Campaigning in the Twenty-First Century

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Updated book by Dennis W. Johnson: “In view of the 2016 US election season, the second edition of this book analyzes the way political campaigns have been traditionally run and the extraordinary changes that have occurred since 2012. Dennis W. Johnson looks at the most sophisticated techniques of modern campaigning—micro-targeting, online fundraising, digital communication, the new media—and examines what has changed, how those changes have dramatically transformed campaigning, and what has remained fundamentally the same despite new technologies and communications.

Campaigns are becoming more open and free-wheeling, with greater involvement of activists (especially through social media) and average voters alike. At the same time, they have become more professionalized, and the author has experience managing and marketing the process. Campaigning in the Twenty-First Century illustrates the daunting challenges for candidates and professional consultants as they try to get their messages out to voters. Ironically, the more open and robust campaigns become, the greater is the need for seasoned, flexible, and imaginative professional consultants… (More)”

The impact of open access scientific knowledge

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jack Karsten and Darrell M. West at Brookings: “In spite of technological advancements like the Internet, academic publishing has operated in much the same way for centuries. Scientists voluntarily review their peers’ papers for little or no compensation; the paper’s author likewise does not receive payment from academic publishers. Though most of the costs of publishing a journal are administrative, the cost of subscribing to scientific journals nevertheless increased 600 percent between 1984 and 2002. The funding for the research libraries that form the bulk of journal subscribers has not kept pace, leading to campaigns at universities including Harvard to boycott for-profit publishers.

Though the Internet has not yet brought down the price of academic journal subscriptions, it has led to some interesting alternatives. In 2015, the Twitter hashtag #icanhazPDF was created to request copies of papers located behind paywalls. Anyone with access to a specific paper can download it and then e-mail it to the requester. The practice violates the copyright of publishers, but puts papers in reach of researchers who would otherwise not be able to read them. If a researcher cannot read a journal article in the first place, they cannot go on to cite it, which raises the profile of the cited article and the journal that published it. The publisher is caught between two conflicting goals: to increase the number of citations for their articles and earning revenue to stay in business.

Thinking outside the journal

A trio of University of Chicago researchers examines this issue through the lens of Wikipedia in a paper titled “Amplifying the Impact of Open Access: Wikipedia and the Diffusion of Science.” Wikipedia makes a compelling subject for scientific diffusion given its status as one of the most visited websites in the world, attracting 374 million unique visitors monthly as of September 2015. The study found that on English language articles, Wikipedia editors are 47 percent more likely to cite an article from an open access journal. Anyone using Wikipedia as a first source for information on a subject is more likely to read information from open source journals. If readers click through the links to cited articles, they can read the actual text of these open-source journal articles.

Given how much the federal government spends on scientific research ($66 billion on nondefense R&D in 2015), it has a large role to play in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. Since 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has required researchers who publish in academic journals to also publish in PubMed, an online open access journal. Expanding provisions like the NIH Public Access Policy to other agencies and to recipients of federal grants at universities would give the public and other researchers a wealth of scientific information. Scientific literacy, even on cutting-edge research, is increasingly important when science informs policy on major issues such as climate change and health care….(More)”

Systematic Thinking for Social Action

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Re-issued book by Alice M. Rivlin: “In January 1970 Alice M. Rivlin spoke to an audience at the University of California–Berkeley. The topic was developing a more rational approach to decision-making in government. If digital video, YouTube, and TED Talks had been inventions of the 1960s, Rivlin’s talk would have been a viral hit. As it was, the resulting book, Systematic Thinking for Social Action, spent years on the Brookings Press bestseller list. It is a very personal and conversational volume about the dawn of new ways of thinking about government.

As a deputy assistant secretary for program coordination, and later as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1966 to 1969, Rivlin was an early advocate of systems analysis, which had been introduced by  Robert McNamara at the Department of Defense as  PPBS (planning-programming-budgeting-system).

While Rivlin brushes aside the jargon, she digs into the substance of systematic analysis and a “quiet revolution in government.” In an evaluation of the evaluators, she issues mixed grades, pointing out where analysts had been helpful in finding solutions and where—because of inadequate data or methods—they had been no help at all.

Systematic Thinking for Social Action offers important insights for anyone interested in working to find the smartest ways to allocate scarce funds to promote the maximum well-being of all citizens.

This reissue is a Brookings Classics, a series of republished books for readers to revisit or discover previous, notable works by the Brookings Institution Press.

Predictive Analytics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Revised book by Eric Siegel: “Prediction is powered by the world’s most potent, flourishing unnatural resource: data. Accumulated in large part as the by-product of routine tasks, data is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is a gold mine. Big data embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn.

Predictive analytics unleashes the power of data. With this technology, the computer literally learns from data how to predict the future behavior of individuals. Perfect prediction is not possible, but putting odds on the future drives millions of decisions more effectively, determining whom to call, mail, investigate, incarcerate, set up on a date, or medicate.

