Homero Gil de Zúñiga at Social Science Computer Review: “This special issue of the Social Science Computer Review provides a sample of the latest strategies employing large data sets in social media and political communication research. The proliferation of information communication technologies, social media, and the Internet, alongside the ubiquity of high-performance computing and storage technologies, has ushered in the era of computational social science. However, in no way does the use of “big data” represent a standardized area of inquiry in any field. This article briefly summarizes pressing issues when employing big data for political communication research. Major challenges remain to ensure the validity and generalizability of findings. Strong theoretical arguments are still a central part of conducting meaningful research. In addition, ethical practices concerning how data are collected remain an area of open discussion. The article surveys studies that offer unique and creative ways to combine methods and introduce new tools while at the same time address some solutions to ethical questions….(More)”
The Upside of Slacktivism
Nathan Collins in Pacific Standard: “When you think of meaningful political action, you probably think of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, or perhaps ACT-UP‘s 1990 protests in San Francisco. You probably don’t think of clicking “like” or “share” on Facetwitstagram—though a new study suggests that those likes and shares may be just as important as marching in the streets, singing songs, and carrying signs.
“The efficacy of online networks in disseminating timely information has been praised by many commentators; at the same time, users are often derided as ‘slacktivists’ because of the shallow commitment involved in clicking a forwarding button,” writes a team led by Pablo Barberá, a political scientist at New York University, in the journal PLoS One.
In other words, it’s easy to argue that sharing a post about climate change and whatnot has no value, since it involves no sacrifice—no standoffs with angry police, no going to jail over taxes you didn’t pay because you opposed the Mexican-American War, not even lost shoes.
On the other hand, maybe sacrifice isn’t the point. Maybe it’s getting attention, and, Barberá and colleagues suggest, slacktivism is actually pretty good at that part—a consequence of just how easy it is to spread the word with the click of a mouse.
The team reached that conclusion after analyzing tens of millions of tweets sent by nearly three million users during the May 2013 anti-government protests in Gezi Park, Istanbul. Among other things, the team identified which tweets were originals rather than retweets, who retweeted whom, and how many followers each user had. That meant Barberá and his team could identify not only how information flowed within the network of protesters, but also how many people that information reached.
Most original tweets came from a relatively small group of protestors using hashtags such as #gezipark, suggesting that information flowed from a core group of protestors toward a less-active periphery. Geographic data backed that up: Around 18 percent of core tweeters were physically present for the Gezi Park demonstrations, compared to a quarter of a percent of peripheral tweeters…..(More)”
The Internet’s Loop of Action and Reaction Is Worsening
Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times: “Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton said this week that we should think about shutting down parts of the Internet to stop terrorist groups from inspiring and recruiting followers in distant lands. Mr. Trump even suggested an expert who’d be perfect for the job: “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening, and we have to talk to them — maybe, in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way,” he said on Monday in South Carolina.
Many online responded to Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton with jeers, pointing out both constitutional and technical limits to their plans. Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who now spends much of his time on philanthropy, has as much power to close down the Internet as he does to fix Mr. Trump’s hair.
Yet I had a different reaction to Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton’s fantasy of a world in which you could just shut down parts of the Internet that you didn’t like: Sure, it’s impossible, but just imagine if we could do it, just for a bit. Wouldn’t it have been kind of a pleasant dream world, in these overheated last few weeks, to have lived free of social media?
Hear me out. If you’ve logged on to Twitter and Facebook in the waning weeks of 2015, you’ve surely noticed that the Internet now seems to be on constant boil. Your social feed has always been loud, shrill, reflexive and ugly, but this year everything has been turned up to 11. The Islamic State’s use of the Internet is perhaps only the most dangerous manifestation of what, this year, became an inescapable fact of online life: The extremists of all stripes are ascendant, and just about everywhere you look, much of the Internet is terrible.“The academic in me says that discourse norms have shifted,” said Susan Benesch, a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the director of the Dangerous Speech Project, an effort to study speech that leads to violence. “It’s become so common to figuratively walk through garbage and violent imagery online that people have accepted it in a way. And it’s become so noisy that you have to shout more loudly, and more shockingly, to be heard.”
You might argue that the angst online is merely a reflection of the news. Terrorism, intractable warfare, mass shootings, a hyperpartisan presidential race, police brutality, institutional racism and the protests over it have dominated the headlines. It’s only natural that the Internet would get a little out of control over that barrage.
