scholarly journals The public accountability of social platforms: lessons from a study on bots and trolls in the Brexit campaign

2018 ◽  
Vol 376 (2128) ◽  
pp. 20180003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Bastos ◽  
Dan Mercea
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Application Programming ◽  
Access To Data ◽  
The Uk

In this article, we review our study of 13 493 bot-like Twitter accounts that tweeted during the UK European Union membership referendum debate and disappeared from the platform after the ballot. We discuss the methodological challenges and lessons learned from a study that emerged in a period of increasing weaponization of social media and mounting concerns about information warfare. We address the challenges and shortcomings involved in bot detection, the extent to which disinformation campaigns on social media are effective, valid metrics for user exposure, activation and engagement in the context of disinformation campaigns, unsupervised and supervised posting protocols, along with infrastructure and ethical issues associated with social sciences research based on large-scale social media data. We argue for improving researchers' access to data associated with contentious issues and suggest that social media platforms should offer public application programming interfaces to allow researchers access to content generated on their networks. We conclude with reflections on the relevance of this research agenda to public policy. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations'.

scholarly journals Confronting the digital mob: Press coverage of online justice seeking

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 597-612
Author(s):  
Daniel Trottier
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Press ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Uk

This article offers an exploratory account of press coverage of digitally mediated vigilantism. It considers how the UK press renders these events visible in a sustained and meaningful way. News reports and editorials add visibility to these events, and also make them more tangible when integrating content from social media platforms. In doing so, this coverage directs attention to a range of social actors, who may be perceived as responsible for these kinds of developments. In considering how other social actors are presented in relation to digital vigilantism, this study focusses on press accounts of those either initiating or being targeted by online denunciations, and also on a broader and often amorphous range of spectators to such events, often referred to as ‘internet mobs’. Relatedly, this article explores how specific practices related to digital vigilantism such as denunciation are expressed in press coverage, as well as coverage of motivations by the public to either participate or facilitate such practices. Reflecting on how the press represent mediated denunciation will illustrate not only how tabloids and broadsheets frame such practices, but also how they take advantage of connective and data-generating affordances associated with social platforms.

scholarly journals Experiments in Social Media

AI Magazine ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-77
Author(s):  
Toby Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Real Risk ◽  
Psychometric Data ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter permit experiments to be performed at minimal cost on populations of a size that scientists might previously have dreamed about. For instance, one experiment on Facebook involved more than 60 million subjects. Such large-scale experiments introduce new challenges as even small effects when multiplied by a large population can have a significant impact. Recent revelations about the use of social media to manipulate voting behavior compound such concerns. It is believed that the psychometric data used by Cambridge Analytica to target US voters was collected by Dr Aleksandr Kogan from Cambridge University using a personality quiz on Facebook. There is a real risk that researchers wanting to collect data and run experiments on social media platforms in the future will face a public backlash that hinders such studies from being conducted. We suggest that stronger safeguards are put in place to help prevent this, and ensure the public retain confidence in scientists using social media for behavioral and other studies.

scholarly journals Employee dissent on social media and organizational discipline

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (5) ◽  
pp. 631-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Thompson ◽  
Paula McDonald ◽  
Peter O’Connor
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Employee Rights ◽  
Work Time ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Survey Responses

What kind of surveillance of employees is evident today? The rights of employers to police and act punitively with regard to workplace dissent and misbehaviour have become contentious legal, policy and ethical issues. Drawing on survey responses from employees in the UK and Australia, this study investigates the scope and scale of employee dissent in relation to critical online comments and the private use of social media during work time. The findings reveal a sufficient pool of misbehaviours, albeit that they are emergent and uneven. Also evident were some apparently contradictory responses with respect to employer rights to profile and discipline, at the same time as asserting employee rights to voice and private online identities. The findings contribute to knowledge of how much and what kinds of online dissent exist in the ambiguous space between the public sphere of work and the private lives of individual employees and what employers do about it.

Online Communication by Emergency Responders during Crisis Events

2018 ◽  
pp. 149-173
Author(s):  
Emma S. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emergency Responders ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Critical Components

Social media have become critical components of all phases of crisis management, including preparedness, response, and recovery. Numerous recent events have demonstrated that during extreme occurrences (such as natural hazards, civil unrest, and domestic terrorist attacks), social media platforms are appropriated for response activities, providing new infrastructure for official responders to disseminate event-related information, interact with members of the public, and monitor public opinion. Emergency responders recognize the potential of social media platforms and actively use these technologies to share information and connect with constituents; however, many questions remain about the effectiveness of social media platforms in reaching members of the public during times of crisis. Moreover, there is a strong tendency for research to focus on the behavior of the public rather than on that of official emergency responders. This chapter reviews prior and ongoing work that contributes to our understanding of usage practices and the effectiveness of networked online communication during times of crisis. In particular, it focuses on empirically driven research that utilizes large-scale data sets of behavioral traces captured from social media platforms. Together this body of work demonstrates how computational techniques combined with rich, curated data sets can be used to explore information and communication behaviors in online networks.