In this lucid, captivating introduction — now in its Revised and Updated edition — former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction:

    • What type of mortgage risk Chase Bank predicted before the recession.
    • Predicting which people will drop out of school, cancel a subscription, or get divorced before they even know it themselves.
    • Why early retirement predicts a shorter life expectancy and vegetarians miss fewer flights.
    • Five reasons why organizations predict death — including one health insurance company.
    • How U.S. Bank and Obama for America calculated — and Hillary for America 2016 plans to calculate — the way to most strongly persuade each individual.
    • Why the NSA wants all your data: machine learning supercomputers to fight terrorism.
    • How IBM’s Watson computer used predictive modeling to answer questions and beat the human champs on TV’s Jeopardy!
    • How companies ascertain untold, private truths — how Target figures out you’re pregnant and Hewlett-Packard deduces you’re about to quit your job.
    • How judges and parole boards rely on crime-predicting computers to decide how long convicts remain in prison.
    • 183 examples from Airbnb, the BBC, Citibank, ConEd, Facebook, Ford, Google, the IRS, LinkedIn, Match.com, MTV, Netflix, PayPal, Pfizer, Spotify, Uber, UPS, Wikipedia, and more….(More)”

 

Humanity 360: World Humanitarian Data and Trends 2015

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OCHA: “WORLD HUMANITARIAN DATA AND TRENDS

Highlights major trends, challenges and opportunities in the nature of humanitarian crises, showing how the humanitarian landscape is evolving in a rapidly changing world.

EXPLORE...

LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND: HUMANITARIAN EFFECTIVENESS IN THE AGE OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Exploring what humanitarian effectiveness means in today’s world ‐ better meeting the needs of people in crisis, better moving people out of crisis.

EXPLORE…

TOOLS FOR DATA COORDINATION AND COLLECTION

Skype and Ebola: In August 2014, members of the humanitarian community launched the Ebola IM/GIS Skype group. This platform enabled communications across agencies and countries to share best practices and the latest news during the Ebola response. Communications peaked during September, October and November when transmission rates were highest. A total of 101 organizations participated in the group. The most messages were shared on 24 October — the day Ebola was detected in Mali…(more)”

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media and hum disasters: Typhoon Ruby

The Philippines has a large population of active social media users. Their response to Typhoon Hagupit (Ruby) on December 2014 was similar to the response for Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in November 2013, with hundreds of thousands of messages posted to various sites. During the Typhoon Ruby response, approximately 700 digital volunteers classified Twitter messages during approximately 72 hours. In total, 12,628 tweets were categorized. Among the relevant tweets, over 10 per cent related to humanitarian aid and approximately 2 per cent were requests for help. Volunteers geo-located 3,555 tweets and 7,413 images to create a map showing the relationship between affected areas and social media use…(more)

 

 

HereHere

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“HereHere NYC generates weekly cartoons for NYC neighborhoods based on public data. We sum up how your neighborhood, or other NYC neighborhoods you care about, are doing via weekly email digest, neighborhood-specific Twitter & Instagram feeds, and with deeper data and context.

HereHere is a research project from FUSE Labs, Microsoft Research that explores:

  • Creating compelling stories with data to engage larger communities
  • Inventing new habits for connecting to the hyperlocal
  • Using cartoons as a tool to drive data engagement

HereHere does not use sentiment analysis, but uses a research platform with the intention of surfacing the most pertinent information with a human perspective. …

How It Works

Several times a day we grab the freshest NYC 311 data. The data comes in as a long list of categorized concerns issued by people in NYC (either via phone, email, or text message) and range from heating complaints to compliments to concerns about harboring bees and everything in between.

We separate the data by neighborhood for each of the 42 neighborhoods throughout the 5 boroughs of NYC, and count the total of each concern per neighborhood.

Next, we process the data through the Sentient Data Server. SDS equips each neighborhood with a personality (like a character in a movie or videogame) and we calculate the character’s response to the latest data based on pace, position and trend. For example, a neighborhood might be delighted if after several days of more than 30 heating complaints, heating complaints drops down to 0; or a neighborhood might be ashamed to see a sudden rise in homeless person assistance requests.

 

HereHere determines the most critical 311 issues for each neighborhood each week and uses that to procedurally generate a weekly cartoon for each neighborhood.

 HereHere summarizes the 311 concerns into categories for a quick sense of what’s happening in each neighborhood…(More)

How Facebook Makes Us Dumber

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 in BloombergView: “Why does misinformation spread so quickly on the social media? Why doesn’t it get corrected? When the truth is so easy to find, why do people accept falsehoods?

A new study focusing on Facebook users provides strong evidence that the explanation is confirmation bias: people’s tendency to seek out information that confirms their beliefs, and to ignore contrary information.

