social media

Dissecting the Spirit of Gezi: Influence vs. Selection in the Occupy Gezi Movement

Curated on September 2, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New study by Ceren Budak and Duncan J. Watts in Sociological Science: “Do social movements actively shape the opinions and attitudes of participants by bringing together diverse groups that subsequently influence one another? Ethnographic studies of the 2013 Gezi uprising seem to answer “yes,” pointing to solidarity among groups that were traditionally indifferent, or even hostile, to one another. We argue that two mechanisms with differing implications may generate this observed outcome: “influence” (change in attitude caused by interacting with other participants); and “selection” (individuals who participated in the movement were generally more supportive of other groups beforehand).

We tease out the relative importance of these mechanisms by constructing a panel of over 30,000 Twitter users and analyzing their support for the main Turkish opposition parties before, during, and after the movement. We find that although individuals changed in significant ways, becoming in general more supportive of the other opposition parties, those who participated in the movement were also significantly more supportive of the other parties all along. These findings suggest that both mechanisms were important, but that selection dominated. In addition to our substantive findings, our paper also makes a methodological contribution that we believe could be useful to studies of social movements and mass opinion change more generally. In contrast with traditional panel studies, which must be designed and implemented prior to the event of interest, our method relies on ex post panel construction, and hence can be used to study unanticipated or otherwise inaccessible events. We conclude that despite the well known limitations of social media, their “always on” nature and their widespread availability offer an important source of public opinion data….(More)”

Customer-Driven Government

Curated on August 26, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jane Wiseman at DataSmart City Solutions: “Public trust in government is low — of the 43 industries tracked in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, only one ranks lower than the federal government in satisfaction levels. Local government ranks a bit higher than the federal government, but for most of the public, that makes little difference. It’s time for government to change that perception by listening to its customers and improving service delivery.

What can the cup holder in your car teach government about customer engagement? A cup holder would be hard to live without — it keeps a latte from spilling and has room for keys and a phone. But the cup holder was not always such a multi-tasker. The first ones were shallow indentations in the plastic on the inside of the glove box. Accelerate and the drinks went flying. Did a brilliant automotive engineer decide that was a design flaw and fix it? No. It was only when Chrysler received more complaints about the cup holder than about anything else in their cars that they were forced to innovate. Don Clark, a DaimlerChrysler engineer known as the “Cup Holder King,” designed the first of the modern cup holders, debuting in the company’s 1984 minivans. The engineersthought they knew what their customers wanted (more powerful engines, better fuel economy, safety features) but it wasn’t until they listened to customers’ comments that they put in the cup holder. And sales took off.

Today, we’re awash in customer feedback, seemingly everywhere but government. Over the past decade, customer feedback ratings for products and services have shown up everywhere — whether in a review on Yelp, a “like” on Facebook, or a Tweet about the virtues or shortcomings of a product or service. Ratings help draw attention to poor quality and allow companies to address these gaps. Many companies routinely follow up a customer interaction with a satisfaction survey. This data drives improvement efforts aimed at keeping customers happy. Some companies aggressively manage their online reviews, seeking to increase their NPS, or net promoter score. Many people really like to provide feedback — there are 77 million reviews on Yelp to date, according to the company. Imagine the power of that many reviews of government service.

If customer input can influence the automotive industry, and can help consumers make better decisions, what if we turned this energy toward government? After all, the government is run “by the people” and “for the people” — what if citizens gave government real-time guidance on improving services? And could leaders in government ask customers what they want, instead of presuming to know? This paper explores these questions and suggests a way forward.

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If I were a mayor, how would I begin harnessing customer feedback to improve service delivery? I would build a foundation for improving core city operations (trash pickup, pothole fixing, etc.) by using the same three questions Kansas City uses for follow-up surveys to all who contact 311. Upon that foundation I would layer additional outreach on a tactical, ad hoc basis. I would experiment with the growing body of tools for engaging the public in shaping tactical decisions, such as how to allocate capital projects and where to locate bike share hubs.

