scholarly journals 1414. #Vaccine Twitter Influencers: is it Just About Reach and Followers?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S714-S715
Author(s):  
Jean-Etienne Poirrier ◽  
Theodore Caputi ◽  
John Ayers ◽  
Mark Dredze ◽  
Sara Poston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Standard Deviation ◽  
Small Proportion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Media Messages ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background A small number of powerful users (“influencers”) dominates conversations on social media platforms: less than 1% of Twitter accounts have at least 3,000 followers and even fewer have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. Beyond simple metrics (number of tweets, retweets...) little is known about these “influencers”, particularly in relation to their role in shaping online narratives about vaccines. Our goal was to describe influential Twitter accounts that are driving conversations about vaccines and present new metrics of influence. Methods Using publicly-available data from Twitter, we selected posts from 1-Jan-2016 to 31-Dec-2018 and extracted the top 5% of accounts tweeting about vaccines with the most followers. Using automated classifiers, we determined the location of these accounts, and grouped them into those that primarily tweet pro- versus anti-vaccine content. We further characterized the demographics of these influencer accounts. Results From 25,381 vaccine-related tweets available in our sample representing 10,607 users, 530 accounts represented the top 5% by number of followers. These accounts had on average 1,608,637 followers (standard deviation=5,063,421) and 340,390 median followers. Among the accounts for which sentiment was successfully estimated by the classifier, 10.4% (n=55) posted anti-vaccine content and 33.6% (n=178) posted pro-vaccine content. Of the 55 anti-vaccine accounts, 50% (n=18) of the accounts for which location was successfully determined were from the United States. Of the 178 pro-vaccine accounts, 42.5% (n=54) were from the United States. Conclusion This study showed that only a small proportion of Twitter accounts (A) post about vaccines and (B) have a high follower count and post anti-vaccine content. Further analysis of these users may help researchers and policy makers better understand how to amplify the impact of pro-vaccine social media messages. Disclosures Jean-Etienne Poirrier, PhD, MBA, The GSK group of companies (Employee, Shareholder) Theodore Caputi, PhD, Good Analytics Inc. (Consultant) John Ayers, PhD, GSK (Grant/Research Support) Mark Dredze, PhD, Bloomberg LP (Consultant)Good Analytics (Consultant) Sara Poston, PharmD, The GlaxoSmithKline group of companies (Employee, Shareholder) Cosmina Hogea, PhD, GlaxoSmithKline (Employee, Shareholder)

Rumors on the Net: A Brackish Suspension of Speech and Hate

2019 ◽  
pp. 174387211988012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Wagner ◽  
Sarah Marusek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Cyber Culture ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mob Mentality

The legitimacy of public memory and socially normative standards of civility is questioned through rumors that abound on online social media platforms. On the Net, the proclivity of rumors is particularly prone to acts of bullying and frameworks of hate speech. Legislative attempts to limit rumors operate differently in France and throughout Europe from the United States. This article examines the impact of online rumors, the mob mentality, and the politicization of bullying critics within a cyber culture that operates within the limitations of law.

A survey of Instagram users with asthma to evaluate the acceptability of a planned clinical trial intervention (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Spitzer ◽  
Brent Heineman ◽  
Marcella Jewell ◽  
Michael Moran ◽  
Peter Lindenauer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
College Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Healthy Behaviors ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Hispanic White

BACKGROUND Asthma is a chronic lung disease that affects nearly 25 million individuals in the United States. There is a need for more research into the potential for health care providers to leverage existing social media platforms to improve healthy behaviors and support individuals living with chronic health conditions. OBJECTIVE In this study, we assess the willingness of Instagram users with poorly controlled asthma to participate in a pilot study that uses Instagram as a means of providing social and informational support. In addition, we explore the potential for adapting photovoice and digital storytelling to social media. METHODS A survey study of Instagram users living with asthma in the United States, between the ages of 18 to 40. RESULTS Over 3 weeks of recruitment, 457 individuals completed the pre-survey screener; 347 were excluded. Of the 110 people who were eligible and agreed to participate in the study, 82 completed the study survey. Respondents mean age was 21(SD = 5.3). Respondents were 56% female (n=46), 65% (n=53) non-Hispanic white, and 72% (n=59) had at least some college education. The majority of respondents (n = 66, 81%) indicated that they would be willing to participate in the study. CONCLUSIONS Among young-adult Instagram users with asthma there is substantial interest in participating in a study that uses Instagram to connect participants with peers and a health coach in order to share information about self-management of asthma and build social connection.