Confirmation bias turns out to play a pivotal role in the creation of online echo chambers. This finding bears on a wide range of issues, including the current presidential campaign, the acceptance of conspiracy theories and competing positions in international disputes.

The new study, led by Michela Del Vicario of Italy’s Laboratory of Computational Social Science, explores the behavior of Facebook users from 2010 to 2014. One of the study’s goals was to test a question that continues to be sharply disputed: When people are online, do they encounter opposing views, or do they create the virtual equivalent of gated communities?

Del Vicario and her coauthors explored how Facebook users spread conspiracy theories (using 32 public web pages); science news (using 35 such pages); and “trolls,” which intentionally spread false information (using two web pages). Their data set is massive: It covers all Facebook posts during the five-year period. They explored which Facebook users linked to one or more of the 69 web pages, and whether they learned about those links from their Facebook friends.

In sum, the researchers find a lot of communities of like-minded people. Even if they are baseless, conspiracy theories spread rapidly within such communities.

More generally, Facebook users tended to choose and share stories containing messages they accept, and to neglect those they reject. If a story fits with what people already believe, they are far more likely to be interested in it and thus to spread it….(More)”

Social Media for Government Services

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Surya Nepal, Cécile Paris and Dimitrios Georgakopoulos: “This book highlights state-of-the-art research, development and implementation efforts concerning social media in government services, bringing together researchers and practitioners in a number of case studies. It elucidates a number of significant challenges associated with social media specific to government services, such as:  benefits and methods of assessing; usability and suitability of tools, technologies and platforms; governance policies and frameworks; opportunities for new services; integrating social media with organisational business processes; and specific case studies. The book also highlights the range of uses and applications of social media in the government domain, at both local and federal levels. As such, it offers a valuable resource for a broad readership including academic researchers, practitioners in the IT industry, developers, and government policy- and decision-makers….(More)“

Living Labs: Concepts, Tools and Cases

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Pieter Ballon , Dimitri Schuurman: “This special issue on “Living labs: concepts, tools and cases” comes 10 years after the first scientific publications that defined the notion of living labs, but more than 15 years after the appearance of the first living lab projects (Ballon et al., 2005; Eriksson et al., 2005). This five-year gap demonstrates the extent to which living labs have been a practice-driven phenomenon. Right up to this day, they represent a pragmatic approach to innovation (of information and communication technologies [ICTs] and other artefacts), characterised by a.o. experimentation in real life and active involvement of users.

While there is now a certain body of literature that attempts to clarify and analyse the concept (Følstad, 2008; Almirall et al., 2012; Leminen et al., 2012), living lab practices are still under-researched, and a theoretical and methodological gap continues to exist in terms of the restricted amount and visibility of living lab literature vis-à-vis the rather large community of practice (Schuurman, 2015). The present special issue aims to assist in filling that gap.

This does not mean that the development of living labs has not been informed by scholarly literature previously (Ballon, 2015). Cornerstones include von Hippel’s (1988) work on user-driven innovation because of its emphasis on the ability of so-called lead users, rather than manufacturers, to create (mainly ICT) innovations. Another cornerstone is Silverstone’s (1993) theory on the domestication of ICTs that frames technology adoption as an ongoing struggle between users and technology where the user attempts to take control of the technological artefact and the technology comes to be fitted to users’ daily routines. It has been said that, in living labs, von Hippel’s concept of user-driven design and Silverstone’s insights into the appropriation of technologies are coupled dynamically through experimentation (Frissen and Van Lieshout, 2006).

The concept of stigmergy, which refers to addressing complex problems by collective, yet uncoordinated, actions and interactions of communities of individuals, has gradually become the third foundational element, as social media have provided online platforms for stigmergic behaviour, which has subsequently been linked to the “spontaneous” emergence of innovations (Pallot et al., 2010; Kiemen and Ballon, 2012). A fourth cornerstone is the literature on open and business model innovation, which argues that today’s fast-paced innovation landscape requires collaboration between multiple business and institutional stakeholders, and that the business should use these joint innovation endeavours to find the right “business architecture” (Chesbrough, 2003; Mitchell and Coles, 2003).….(More)

Five times Internet activism made a difference

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Max Lewontin in The Christian Science Monitor: “The revolution will not be televised…the revolution will be live,” musician Gil Scott-Heron famously sang in 1970. But with the evolving ability of citizens to connect online and through social media despite vast physical distances, a slew of new social movements are increasingly pushing for action on a range of social, political, and cultural issues.

The immediacy of social media, many activists say, allows a rapid spread of information not previously available, with updates possible in near-real time. From the Arab Spring to SOPA to #blacklivesmatter, here’s a look at how online activism has impacted social issues across the globe.

1. Black Lives Matter…

2. Arab Spring…

3. Taiwan’s student protests…

4. Net neutrality…

5. SOPA/PIPA…(More)”