But there’s also a way in which social networks seem to be feeding a cycle of action and reaction. In just about every news event, the Internet’s reaction to the situation becomes a follow-on part of the story, so that much of the media establishment becomes trapped in escalating, infinite loops of 140-character, knee-jerk insta-reaction.
“Presidential elections have always been pretty nasty, but these days the mudslinging is omnipresent in a way that’s never been the case before,” said Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of literary studies and writing at Mercer University, who is the author of “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” a study of online “trolling.” “When Donald Trump says something that I would consider insane, it’s not just that it gets reported on by one or two or three outlets, but it becomes this wave of iterative content on top of content on top of content in your feed, taking over everything you see.”
The spiraling feedback loop is exhausting and rarely illuminating. The news brims with instantly produced “hot takes” and a raft of fact-free assertions. Everyone — yours truly included — is always on guard for the next opportunity to meme-ify outrage: What crazy thing did Trump/Obama/The New York Times/The New York Post/Rush Limbaugh/etc. say now, and what clever quip can you fit into a tweet to quickly begin collecting likes?
There is little room for indulging nuance, complexity, or flirting with the middle ground. In every issue, you are either with one aggrieved group or the other, and the more stridently you can express your disdain — short ofhurling profanities at the president on TV, which will earn you a brief suspension — the better reaction you’ll get….(More)”
What Privacy Papers Should Policymakers be Reading in 2016?
Stacy Gray at the Future of Privacy Forum: “Each year, FPF invites privacy scholars and authors to submit articles and papers to be considered by members of our Advisory Board, with an aim toward showcasing those articles that should inform any conversation about privacy among policymakers in Congress, as well as at the Federal Trade Commission and in other government agencies. For our sixth annual Privacy Papers for Policymakers, we received submissions on topics ranging from mobile app privacy, to location tracking, to drone policy.
Our Advisory Board selected papers that describe the challenges and best practices of designing privacy notices, ways to minimize the risks of re-identification of data by focusing on process-based data release policy and taking a precautionary approach to data release, the relationship between privacy and markets, and bringing the concept of trust more strongly into privacy principles.
Our top privacy papers for 2015 are, in alphabetical order:
Florian Schaub, Rebecca Balebako, Adam L. Durity, and Lorrie Faith CranorIra S. Rubinstein and Woodrow HartzogArvind Narayanan, Joanna Huey, and Edward W. Felten
Our two papers selected for Notable Mention are:
Peter Swire (Testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, July 8, 2015)Joel R. Reidenberg….(More)”
Why: A Guide to Finding and Using Causes
Book by Samantha Kleinberg: “Can drinking coffee help people live longer? What makes a stock’s price go up? Why did you get the flu? Causal questions like these arise on a regular basis, but most people likely have not thought deeply about how to answer them.
This book helps you think about causality in a structured way: What is a cause, what are causes good for, and what is compelling evidence of causality? Author Samantha Kleinberg shows you how to develop a set of tools for thinking more critically about causes. You’ll learn how to question claims, identify causes, make decisions based on causal information, and verify causes through further tests.
Whether it’s figuring out what data you need, or understanding that the way you collect and prepare data affects the conclusions you can draw from it, Why will help you sharpen your causal inference skills….(More)”
Join Campaigns, Shop Ethically, Hit the Man Where It Hurts—All Within an App
PSFK: “Buycott is an app that wants to make shopping ethically a little easier. Join campaigns to support causes you care about, scan barcodes on products you’re considering to view company practices, and voice your concerns directly through the free app, available for iOS and Android.
Ethical campaigns are crowdsourced, and range from environmental to political and social concerns. Current campaigns include a demand for GMO labeling, supporting fair trade, ending animal testing, and more. You can read a description of the issue in question and see a list of companies to avoid and support under each campaign.
Scan barcodes of potential purchases to see if it the parent companies behind them hold up to your ethical standards. If the company doesn’t stand up, the app will suggest more ethically aligned alternatives.
According to Ivan Pardo, founder and CEO of Buycott, the app is designed to help consumers make informed shopping decisions “they can feel good about.”
“As consumers become increasingly conscientious about the impact of their purchases and shop to reflect these principles, Buycott provides users with transparency into the business practices of the companies marketing to them.”