scholarly journals Networked Influence: An Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511986547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenna Jacobson ◽  
Anatoliy Gruzd ◽  
Priya Kumar ◽  
Philip Mai
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Information Campaigns ◽  
The Public ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Media Environments

We are witnessing a changing social media environment with new actors, new influencers, and new challenges. Considering the changes on social media platforms, the rise of bots, and the increased participation of state actors, this thematic collection addresses the methodological, topical, and ethical issues of networked influence. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal opened a new chapter to analyze what “influence” means in our current, complicated social media age. As discussed in the five papers stemming from the 2018 International Conference on Social Media & Society, this special issue introduces a wide array of interdisciplinary topics and approaches that highlight the rapid changes in social media environments, use, and users—with a focus on networked influence; by doing so, we attempt to answer some of the key research questions in this area, such as (1) how to identify and measure influence (broadly defined), (2) how to track propaganda campaigns, (3) how to effectively disseminate information and measure the public’s response to these information campaigns, (4) how do bots influence opinion trends on social media, and, finally, (5) how does the public frame privacy in a social media age?

scholarly journals Text Polarity Detection using Multiple Supervised Machine Learning Algorithms

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1612-1618
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Learning Algorithms ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Supervised Machine Learning ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Day By Day

Sentiment analysis is the classifying of a review, opinion or a statement into categories, which brings clarity about specific sentiments of customers or the concerned group to businesses and developers. These categorized data are very critical to the development of businesses and understanding the public opinion. The need for accurate opinion and large-scale sentiment analysis on social media platforms is growing day by day. In this paper, a number of machine learning algorithms are trained and applied on twitter datasets and their respective accuracies are determined separately on different polarities of data, thereby giving a glimpse to which algorithm works best and which works worst..

Kim Kardashian: the Leader of the Influencers

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laila Fariha Zein ◽  
Adib Rifqi Setiawan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Global Commerce ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Global Influence

In today’s world, it is easier and easier to stay connected with people who are halfway across the world. Social media and a globalizing economy have created new methods of business, trade and socialization resulting in vast amounts of communication and effecting global commerce. Like her or hate her, Kimberly Noel Kardashian West as known as Kim Kardashian has capitalized on social media platforms and the globalizing economy. Kim is known for two things: famous for doing nothing and infamous for a sex tape. But Kim has not let those things define her. With over 105 million Instagram followers and 57 million Twitter followers, Kim has become a major global influence. Kim has travelled around the world, utilizing the success she has had on social media to teach make-up master classes with professional make-up artist, Mario Dedivanovic. She owns or has licensed several different businesses including: an emoji app, a personal app, a gaming app, a cosmetics line, and a fragrance line. Not to be forgotten, the Kardashian family show, ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ has been on the air for ten years with Kim at the forefront. Kim also has three books: ‘Kardashian Konfidential’, ‘Dollhouse’, and ‘Selfish’. With her rising social media following, Kim has used the platforms to show her support for politicians and causes, particularly, recognition of the Armenian genocide. Kim also recently spoke at the Forbes’ women’s summit. Following the summit, Kim tweeted out her support for a recent movement on Twitter, #freeCyntoiaBrown which advocated for a young woman who claimed to have shot and killed the man who held her captive as a teenage sex slave in self-defense. Kim had her own personal lawyers help out Cyntoia on her case. Kim has also moved beyond advocating for issues within the confines of the United States. As mentioned earlier, she is known for advocating for recognition of the Armenian genocide. In the last two years, her show has made it a point to address the Armenian situation as it was then and as it is now. Kim has been recognized as a global influencer by others across the wordl. We believe Kim has become the same as political leaders when it comes to influencing the public. Kim’s story reveals that the new reality creates a perfect opportunity for mass disturbances or for initiating mass support or mass disapproval. Although Kim is typically viewed for her significance to pop culture, Kim’s business and social media following have placed her deep into the mix of international commerce. As her businesses continue to grow and thrive, we may see more of her influence on international issues and an increase in the commerce from which her businesses benefit.

Opportunities for Qualitative Analysis of Social Media Platforms in Dietetic Research and Practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Meghan Lynch ◽  
Irena Knezevic ◽  
Kennedy Laborde Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Article ◽  
Discussion Forums ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Related Data ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Article Comment

To date, most qualitative knowledge about individual eating patterns and the food environment has been derived from traditional data collection methods, such as interviews, focus groups, and observations. However, there currently exists a large source of nutrition-related data in social media discussions that have the potential to provide opportunities to improve dietetic research and practice. Qualitative social media discussion analysis offers a new tool for dietetic researchers and practitioners to gather insights into how the public discusses various nutrition-related topics. We first consider how social media discussion data come with significant advantages including low-cost access to timely ways to gather insights from the public, while also cautioning that social media data have limitations (e.g., difficulty verifying demographic information). We then outline 3 types of social media discussion platforms in particular: (i) online news article comment sections, (ii) food and nutrition blogs, and (iii) discussion forums. We discuss how each different type of social media offers unique insights and provide a specific example from our own research using each platform. We contend that social media discussions can contribute positively to dietetic research and practice.

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