scholarly journals Bots are less central than verified accounts during contentious political events

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (11) ◽  
pp. e2013443118
Author(s):  
Sandra González-Bailón ◽  
Manlio De Domenico
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Information Campaigns ◽  
Online Networks ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Diffusion Structure ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Information Manipulation ◽  
The Impact

Information manipulation is widespread in today’s media environment. Online networks have disrupted the gatekeeping role of traditional media by allowing various actors to influence the public agenda; they have also allowed automated accounts (or bots) to blend with human activity in the flow of information. Here, we assess the impact that bots had on the dissemination of content during two contentious political events that evolved in real time on social media. We focus on events of heightened political tension because they are particularly susceptible to information campaigns designed to mislead or exacerbate conflict. We compare the visibility of bots with human accounts, verified accounts, and mainstream news outlets. Our analyses combine millions of posts from a popular microblogging platform with web-tracking data collected from two different countries and timeframes. We employ tools from network science, natural language processing, and machine learning to analyze the diffusion structure, the content of the messages diffused, and the actors behind those messages as the political events unfolded. We show that verified accounts are significantly more visible than unverified bots in the coverage of the events but also that bots attract more attention than human accounts. Our findings highlight that social media and the web are very different news ecosystems in terms of prevalent news sources and that both humans and bots contribute to generate discrepancy in news visibility with their activity.

#INCLUSION – THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATION ON THE LEGITIMACY OF ARMED FORCES

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
EVA MOEHLECKE DE BASEGGIO ◽  
OLIVIA SCHNEIDER ◽  
TIBOR SZVIRCSEV TRESCH
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Legitimation ◽  
Social Media Communication ◽  
The Impact

The Swiss Armed Forces (SAF), as part of a democratic system, depends on legitimacy. Democracy, legitimacy and the public are closely connected. In the public sphere the SAF need to be visible; it is where they are controlled and legitimated by the citizens, as part of a deliberative discussion in which political decisions are communicatively negotiated. Considering this, the meaning of political communication, including the SAF’s communication, becomes obvious as it forms the most important basis for political legitimation processes. Social media provide a new way for the SAF to communicate and interact directly with the population. The SAF’s social media communication potentially brings it closer to the people and engages them in a dialogue. The SAF can become more transparent and social media communication may increase its reputation and legitimacy. To measure the effects of social media communication, a survey of the Swiss internet population was conducted. Based on this data, a structural equation model was defined, the effects of which substantiate the assumption that the SAF benefits from being on social media in terms of broadening its reach and increasing legitimacy values.

New Wars and Their Visual Representation: Dead Bodies without Graves/Mourne

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tuncay Şur ◽  
Betül Yarar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Photographic Images ◽  
War Photography ◽  
New Wars ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This paper seeks to understand why there has been an increase in photographic images exposing military violence or displaying bodies killed by military forces and how they can freely circulate in the public without being censored or kept hidden. In other words, it aims to analyze this particular issue as a symptom of the emergence of new wars and a new regime of their visual representation. Within this framework, it attempts to relate two kinds of literature that are namely the history of war and war photography with the bridge of theoretical discussions on the real, its photographic representation, power, and violence.  Rather than systematic empirical analysis, the paper is based on a theoretical attempt which is reflected on some socio-political observations in the Middle East where there has been ongoing wars or new wars. The core discussion of the paper is supported by a brief analysis of some illustrative photographic images that are served through the social media under the circumstances of war for instance in Turkey between Turkish military troops and the Kurdish militants. The paper concludes that in line with the process of dissolution/transformation of the old nation-state formations and globalization, the mechanism and mode of power have also transformed to the extent that it resulted in the emergence of new wars. This is one dynamic that we need to recognize in relation to the above-mentioned question, the other is the impact of social media in not only delivering but also receiving war photographies. Today these changes have led the emergence of new machinery of power in which the old modern visual/photographic techniques of representing wars without human beings, torture, and violence through censorship began to be employed alongside medieval power techniques of a visual exhibition of tortures and violence.

Correcting Misperceptions About Genetically Modified Food on Social Media: Examining the Impact of Experts, Social Media Heuristics, and the Gateway Belief Model

2020 ◽  
pp. 107554702098137
Author(s):  
Leticia Bode ◽  
Emily K. Vraga ◽  
Melissa Tully
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Food Safety ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Genetically Modified Food ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Consensus ◽  
Gm Food ◽  
Belief Model ◽  
The Impact

We experimentally test whether expert organizations on social media can correct misperceptions of the scientific consensus on the safety of genetically modified (GM) food for human consumption, as well as what role social media cues, in the form of “likes,” play in that process. We find expert organizations highlighting scientific consensus on GM food safety reduces consensus misperceptions among the public, leading to lower GM misperceptions and boosting related consumption behaviors in line with the gateway belief model. Expert organizations’ credibility may increase as a result of correction, but popularity cues do not seem to affect misperceptions or credibility.

scholarly journals Evaluating Cultural Impact in Discursive Space through Digital Footprints