Users can contact problematic companies through the app, using email, Facebook or Twitter. The app traces each product all the way back to its umbrella or parent company (which means the same few corporate giants are likely to show up on a few do-not buy lists)….(More)
State of the Commons
Creative Commons: “Creative Commoners have known all along that collaboration, sharing, and cooperation are a driving force for human evolution. And so for many it will come as no surprise that in 2015 we achieved a tremendous milestone: over 1.1 billion CC licensed photos, videos, audio tracks, educational materials, research articles, and more have now been contributed to the shared global commons…..
Whether it’s open education, open data, science, research, music, video, photography, or public policy, we are putting sharing and collaboration at the heart of the Web. In doing so, we are much closer to realizing our vision: unlocking the full potential of the Internet to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.
I am proud to share with you our 2015 State of the Commons report, our best effort to measure the immeasurable scope of the commons by looking at the CC licensed content, along with content marked as public domain, that comprise the slice of the commons powered by CC tools. We are proud to be a leader in the commons movement, and we hope you will join us as we celebrate all we have accomplished together this year. ….Report at https://stateof.creativecommons.org/2015/”
The $50 Million Competition to Remake the American City
Alex Davies at Wired: “IN THE NEXT 30 years, the American population will rise by 70 million people. This being the future, those people will love ordering stuff online even more than people do now, which will prompt a 45 percent rise in freight volume. The nation’s roads, already crumbling because Congress likes bickering more than legislating, will be home to 65 percent more trucks.
That’s just one of the ways a report, released earlier this year by the US Department of Transportation, says a growing population will strain an already overloaded highway system. Eager to avert some of these problems and get people thinking about the mobility of tomorrow, today the DOT is launching the Smart City Challenge, a contest that invites American cities to take advantage of new technologies that could change how we move.
Open data, smart gadgets, autonomous vehicles, and connected cars are among the tech already revolutionizing the road, while companies ranging from Apple and Google to Uber and Lyft promise to revolutionize how people and goods get around. The city that offers the most compelling plan gets $50 million to begin making it happen.
The challenge represents a new way of working for the DOT, one tailored to a rapidly changing world….(More)” See also >www.transportation.gov/smartcity<.
Forging Trust Communities: How Technology Changes Politics
Book by Irene S. Wu: “Bloggers in India used social media and wikis to broadcast news and bring humanitarian aid to tsunami victims in South Asia. Terrorist groups like ISIS pour out messages and recruit new members on websites. The Internet is the new public square, bringing to politics a platform on which to create community at both the grassroots and bureaucratic level. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies from more than ten countries, Irene S. Wu’s Forging Trust Communities argues that the Internet, and the technologies that predate it, catalyze political change by creating new opportunities for cooperation. The Internet does not simply enable faster and easier communication, but makes it possible for people around the world to interact closely, reciprocate favors, and build trust. The information and ideas exchanged by members of these cooperative communities become key sources of political power akin to military might and economic strength.
Wu illustrates the rich world history of citizens and leaders exercising political power through communications technology. People in nineteenth-century China, for example, used the telegraph and newspapers to mobilize against the emperor. In 1970, Taiwanese cable television gave voice to a political opposition demanding democracy. Both Qatar (in the 1990s) and Great Britain (in the 1930s) relied on public broadcasters to enhance their influence abroad. Additional case studies from Brazil, Egypt, the United States, Russia, India, the Philippines, and Tunisia reveal how various technologies function to create new political energy, enabling activists to challenge institutions while allowing governments to increase their power at home and abroad.
Forging Trust Communities demonstrates that the way people receive and share information through network communities reveals as much about their political identity as their socioeconomic class, ethnicity, or religion. Scholars and students in political science, public administration, international studies, sociology, and the history of science and technology will find this to be an insightful and indispensable work….(More)”
Social media and citizen engagement: A meta-analytic review
Paper by Marko M. Skoric et al: “This meta-analytic study reviews empirical research published from 2007 to 2013 with an aim of providing robust conclusions about the relationship between social media use and citizen engagement. It includes 22 studies that used self-reported measures of social media use and participation, with a total of 116 relationships/effects. The results suggest that social media use generally has a positive relationship with engagement and its three sub-categories, that is, social capital, civic engagement, and political participation. More specifically, we find small-to-medium size positive relationships between expressive, informational, and relational uses of social media and the above indicators of citizen engagement. For identity- and entertainment-oriented uses of social media, our analyses find little evidence supporting their relationship with citizen engagement….(More)”