Presentation about the Voter Ecology Project (www.voterecology.com) at the ECREA Communication and Democracy Section annual conference, 11-12 Oct. 2013, Munich, Germany.
"How Social Media Monitoring Can Help Corporate Communication" by Nadine Jako...UNECE Statistics
This is the presentation by Nadine Jakobs (Statistics Germany) made at the Work Session on the Communication of Statistics 2011 (organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe).
You can download all papers and presentations from the work session at http://live.unece.org/stats/documents/2011.06.dissemination.html
These slides provide the basic talking points for a series of talks I did in Paris, Rome and Berlin from the 11th through the 13th of July 2017. The talk was based on the Quello Center project on 'The Part Played by Search in Shaping Public Opinion', which was supported by a grant from Google.
El Estudio Data Journalism in 2017 aborda cómo los periodistas usan los datos para contar historias.
El análisis ofrece una visión general del estado del periodismo de datos en 2017 y destaca los retos clave para que el campo avance.
Algunas conclusiones:
- El 42% de los periodistas emplean los datos para contar historias de manera regular (dos veces o más por semana).
- El 51% de los medios de comunicación en Estados Unidos y Europa tienen en las redacciones al menos un periodista especializadp a los datos (periodista de datos). Este porcentaje se eleva al 60% para los medios digitales.
- El 33% de los periodistas usan datos para historias políticas, seguidos por 28% para finanzas y economía y 25% por historias enmarcadas en el periodismo de investigación.
Informe de Google Labs y PolizyViz (ENG) para averiguar cómo utilizan los periodistas los datos a la hora de redactar las informaciones.
Es el resultado de realizar 56 entrevistas en profundidad a responsables, expertos en visualización de datos, periodistas de datos y vídeoperiodistas de EEUU, Alemania, Francia y Gran Bretaña. Además, se hizo una encuesta cuantitativa a más de 900 periodistas y editores.
Página web: https://newslab.withgoogle.com/assets/docs/data-journalism-in-2017.pdf
With the rise of new media and social media, a new era of big data has emerged, which has brought about various methodological and theoretical challenges for conducting social research. With over a billion daily active users, Facebook is widely recognized as the leading social media platform in the world. Beyond the use of Facebook to connect people from around the world, Facebook affords various opportunities for academics to conduct research. In this presentation, we will discuss our approach to integrate Facebook data as part of an online survey to study people’s privacy concerns, with a particular focus on methodological challenges associated with sampling and recruiting participants on Facebook.
Sampling: Considering, there is no easy searchable directory of Facebook Groups or Pages, how do researchers identify and sample Facebook Groups or Pages? Problematically, it is difficult to systematically sample across Facebook to get a “representative” sample of Facebook users. Facebook Group Directory, algorithmically-filtered search, and custom-curated directories can be used to sample; however, each approach introduces biases and challenges.
Recruitment: After the selection of the Group/Page of study, how can researchers invite people to participate in the study? Facebook’s Terms of Service does not allow contacting users directly unless you have conducted “business” with them. We outline the various options for recruitment, including buying an ad, posting directly to the group/page, and contacting the moderator.
Ethics: As more Canadians are joining and contributing to Facebook, their automatically recorded data are rapidly becoming available to third parties to mine for both commercial and academic purposes. Ethical questions need to be considered throughout the entire research process. This is particularly true of social media research, which presents unique ethical and personal considerations. In this part of the presentation, we will outline the Social API Terms of Service online guide created by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University that Internet researchers can use to learn what they can or cannot do with social media collected from sites like Facebook.
The presentation will conclude with the discussion of our plans to develop a unique Facebook app that will allow any Facebook user to review their publicly available social media data and participate in our survey on Social Media Privacy Concerns.
In order to explore public attitudes towards the use of data from online services (e.g. social media) or digital devices (e.g. mobile phone GPS), we are running a Twitter based campaign (#AnalyzeMyData) in which we reminded people of instances of data usage that have been reported in news stories and asked them to rate if they considered these data uses to be OK. In order to produce momentum of public participation we designed the experiment as a sustained campaign in which a different news item is presented each day over a period of multiple weeks. Each Tweet includes a link to a mini-survey which asks participants to respond, 'yes', 'no' or 'depends'. To further motivate continued participation as the campaign progresses, we provide a running update on our website of the response statistics to the items that were previously Tweeted. The types of data usage included in the campaign range from academic studies of social media use, to data collection for product development, marketing and government studies. Our hope is that this campaign/experiment will 1) help to raise awareness of the various ways in which personal data, acquired through online services of digital devices, is currently being used, and 2) provide a large dataset of case-studies with an associated baseline of public acceptance/rejection that can be used for future research ethics guidelines and review training.
"How Social Media Monitoring Can Help Corporate Communication" by Nadine Jako...UNECE Statistics
This is the presentation by Nadine Jakobs (Statistics Germany) made at the Work Session on the Communication of Statistics 2011 (organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe).
You can download all papers and presentations from the work session at http://live.unece.org/stats/documents/2011.06.dissemination.html
These slides provide the basic talking points for a series of talks I did in Paris, Rome and Berlin from the 11th through the 13th of July 2017. The talk was based on the Quello Center project on 'The Part Played by Search in Shaping Public Opinion', which was supported by a grant from Google.
El Estudio Data Journalism in 2017 aborda cómo los periodistas usan los datos para contar historias.
El análisis ofrece una visión general del estado del periodismo de datos en 2017 y destaca los retos clave para que el campo avance.
Algunas conclusiones:
- El 42% de los periodistas emplean los datos para contar historias de manera regular (dos veces o más por semana).
- El 51% de los medios de comunicación en Estados Unidos y Europa tienen en las redacciones al menos un periodista especializadp a los datos (periodista de datos). Este porcentaje se eleva al 60% para los medios digitales.