To get an even deeper insight into the customer experience, I might copy what Somerville, MA has done with its Secret Resident program. Trained volunteers assess the efficiency, courtesy, and ease of use of selected city departments. The volunteers transact typical city services by phone or in person, and then document their customer experience. They rate the agencies, and the 311 call center, and provide assessments that can help improve customer service.

By listening to and leveraging data on constituent calls for service, government can move from a culture of reaction to a proactive culture of listening and learning from the data provided by the public. Engaging the public, and following through on the suggestions they give, can increase not only the quality of government service, but the faith of the public that government can listen and respond.

Every leader in government should commit to getting feedback from customers — it’s the only way to know how to increase their satisfaction with the services. There is no more urgent time to improve the customer experience…(More)

How Africa can benefit from the data revolution

Curated on August 26, 2015October 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Neil Lawrence in The Guardian: “….The modern information infrastructure is about movement of data. From data we derive information and knowledge, and that knowledge can be propagated rapidly across the country and throughout the world. Facebook and Google have both made massive investments in machine learning, the mainstay technology for converting data into knowledge. But the potential for these technologies in Africa is much larger: instead of simply advertising products to people, we can imagine modern distributed health systems, distributed markets, knowledge systems for disease intervention. The modern infrastructure should be data driven and deployed across the mobile network. A single good idea can then be rapidly implemented and distributed via the mobile phone app ecosystems.

The information infrastructure does not require large scale thinking and investment to deliver. In fact, it requires just the reverse. It requires agility and innovation. Larger companies cannot react quickly enough to exploit technological advances. Small companies with a good idea can grow quickly. From IBM to Microsoft, Google and now Facebook. All these companies now agree on one thing: data is where the value lies. Modern internet companies are data-driven from the ground up. Could the same thing happen in Africa’s economies? Can entire countries reformulate their infrastructures to be data-driven from the ground up?

Maybe, or maybe not, but it isn’t necessary to have a grand plan to give it a go. It is already natural to use data and communication to solve real world problems. In Silicon Valley these are the challenges of getting a taxi or reserving a restaurant. In Africa they are often more fundamental. John Quinn has been in Kampala, Uganda at Makerere University for eight years now targeting these challenges. In June this year, John and other researchers from across the region came together for Africa’s first workshop on data science at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology. The objective was to spread knowledge of technologies, ideas and solutions. For the modern information infrastructure to be successful software solutions need to be locally generated. African apps to solve African problems. With this in mind the workshop began with a three day summer school on data science which was then followed by two days of talks on challenges in African data science.

The ideas and solutions presented were cutting edge. The Umati project uses social media to understand the use of ethnic hate speech in Kenya (Sidney Ochieng, iHub, Nairobi). The use of social media for monitoring the evolution and effects of Ebola in west Africa (Nuri Pashwani, IBM Research Africa). The Kudusystem for market making in Ugandan farm produce distribution via SMS messages (Kenneth Bwire, Makerere University, Kampala). Telecommunications data for inferring the source and spread of a typhoid outbreak in Kampala (UN Pulse Lab, Kampala). The Punya system for prototyping and deployment of mobile phone apps to deal with emerging crises or market opportunities (Julius Adebayor, MIT) and large scale systems for collating and sharing data resources Open Data Kenya and UN OCHA Human Data Exchange….(More)”

The Silo Effect – The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers

Curated on August 23, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Gillian Tett: “From award-winning columnist and journalist Gillian Tett comes a brilliant examination of how our tendency to create functional departments—silos—hinders our work…and how some people and organizations can break those silos down to unleash innovation.

One of the characteristics of industrial age enterprises is that they are organized around functional departments. This organizational structure results in both limited information and restricted thinking. The Silo Effect asks these basic questions: why do humans working in modern institutions collectively act in ways that sometimes seem stupid? Why do normally clever people fail to see risks and opportunities that later seem blindingly obvious? Why, as psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, are we sometimes so “blind to our own blindness”?