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 4043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús López Baeza ◽  
Jens Bley ◽  
Kay Hartkopf ◽  
Martin Niggemann ◽  
James Arias ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Test Site ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Topic Identification ◽  
Small Test ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The research presented in this paper describes an evaluation of the impact of spatial interventions in public spaces, measured by social media data. This contribution aims at observing the way a spatial intervention in an urban location can affect what people talk about on social media. The test site for our research is Domplatz in the center of Hamburg, Germany. In recent years, several actions have taken place there, intending to attract social activity and spotlight the square as a landmark of cultural discourse in the city of Hamburg. To evaluate the impact of this strategy, textual data from the social networks Twitter and Instagram (i.e., tweets and image captions) are collected and analyzed using Natural Language Processing intelligence. These analyses identify and track the cultural topic or “people talking about culture” in the city of Hamburg. We observe the evolution of the cultural topic, and its potential correspondence in levels of activity, with certain intervention actions carried out in Domplatz. Two analytic methods of topic clustering and tracking are tested. The results show a successful topic identification and tracking with both methods, the second one being more accurate. This means that it is possible to isolate and observe the evolution of the city’s cultural discourse using NLP. However, it is shown that the effects of spatial interventions in our small test square have a limited local scale, rather than a city-wide relevance.

scholarly journals Determinants of Social Media Impact in Local Government

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 82-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Hisham Mohd Sharif ◽  
Indrit Troshani ◽  
Robyn Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Security Risks ◽  
Media Impact ◽  
The Public ◽  
Perceived Security ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Media Data

Limited attention has been directed towards understanding the impact of social media in the public sector, particularly in local government organisations. Although social media offer substantial benefits and opportunities to local government, research into the impact of social media remains scant. To address this gap, the authors draw on the technology, organisation, and environment (TOE) framework and propose a model of the determinants of social media impact in local government. The model is tested with data collected via a survey with 173 Australian local government organisations using social media. Data were analysed using the partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results indicate that TOE factors including perceived benefits, perceived security risks, compatibility, and degree of formalisation are important predictors of social media impact in local government.

Public perception of COVID-19 vaccines from the digital footprints left on Twitter: analyzing positive, neutral and negative sentiments of Twitterati

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aasif Ahmad Mir ◽  
Sevukan Rathinam ◽  
Sumeer Gul
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
English Language ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Application Programming Interface ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reaction ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
The Impact

PurposeTwitter is gaining popularity as a microblogging and social networking service to discuss various social issues. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic and is discussed worldwide. Social media is an instant platform to deliberate various dimensions of COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to explore and analyze the public sentiments related to COVID-19 vaccines across the Twitter messages (positive, neutral, and negative) and the impact tweets make across digital social circles.Design/methodology/approachTo fetch the vaccine-related posts, a manual examination of randomly selected 500 tweets was carried out to identify the popular hashtags relevant to the vaccine conversation. It was found that the hashtags “covid19vaccine” and “coronavirusvaccine” were the two popular hashtags used to discuss the communications related to COVID-19 vaccines. 23,575 global tweets available in public domain were retrieved through “Twitter Application Programming Interface” (API), using “Orange Software”, an open-source machine learning, data visualization and data mining toolkit. The study was confined to the tweets posted in English language only. The default data cleaning and preprocessing techniques available in the “Orange Software” were applied to the dataset, which include “transformation”, “tokenization” and “filtering”. The “Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning” (VADER) tool was used for classification of tweets to determine the tweet sentiments (positive, neutral and negative) as well as the degree of sentiments (compound score also known as sentiment score). To assess the influence/impact of tweets account wise (verified and unverified) and sentiment wise (positive, neutral, and negative), the retweets and likes, which offer a sort of reward or acknowledgment of tweets, were used.FindingsA gradual decline in the number of tweets over the time is observed. Majority (11,205; 47.52%) of tweets express positive sentiments, followed by neutral (7,948; 33.71%) and negative sentiments (4,422; 18.75%), respectively. The study also signifies a substantial difference between the impact of tweets tweeted by verified and unverified users. The tweets related to verified users have a higher impact both in terms of retweets (65.91%) and likes (84.62%) compared to the tweets tweeted by unverified users. Tweets expressing positive sentiments have the highest impact both in terms of likes (mean = 10.48) and retweets (mean = 3.07) compared to those that express neutral or negative sentiments.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of the study is that the sentiments of the people expressed over one single social platform, that is, Twitter have been studied which cannot generalize the global public perceptions. There can be a variation in the results when the datasets from other social media platforms will be studied.Practical implicationsThe study will help to know the people's sentiments and beliefs toward the COVID-19 vaccines. Sentiments that people hold about the COVID-19 vaccines are studied, which will help health policymakers understand the polarity (positive, negative, and neutral) of the tweets and thus see the public reaction and reflect the types of information people are exposed to about vaccines. The study can aid the health sectors to intensify positive messages and eliminate negative messages for an enhanced vaccination uptake. The research can also help design more operative vaccine-advocating communication by customizing messages using the obtained knowledge from the sentiments and opinions about the vaccines.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on an essential aspect of COVID-19 vaccines and how people express themselves (positively, neutrally and negatively) on Twitter.