scholarly journals GOVERNANCE OF THE FACEBOOK PRIVACY CRISIS

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Trautman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Select Committee ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
Social Media Platforms

In November 2018, The New York Times ran a front-page story describing how Facebook concealed knowledge and disclosure of Russian-linked activity and exploitation resulting in Kremlin led disruption of the 2016 and 2018 U.S. elections, through the use of global hate campaigns and propaganda warfare. By mid-December 2018, it became clear that the Russian efforts leading up to the 2016 U.S. elections were much more extensive than previously thought. Two studies conducted for the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), by: (1) Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika; and (2) New Knowledge, provide considerable new information and analysis about the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) influence operations targeting American citizens.By early 2019 it became apparent that a number of influential and successful high growth social media platforms had been used by nation states for propaganda purposes. Over two years earlier, Russia was called out by the U.S. intelligence community for their meddling with the 2016 American presidential elections. The extent to which prominent social media platforms have been used, either willingly or without their knowledge, by foreign powers continues to be investigated as this Article goes to press. Reporting by The New York Times suggests that it wasn’t until the Facebook board meeting held September 6, 2017 that board audit committee chairman, Erskin Bowles, became aware of Facebook’s internal awareness of the extent to which Russian operatives had utilized the Facebook and Instagram platforms for influence campaigns in the United States. As this Article goes to press, the degree to which the allure of advertising revenues blinded Facebook to their complicit role in offering the highest bidder access to Facebook users is not yet fully known. This Article can not be a complete chapter in the corporate governance challenge of managing, monitoring, and oversight of individual privacy issues and content integrity on prominent social media platforms. The full extent of Facebook’s experience is just now becoming known, with new revelations yet to come. All interested parties: Facebook users; shareholders; the board of directors at Facebook; government regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and Congress must now figure out what has transpired and what to do about it. These and other revelations have resulted in a crisis for Facebook. American democracy has been and continues to be under attack. This article contributes to the literature by providing background and an account of what is known to date and posits recommendations for corrective action.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study on Social Media Use and Public Participation in Korea and the United States: Does Social Media Matter?

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Kim Eun Yi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Interaction Effect ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Media Use ◽  
The Impact

This study examines how the use of different types of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, affects public participation, drawing on the theory of motivation, which addresses the effect of internal and external political efficacy as well as the perceived political importance of social media. The study also investigates the interaction effect between social media use and perceived the political importance of social media on public participation. Employing a comparative perspective on an issue that has not been well studied, the study further seeks to discover potential variations in the impacts of different social media on public participation in the United States and Korea, both of which held presidential elections at the end of 2012. This study conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses using data collected from college students in the United States and Korea. It shows the positive impact of social media use and its interaction effect with the perceived political importance of social media on the offline and online public participation of youth. The political motivational factor is found to be critical to driving public participation. This study also shows that the impact of Facebook use is more influential than Twitter use on public participation in the United States, whereas the opposite pattern is observed in Korea.

