Engaged Political Science

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-262
Author(s):  
Matthew Wood
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Shed Light

Political scientists are wary of engaging with ‘the public’ on mainstream and social media because they fear those mediums fail to get across the deep and nuanced argument they develop in their own research. This article suggests a way of justifying public engagement that begins not with debates about the ethical and political concerns of doing this in practice (of which there are many), but how we as political scientists justify public media engagement to ourselves on the basis of the ethical and political process of ‘doing’ political science. As such, this article identifies the disciplinary basis upon which we may justify media-driven public engagement as an integral part of political science as an academic enterprise. Drawing on current epistemological debates in political science, the article characterises moments of political research as impressionistic exercises, which require public engagement. This means making the public aware of the deep and valuable insights of political science, in a way that sketches out how the discipline can shed light on important social and political phenomena, thereby informing our own scholarly thinking, and that of those we engage with.

scholarly journals Exploring public engagement with missing person appeals on Twitter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reka Solymosi ◽  
Oana Petcu ◽  
Jack Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
The Public ◽  
Missing Persons ◽  
Early Return ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Twitter Account

Police agencies globally are seeing an increase in reports of people going missing. These people are often vulnerable, and their safe and early return is a key factor in preventing them from coming to serious harm. One approach to quickly find missing people is to disseminate appeals for information using social media. Yet despite the popularity of twitter-based missing person appeals, presently little is known about how to best construct these messages to ensure they are shared far and wide. This paper aims to build an evidence-base for understanding how police accounts tweet appeals for information about missing persons, and how the public engage with these tweets by sharing them. We analyse 1,008 Tweets made by Greater Manchester Police between the period of 2011 and 2018 in order to investigate what features of the tweet, the twitter account, and the missing person are associated with levels of retweeting. We find that tweets with different choice of image, wording, sentiment, and hashtags vary in how much they are retweeted. Tweets that use custody images have lower retweets than Tweets with regular photos, while tweets asking the question “have you seen...?” and asking explicitly to be retweeted have more engagement in the form of retweets. These results highlight the need for conscientious, evidence-based crafting of missing appeals, and pave the way for further research into the causal mechanisms behind what affects engagement, to develop guidance for police forces worldwide.

scholarly journals Public engagement and dialogic accounting through social media during COVID-19 crisis: a missed opportunity?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Landi ◽  
Antonio Costantini ◽  
Marco Fasan ◽  
Michele Bonazzi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Agencies

PurposeThe purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate why and how public health agencies employed social media during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to foster public engagement and dialogic accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed the official Facebook pages of the leading public agencies for health crisis in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand and they collected data on the number of posts, popularity, commitment and followers before and during the outbreak. The authors also performed a content analysis to identify the topics covered by the posts.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that social media has been extensively used as a public engagement tool in all three countries under analysis but – because of legitimacy threats and resource scarcity – it has also been used as a dialogic accounting tool only in New Zealand. Findings suggest that fake news developed more extensively in contexts where the public body did not foster dialogic accounting.Practical implicationsPublic agencies may be interested in knowing the pros and cons of using social media as a public engagement and dialogic accounting tool. They may also leverage on dialogic accounting to limit fake news.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to look at the nature and role of social media as an accountability tool during public health crises. In many contexts, COVID-19 forced for the first time public health agencies to heavily engage with the public and to develop new skills, so this study paves the way for numerous future research ideas.

scholarly journals Promoting Public Engagement of Natural History Collections through Science Communication

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e28479
Author(s):  
Bryan Lessard
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Speaking ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The Public ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
New Students

Natural history collections are essential for understanding the world’s biodiversity and drive research in taxonomy, systematics, ecology and biosecurity. One of the biggest challenges faced is the decline of new taxonomists and public interest in collections-based research, which is alarming considering that an estimated 70% of the world’s species are yet to be formally described. Science communication combines public relations with the dissemination of scientific knowledge and offers many benefits to promoting natural history collections to a wide audience. For example, social media has revolutionised the way collections and their staff communicate with the public in real time, and can attract more visitors to collection exhibits and new students interested in natural history. Although not everyone is born a natural science communicator, institutions can encourage and provide training for their staff to become engaging spokespeople skilled in social media and public speaking, including television, radio and/or print media. By embracing science communication, natural history collections can influence their target audiences in a positive and meaningful way, raise the profile of their institution, encourage respect for biodiversity, promote their events and research outputs, seek philanthropic donations, connect with other researchers or industry leaders, and most importantly, inspire the next generation of natural historians.

scholarly journals Expert communication on Twitter: Comparing economists and scientists’ social networks, topics and communicative styles

2020 ◽  
pp. 096366252095725
Author(s):  
Marina Della Guista ◽  
Sylvia Jaworska ◽  
Danica Vukadinović Greetham
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
Multimedia Contents ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Experts increasingly use social media to communicate with the wider public, prompted by the need to demonstrate impact and public engagement. While previous research on the use of social media by experts focused on single topics and performed sentiment analysis, we propose to extend the scope by investigating experts’ networks, topics and communicative styles. We perform social and semantic network as well language analysis of top tweeting scientists and economists. We find that economists tweet less, mention fewer people and have fewer Twitter conversations with members of the public than scientists. Scientists use a more informal and involved style and engage wider audiences through multimedia contents, while economists use more jargon, and tend to favour traditional written media. The results point to differences in experts’ communicative practices online, and we propose that disciplinary ways of ‘talking’ may pose obstacles to an effective public communication of expert knowledge.

