomai
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Semantic Networks ◽  
Visualization Tool ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Environmental Concepts ◽  
The Web ◽  
Search And Retrieval

Abstract. Research on knowledge discovery in the geospatial domain currently focuses on semi-structured, even on unstructured rather than fully structured content. The attention has been put on the plethora of resources on the Web, such as html pages, news articles, blogs, social media etc. Semantic information extraction in geospatial-oriented approaches is further used for semantic analysis, search, and retrieval. The aim of this paper is to extract, analyse and visualize geospatial semantic information and emotions from texts on climate change. A collection of articles on climate change is used to demonstrate the developed approach. These articles describe environmental and socio-economic dimensions of climate change across the Earth, and include a wealth of information related to environmental concepts and geographic locations affected by it. The results are analysed in order to understand which specific human emotions are associated with environmental concepts and/or locations, as well as which environmental terms are linked to locations. For the better understanding of the above-mentioned information, semantic networks are used as a powerful visualization tool of the links among concepts – locations – emotions.

THE USE OF CRITICAL THINKING AGAINST FAKE NEWS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra-Niculina Babii
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Informal Logic ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Sanctions ◽  
The One

The digital era has determined a very easy creation and propagation of fake news. As a consequence, it has become harder for people to fight this malicious phenomenon. However, the only weapon that can have results in this informational war is critical thinking. But who should use it? The creators of fake news that do this for different reasons? The social platforms that allow the circulation of fake news with ease? Mass media which does not always verify with much attention and rigour the information they spread? The Governments that should apply legal sanctions? Or the consumer that receives all the fake news, him being the final target? Even if critical thinking would be useful for every actor on fake news’ stage, the one who needs it the most is the consumer. This comes together with the big responsibility placed on his shoulders. Even if others are creating and spreading disinformation, the consumer must be aware and be careful with the information he encounters on a daily basis. He should use his reasoning and he should not believe everything just because it is on the Internet. How can he do that? Critical thinking seems to be a quite difficult tool to use, especially for non-specialized individuals. This paper’s aim is to propose a simplified model of critical thinking that can contribute to detecting fake news with the help of people’s self judgement. The model is based on theories from Informal Logic considering the structure of arguments and on Critical Discourse Analysis theories concerning the patterns found in the content of the information.

COVID-19 and the politicisation of medical preprints on Twitter: Quantitative Analysis of Social Media Data (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Urman ◽  
Stefania Ionescu ◽  
David Garcia ◽  
Anikó Hannák
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
New Research ◽  
Sharing Patterns ◽  
Political Divide

BACKGROUND Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have been willing to share their results quickly to speed up the development of potential treatments and/or a vaccine. At the same time, traditional peer-review-based publication systems are not always able to process new research promptly. This has contributed to a surge in the number of medical preprints published since January 2020. In the absence of a vaccine, preventative measures such as social distancing are most helpful in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Their effectiveness can be undermined if the public does not comply with them. Hence, public discourse can have a direct effect on the progression of the pandemic. Research shows that social media discussions on COVID-19 are driven mainly by the findings from preprints, not peer-reviewed papers, highlighting the need to examine the ways medical preprints are shared and discussed online. OBJECTIVE We examine the patterns of medRxiv preprint sharing on Twitter to establish (1) whether the number of tweets linking to medRxiv increased with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) which medical preprints were mentioned on Twitter most often; (3) whether medRxiv sharing patterns on Twitter exhibit political partisanship; (4) whether the discourse surrounding medical preprints among Twitter users has changed throughout the pandemic. METHODS The analysis is based on tweets (n=557,405) containing links to medRxriv preprint repository that were posted between the creation of the repository in June 2019 and June 2020. The study relies on a combination of statistical techniques and text analysis methods. RESULTS Since January 2020, the number of tweets linking to medRxiv has increased drastically, peaking in April 2020 with a subsequent cool-down. Before the pandemic, preprints were shared predominantly by users we identify as medical professionals and scientists. After January 2020, other users, including politically-engaged ones, have started increasingly tweeting about medRxiv. Our findings indicate a political divide in sharing patterns of the top-10 most-tweeted preprints. All of them were shared more frequently by users who describe themselves as Republicans than by users who describe themselves as Democrats. Finally, we observe a change in the discourse around medRxiv preprints. Pre-pandemic tweets linking to them were predominantly using the word “preprint”. In February 2020 “preprint” was taken over by the word “study”. Our analysis suggests this change is at least partially driven by politically-engaged users. Widely shared medical preprints can have a direct effect on the public discourse around COVID-19, which in turn can affect the societies’ willingness to comply with preventative measures. This calls for an increased responsibility when dealing with medical preprints from all parties involved: scientists, preprint repositories, media, politicians, and social media companies. CONCLUSIONS Widely shared medical preprints can have a direct effect on the public discourse around COVID-19, which in turn can affect the societies’ willingness to comply with preventative measures. This calls for an increased responsibility when dealing with medical preprints from all parties involved: scientists, preprint repositories, media, politicians, and social media companies.

How Phillips saw the light

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (8) ◽  
pp. 29-31
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Business World ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Freak Show ◽  
The World ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
The One ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings The problem with developing a reputation of being something of an oracle in the business world is that all of a sudden, everyone expects you to pull off the trick of interpreting the future on a daily basis. Like a freak show circus act or one-hit wonder pop singer, people expect you to perform when they see you, and they expect you to perform the thing that made you famous, even if it is the one thing in the world you don’t want to do. And when you fail to deliver on these heightened expectations, you are dismissed as a one trick pony, however good that trick is in the first place. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

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