Is Snapchat Discover really a news platform? News snacking from social media and users’ knowledge of current affairs

2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Jayeon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Negative Predictor

The role of the media in informing the public has long been a central topic in journalism studies. Given that social media platforms have become today’s major source of news, it is important to understand the impact of social media use on citizens’ knowledge of current affairs. While people get news from multiple platforms throughout the day, most research treats social media as a single entity or examines only one or two major platforms ignoring newer social media platforms. Drawing on news snacking framework, this study investigates how using some of today’s most popular social media platforms predicts users’ current affairs knowledge, with particular attention to Snapchat and its news section Discover. A survey conducted in the United States (N=417) demonstrated that each of the platforms is distinct: Twitter is a strongly positive predictor of knowledge, Facebook a marginally significant negative predictor, Reddit a significantly negative predictor and Instagram not a significant predictor. Overall Snapchat use has no significant association with users’ knowledge of current affairs, whereas Discover use has a negative relationship. Further analysis revealed that mere exposure to Snapchat is positively related to soft-news knowledge and attention to Discover is negatively related to hard-news knowledge.

scholarly journals March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Hinde ◽  
Carlos Eduardo G Amorim ◽  
Alyson F Brokaw ◽  
Nicole Burt ◽  
Mary C Casillas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
High School ◽  
Social Media ◽  
High School Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Students ◽  
Science Outreach ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Teaching Life ◽  
Creative Products

March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach – gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products – to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping “play-by-play” narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.

Muslim Television Preachers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuve Floden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Satellite Networks ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Muslim television preachers, also called Muslim televangelists or media preachers, became popular with the rise of television, satellite networks, and the Internet. However, these individuals can trace their roots to earlier preachers who used newspapers, radio, and cassettes, as well as the phenomenon of popular storytellers from the medieval period. Today, Muslim television preachers are found worldwide, both inside and outside the Arab world, in countries such as Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, and more. Some of these preachers have traditional religious educations, with degrees from Al-Azhar or elsewhere, but many do not, instead holding degrees in subjects like business, accounting, or engineering. Like their counterparts from other religions, Muslim television preachers have also expanded beyond the realm of television and often spread their message through other means, such as seminars and lectures, book publications, websites, videos on YouTube, and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Prominent examples of Muslim television preachers include Amr Khaled and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as well as others like Muhammad al-Sha‘rawi and Moez Masoud of Egypt, Muhammad Hassan and Wagdi Ghoneim (Salafi preachers from Egypt), Javed Ahmad Ghamidi and Farhat Hashmi of Pakistan, Zakir Naik of India, Abdullah Gymnastiar (Aa Gym) and Arifin Ilham of Indonesia, Tareq al-Suwaidan of Kuwait, and Ahmad al-Shugairi of Saudi Arabia, to name a few.

Facebook will probably avoid US regulation

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Debate ◽  
Content Type ◽  
European Legislation ◽  
Congressional Committees ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Subject Facebook regulation prospects. Significance Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spent ten hours before Congressional committees on April 10 and 11, fielding questions from concerns that Facebook’s byzantine privacy practices allowed information on 87 million people to be collected by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to enabling Russian interference in elections in the United States. Zuckerberg signalled that the era of social media self-governance was over with an admission that the regulation of Facebook and other platforms was “inevitable”. Less clear is what such regulation will look like. Impacts The scandal is likely to set off an international debate on what governments should do to rein in platform overreach. Facebook’s practices will come under more severe scrutiny in Europe. US social media platforms will be vulnerable to European legislation on data protection, privacy, antitrust, content and taxes. Europe and the United States will diverge further on the regulation of 'Big Tech'.

Social Media, who Cares? A Dialogue between a Millennial and a Curmudgeon

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (14) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Frank ◽  
Kaitlin T. Torphy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Group Meeting ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Data Artifact ◽  
Broad Understanding

This is a dialogue between a curmudgeon and a millennial regarding the import of social media for education and for educational research. The dialogue emerged out of conversations the authors have had with policy makers, researchers, and practitioners over the last three years regarding the impact of social media on education (see teachersinsocialmedia.org). It was presented in the context of Kenneth Frank's research group meeting January 4, 2018. The topics covered include a broad understanding about what social media are and how they relate to teaching and curriculum; understanding about social media as a data artifact; a discussion about how social media platforms shape the interactions of participants; the quality of resources available on social media; why teachers engage in using social media; the lack of research on social media; and how social media may give teachers more power relative to the status quo. We invite you to follow along as these topics emerge in the authentic flow of a conversation. There are opportunities for reader participation on Twitter.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document