Decision Rules and Policy Outcomes

1971 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Rae ◽  
Michael Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
The Public

Contemporary political science is rightly concerned with the complex relationship between the political process and the public policies in which it results. In understanding this relationship, it may be useful to distinguish two complementary aspects of the political process: (1) those which are relevant because they account for the policy preferences of elite-members and, (2) those elements, like voting and bargaining, which are of interest because they determine policy outcomes from given configurations of elite preferences. This paper offers a theoretical model for an important component of this second aspect: it is explicitly addressed to legislative voting processes and the underlying strategies of legislators as these contribute to the determination of policy outcomes. And, for the present, we take preference-formation as given.

Political Science in Real Time: Engaging the Middle East Policy Public

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Middle East Policy

A decade ago, very few political scientists had either the opportunity or the incentive to engage with the political public in a direct, unmediated way. Today, there is a dense and eclectic ecosystem of political science and international relations-focused blogs and online publications, where good work can easily find an audience through social media. There are multiple initiatives dedicated to supporting academic interventions in the public sphere, and virtually every political or cultural magazine of note now offers a robust online section featuring commentary and analysis in which political scientists are well represented. This has transformed publication for a broader public from something exotic to something utterly routine. I discuss how these changes have affected individual scholars, the field of political science, and the political world with which we are engaged.

An everyday glimpse of the nation: NHK’s morning drama (asadora) and rituality

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scherer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Broadcaster ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Shed Light

NHK’s morning drama (asadora) has been an important institution on Japanese television since the 1960s and is also known as ‘national drama’. This article discusses this media format in the context of rituals and nationhood: watching asadora has become an everyday ritual that can convey a sense of national unity, and the series functions as a ‘media ritual’ that naturalizes the concept of the Japanese nation, thereby also strengthening the symbolic power of the public broadcaster NHK. As the example of Hiyokko (2017) shows, the producers of this series evoke collective memory and nostalgia by depicting everyday culture and large, nationally charged events such as the 1964 Olympic Games. Reflecting on asadora can shed light on the political and ideological dimensions of seemingly ‘banal’ media products as well as provide more general insights into the development of television in times of social media and the disappearance of the ‘national’ TV audience.

From ‘Opening Up’ to Democratic Renewal: Deepening Public Engagement in Legislative Committees

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn M. Hendriks ◽  
Adrian Kay
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Public Involvement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Central Task ◽  
Committee Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Legislative Committees ◽  
Opening Up

Many legislatures around the world are undergoing a ‘participatory makeover’. Parliaments are hosting open days and communicating the latest parliamentary updates via websites and social media. Public activities such as these may make parliaments more informative and accessible, but much more could be done to foster meaningful democratic renewal. In particular, participatory efforts ought to be engaging citizens in a central task of legislatures – to deliberate and make decisions on collective issues. In this article, the potential of parliamentary committees to bring the public closer to legislative deliberations is considered. Drawing on insights from the practice and theory of deliberative democracy, the article discusses why and how deeper and more inclusive forms of public engagement can strengthen the epistemic, representative and deliberative capacities of parliamentary committees. Practical examples are considered to illustrate the possibilities and challenges of broadening public involvement in committee work.

Public communication and the role of social media in enhancing democratic innovation: the case of the City of Bologna

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Giulia Allegrini ◽  
Stefano Spillare
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
The City

Social media represents for public administration an important area to experi-ment forms of democratic innovation, however this potentiality is often unex-plored. This article, with a focus on the case of the city of Bologna aims to explore 1) whether and how public communication practices enhanced in local participa-tory processes can support a substantial form of participation; 2) which roles so-cial media specifically play in enhancing a participatory environment; 3) which kind of dynamics of interaction emerge between public administration and citizens and the challenges which need to be addressed by a public communication orient-ed to the public engagement.

scholarly journals Public Engagement With and Recognition of the “Be Cancer Alert Campaign” - Colorectal Cancer Awareness

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement 2) ◽  
pp. 57s-57s
Author(s):  
D. Schliemann ◽  
M. Donnelly ◽  
M. Dahlui ◽  
S.Y. Loh ◽  
D. Paramasivam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Colorectal Cancer ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Web Site ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
Signs And Symptoms ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Media Campaign ◽  
Cancer Awareness ◽  
The Public

Background: Colorectal cancer is the most common cancers in males in Malaysia and the second most common cancer in females. Low awareness of cancer delays help-seeking and contributes to late presentation, poor detection and survival. We developed a culturally sensitive mass media campaign to increase awareness about the signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer among Malaysians, which was informed by previously successful campaigns in Northern Ireland. Aim: The aim of this study is to analyze the public engagement with the campaign on social media and to identify whether the public recognizes the campaign materials postintervention. Methods: Focus group discussions informed the cultural adaptation of the Be Cancer Alert Campaign - Colorectal Cancer (BCAC-CRC). Based on the focus discussions we developed a TV commercial and radio advertisement as well as a print advertisement campaign. In addition, we promoted the BCAC through a Web site and social media campaign. The BCAC-CRC will run from the 2nd of April for five weeks. The engagement with the Web site and the social media campaign will be analyzed on a daily basis to respond to public engagement immediately. A population-based survey postintervention including a randomly selected sample of approximately 700 participants will evaluate whether people recall the campaign key messages and have noticed the campaign materials. Results: Postintervention data collection will take place from May-July 2018. The results of the analysis will be presented at the conference. Conclusion: To our knowledge, the BCAC-CRC is the first colorectal cancer awareness campaign in Malaysia that will be evaluated for its public engagement on social media as well as public recognition of the TV, radio and print materials.

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