Public relations in the age of data: corporate perspectives on social media analytics (SMA)

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy R. Fitzpatrick ◽  
Paula L. Weissman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Social Media Analytics ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Management Function ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Corporate Brands ◽  
Depth Interviews

PurposeThe aim of this study was to understand how public relations leaders view and use social media analytics (SMA) and the impact of SMA on the public relations function.Design/methodology/approachThe research involved in-depth interviews with chief communication officers (CCOs) from leading multinational corporate brands.FindingsThe findings revealed that although CCOs perceive social media analytics as strategically important to the advancement of public relations, the use of social media data is slowed by challenges associated with building SMA capacity.Theoretical and practical implications – The research extends public relations theory on public relations as a strategic management function and provides practical insights for building SMA capabilities.Originality/valueThe study is among the first to provide empirical evidence of how companies are using social media analytics to enhance public relations efforts.

Who is Setting Emotions? A Comparative Study on Emotion Diffusion in Social Media among Public, Government and Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhuan Zhou ◽  
Yi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Time Point

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 outbreak, social media served as the main platform for information exchange, through which the Chinese government, media and public would spread information. At the same time, a variety of emotions interweave, and the public emotions would also be affected by the government and media. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the types, trends and relationships of emotional diffusion in Chinese social media among the public, the government and the media under the pandemic of COVID-19 (December 30,2019, to July 1,2020) . METHODS In this paper, Python 3.7.0 and its data crawling framework Scrapy 1.5.1 are used to write a web crawler program to search for super topics related to COVID-19 on Sina Weibo platform of different keywords . Then, we used emotional lexicon to analyze the types and trends of the public, government and media emotions on social media. Finally cross-lagged regression was applied to build the relationships of different subjects’ emotions. RESULTS The highlights of our study are threefold: (1) The public, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic in China; (2) Emotional diffusion shows a certain change over time, and negative emotions are obvious in the initial phase of the pandemic, with the development of the pandemic, positive emotions surpass negative emotions and remain stable. (3)The impact among the three main emotions with the period as the time point is weak, while the impact of emotion with the day as the time point is relatively obvious. The emotions of the public and the government impact each other, and the media emotions can guide the public emotions. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study of comparing pubic, government and media emotions on the social media during COVID-19 pandemic in China. The pubic, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the pandemic. And the government and the media have better effect on short-term emotional guidance. Therefore, when the pandemic suddenly occurs, the government and the media should intervene in time to solve problems and conflicts and diffuse positive and neutral emotions. In this regard, the government and the media can play important roles through social media in the major outbreaks. At the theoretical level, this paper takes China's epidemic environment and social media as the background to provide one of the explanatory perspectives for the spread of emotions on social media. At the some time, because of this special background, it can provide comparison and reference for the research on internet emotions in other countries.

Measuring the Impact of Social Media use in the Public Sector

2012 ◽  
pp. 48-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inez Mergel
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Measurement Techniques ◽  
Current Standard ◽  
The Public ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Standard Practices ◽  
Media Applications ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Current Practices

Existing research on eGovernment performance has provided limited proof for the impact the use of technology has on citizen participation, engagement or generally satisfaction with government activities. Social media applications have the potential to improve responsiveness, reach, and efficiency, and even cost savings in government. The current Government 2.0 initiatives launched by all executive departments and agencies of the U.S. Federal Government as a response to President Obama’s Transparency and Open Government memo show that government agencies are implementing social media applications as additional information and communication channels. This chapter provides a comparison between traditional eGovernment measurement techniques and the current practices, highlighting the current practices of measuring social media impact in the public sector. The insights are based on data collected in 2010 from interviews with social media directors in the most innovative executive departments and agencies. The results show that the current standard practices mostly include quantitative impact measures instead of the qualitative measures needed to better understand the sentiments of citizens.

10. The jury

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Wilson ◽  
Helen Rutherford ◽  
Tony Storey ◽  
Natalie Wortley
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Ethnic Composition ◽  
Jury Trial ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Jury Deliberations ◽  
Jury Trials ◽  
Jury Service ◽  
The Impact

The jury consists of twelve, randomly-selected members of the public, who decide guilt or innocence in the most serious criminal trials in the Crown Court. This ensures that the general public are represented in the criminal justice system. This chapter explains the rules on eligibility for, and disqualification or excusal from, jury service. It considers issues such as the power of the jury to acquit in defiance of the evidence (‘jury equity’); the confidentiality of jury deliberations and the implications of that for appeals; the ethnic composition of a jury; whether juries should be excluded from certain trials such as those involving serious fraud or where there is evidence of jury ‘tampering’; whether the accused should be able to ‘waive’ their right to jury trial; and the impact of social media on jury trials. It concludes by examining the relative advantages and disadvantages of jury trials.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document