Gillian Tett, journalist and senior editor for the Financial Times, answers these questions by plumbing her background as an anthropologist and her experience reporting on the financial crisis in 2008. In The Silo Effect, she shares eight different tales of the silo syndrome, spanning Bloomberg’s City Hall in New York, the Bank of England in London, Cleveland Clinic hospital in Ohio, UBS bank in Switzerland, Facebook in San Francisco, Sony in Tokyo, the BlueMountain hedge fund, and the Chicago police. Some of these narratives illustrate how foolishly people can behave when they are mastered by silos. Others, however, show how institutions and individuals can master their silos instead. These are stories of failure and success.

From ideas about how to organize office spaces and lead teams of people with disparate expertise, Tett lays bare the silo effect and explains how people organize themselves, interact with each other, and imagine the world can take hold of an organization and lead from institutional blindness to 20/20 vision. – (More)”

Review Federal Agencies on Yelp…and Maybe Get a Response

Curated on August 21, 2015July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Yelp Official Blog: “We are excited to announce that Yelp has concluded an agreement with the federal government that will allow federal agencies and offices to claim their Yelp pages, read and respond to reviews, and incorporate that feedback into service improvements.

We encourage Yelpers to review any of the thousands of agency field offices, TSA checkpoints, national parks, Social Security Administration offices, landmarks and other places already listed on Yelp if you have good or bad feedback to share about your experiences. Not only is it helpful to others who are looking for information on these services, but you can actually make an impact by sharing your feedback directly with the source.

It’s clear Washington is eager to engage with people directly through social media. Earlier this year a group of 46 lawmakers called for the creation of a “Yelp for Government” in order to boost transparency and accountability, and Representative Ron Kind reiterated this call in a letter to the General Services Administration (GSA). Luckily for them, there’s no need to create a new platform now that government agencies can engage directly on Yelp.

As this agreement is fully implemented in the weeks and months ahead, we’re excited to help the federal government more directly interact with and respond to the needs of citizens and to further empower the millions of Americans who use Yelp every day.

In addition to working with the federal government, last week we announced our our partnership with ProPublica to incorporate health care statistics and consumer opinion survey data onto the Yelp business pages of more than 25,000 medical treatment facilities. We’ve also partnered with local governments in expanding the LIVES open data standard to show restaurant health scores on Yelp….(More)”

Beyond the Common Rule: Ethical Structures for Data Research in Non-Academic Settings

Curated on August 10, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Future of Privacy Forum: “In the wake of last year’s news about the Facebook “emotional contagion” study and subsequent public debate about the role of A/B Testing and ethical concerns around the use of Big Data, FPF Senior Fellow Omer Tene participated in a December symposum on corporate consumer research hosted by Silicon Flatirons. This past month, the Colorado Technology Law Journal published a series of papers that emerged out of the symposium, including “Beyond the Common Rule: Ethical Structures for Data Research in Non-Academic Settings.”

“Beyond the Common Rule,” by Jules Polonetsky, Omer Tene, and Joseph Jerome, continues the Future of Privacy Forum’s effort to build on the notion of consumer subject review boards first advocated by Ryan Calo at FPF’s 2013 Big Data symposium. It explores how researchers, increasingly in corporate settings, are analyzing data and testing theories using often sensitive personal information. Many of these new uses of PII are simply natural extensions of current practices, and are either within the expectations of individuals or the bounds of the FIPPs. Yet many of these projects could involve surprising applications or uses of data, exceeding user expectations, and offering notice and obtaining consent could may not be feasible.

This article expands on ideas and suggestions put forward around the recent discussion draft of the White House Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, which espouses “Privacy Review Boards” as a safety value for noncontextual data uses. It explores how existing institutional review boards within the academy and for human testing research could offer lessons for guiding principles, providing accountability and enhancing consumer trust, and offers suggestions for how companies — and researchers — can pursue both knowledge and data innovation responsibly and ethically….(More)”

Four things policy-makers need to know about social media data and real time analytics.

Curated on August 5, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ella McPherson at LSE’s Impact Blog: “I recently gave evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee. This was based on written evidence co-authored with my colleague, Anne Alexander, and submitted to their ongoing inquiry into social media data and real time analytics. Both Anne and I research the use of social media during contested times; Anne looks at its use by political activists and labour movement organisers in the Arab world, and I look at its use in human rights reporting. In both cases, the need to establish facticity is high, as is the potential for the deliberate or inadvertent falsification of information. Similarly to the case that Carruthers makes about war reporting, we believe that the political-economic, methodological, and ethical issues raised by media dynamics in the context of crisis are bellwethers for the dynamics in more peaceful and mundane contexts.

From our work we have learned four crucial lessons that policy-makers considering this issue should understand:

1. Social media information is vulnerable to a variety of distortions – some typical of all information, and others more specific to the characteristics of social media communications….

2. If social media information is used to establish events, it must be verified; while technology can hasten this process, it is unlikely to ever occur real time due to the subjective, human element of judgment required….

3. Verifying social media information may require identifying its source, which has ethical implications related to informed consent and anonymisation….

4. Another way to think about social media information is as what Hermida calls an ‘awareness system,’ which reduces the need to collect source identities; under this approach, researchers look at volume rather than veracity to recognise information of interest… (More)“

How We’re Changing the Way We Respond to Petitions

Curated on August 5, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jason Goldman (White House) at Medium: “…In 2011 (years before I arrived at the White House), the team here developed a petitions platform called We the People. It provided a clear and easy way for the American people to petition their government — along with a threshold for action. Namely — once a petition gains 100,000 signatures.

This was a new system for the United States government, announced as a flagship effort in the first U.S. Open Government National Action Plan. Right now it exists only for the White House (Hey, Congress! We have anopen API! Get in touch!) Some other countries, including Germany and theUnited Kingdom, do online petitions, too. In fact, the European Parliamenthas even started its own online petitioning platform.

For the most part, we’ve been pretty good about responding — before today, the Obama Administration had responded to 255 petitions that had collectively gathered more than 11 million signatures. That’s more than 91 percent of the petitions that have met our threshold requiring a response. Some responses have taken a little longer than others. But now, I’m happy to say, we have caught up.

Today, the White House is responding to every petition in our We the Peoplebacklog — 20 in all.

This means that nearly 2.5 million people who had petitioned us to take action on something heard back today. And it’s our goal to make that response the start of the conversation, not the final page. The White House is made up of offices that research and analyze the kinds of policy issues raised by these petitions, and leaders from those offices will be taking questions today, and in the weeks to come, from petition signers, on topics such as vaccination policy, community policing, and other petition subjects.

Take a look at more We the People stats here.

We’ll start the conversation on Twitter. Follow @WeThePeople, and join the conversation using hashtag #WeThePeople. (I’ll be personally taking your questions on @Goldman44 about how we’re changing the platform specifically at 3:30 p.m. Eastern.)

We the People, Moving Forward

We’re going to be changing a few things about We the People.

First, from now on, if a petition meets the signature goal within a designated period of time, we will aim to respond to it — with an update or policy statement — within 60 days wherever possible. You can read about the details of our policy in the We the People Terms of Participation.
Second, other outside petitions platforms are starting to tap into the We the People platform. We’re excited to announce today that Change.org is choosing to integrate with the We the People platform, meaning the future signatures of its 100 million users will count toward the threshold for getting an official response from the Administration. We’re also opening up the code behind petitions.whitehouse.gov on Drupal.org and GitHub, which empowers other governments and outside organizations to create their own versions of this platform to engage their own citizens and constituencies.
Third, and most importantly, the process of hearing from us about your petition is going to look a little different. We’ve assembled a team of people responsible for taking your questions and requests and bringing them to the right people — whether within the White House or in an agency within the Administration — who may be in a position to say something about your request….(More)