- El 33% de los periodistas usan datos para historias políticas, seguidos por 28% para finanzas y economía y 25% por historias enmarcadas en el periodismo de investigación.
Informe de Google Labs y PolizyViz (ENG) para averiguar cómo utilizan los periodistas los datos a la hora de redactar las informaciones.
Es el resultado de realizar 56 entrevistas en profundidad a responsables, expertos en visualización de datos, periodistas de datos y vídeoperiodistas de EEUU, Alemania, Francia y Gran Bretaña. Además, se hizo una encuesta cuantitativa a más de 900 periodistas y editores.
Página web: https://newslab.withgoogle.com/assets/docs/data-journalism-in-2017.pdf
With the rise of new media and social media, a new era of big data has emerged, which has brought about various methodological and theoretical challenges for conducting social research. With over a billion daily active users, Facebook is widely recognized as the leading social media platform in the world. Beyond the use of Facebook to connect people from around the world, Facebook affords various opportunities for academics to conduct research. In this presentation, we will discuss our approach to integrate Facebook data as part of an online survey to study people’s privacy concerns, with a particular focus on methodological challenges associated with sampling and recruiting participants on Facebook.
Sampling: Considering, there is no easy searchable directory of Facebook Groups or Pages, how do researchers identify and sample Facebook Groups or Pages? Problematically, it is difficult to systematically sample across Facebook to get a “representative” sample of Facebook users. Facebook Group Directory, algorithmically-filtered search, and custom-curated directories can be used to sample; however, each approach introduces biases and challenges.
Recruitment: After the selection of the Group/Page of study, how can researchers invite people to participate in the study? Facebook’s Terms of Service does not allow contacting users directly unless you have conducted “business” with them. We outline the various options for recruitment, including buying an ad, posting directly to the group/page, and contacting the moderator.
Ethics: As more Canadians are joining and contributing to Facebook, their automatically recorded data are rapidly becoming available to third parties to mine for both commercial and academic purposes. Ethical questions need to be considered throughout the entire research process. This is particularly true of social media research, which presents unique ethical and personal considerations. In this part of the presentation, we will outline the Social API Terms of Service online guide created by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University that Internet researchers can use to learn what they can or cannot do with social media collected from sites like Facebook.
The presentation will conclude with the discussion of our plans to develop a unique Facebook app that will allow any Facebook user to review their publicly available social media data and participate in our survey on Social Media Privacy Concerns.
In order to explore public attitudes towards the use of data from online services (e.g. social media) or digital devices (e.g. mobile phone GPS), we are running a Twitter based campaign (#AnalyzeMyData) in which we reminded people of instances of data usage that have been reported in news stories and asked them to rate if they considered these data uses to be OK. In order to produce momentum of public participation we designed the experiment as a sustained campaign in which a different news item is presented each day over a period of multiple weeks. Each Tweet includes a link to a mini-survey which asks participants to respond, 'yes', 'no' or 'depends'. To further motivate continued participation as the campaign progresses, we provide a running update on our website of the response statistics to the items that were previously Tweeted. The types of data usage included in the campaign range from academic studies of social media use, to data collection for product development, marketing and government studies. Our hope is that this campaign/experiment will 1) help to raise awareness of the various ways in which personal data, acquired through online services of digital devices, is currently being used, and 2) provide a large dataset of case-studies with an associated baseline of public acceptance/rejection that can be used for future research ethics guidelines and review training.
Med2028 m media research methods & proposal designMeezan Bank
I have complete copy of this assignment. If you want to have complete draft of this work with no plagiarism, then contact me at my email id: projectwork185@gmail.com
A slide deck discussing the results of my semester-long analysis on the hashtag "fake news". Within the deck is a compilation of statistical charts to offer ideas on the significance of this hashtag, as well as a deep dive into the social dynamics attached to this topic.
Storytelling in the database era: uncertainty and science reportingPaul Bradshaw
Presentation at the Humboldt Foundation's International Journalists' Programmes 2020 about the changes within journalism around using interactivity for telling stories, and communicating uncertainty. The slides also include recommendations around avoiding mistakes.
This project analyses the relations on Twitter between politicians and journalists in the triangle of political communication in a hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013).
This primer - or "Big Data 101" specifically for the international development and humanitarian communities - explains the concepts behind using Big Data for social good in easy-to-understand language. Published by the United Nations' Global Pulse initiative, which is exploring how new, digital data sources and real-time analytics technologies can help policymakers understand human well-being and emerging vulnerabilities in real-time. www.unglobalpulse.org
The Politics of Open Data: Past, Present and FutureJonathan Gray
Slides for presentation on “The Politics of Open Data: Past, Present and Future” at the Data Power conference at the University of Sheffield, 22nd June 2015.
Add a section to the paper you submittedIt is based on the paper (.docxdaniahendric
Add a section to the paper you submittedIt is based on the paper ( 4th Sept 2019) check it out. The new section should address the following:
Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 | V O L . 6 0 | N O . 9 | C O M M U N I C AT I O N S O F T H E A C M 65
W H I L E T H E I N T E R N E T has the potential to give people
ready access to relevant and factual information,
social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have made
filtering and assessing online content increasingly
difficult due to its rapid flow and enormous volume.
In fact, 49% of social media users in the U.S. in 2012
received false breaking news through
social media.8 Likewise, a survey by
Silverman11 suggested in 2015 that
false rumors and misinformation
disseminated further and faster than
ever before due to social media. Polit-
ical analysts continue to discuss mis-
information and fake news in social
media and its effect on the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
Such misinformation challenges
the credibility of the Internet as a
venue for authentic public informa-
tion and debate. In response, over the
past five years, a proliferation of out-
lets has provided fact checking and
debunking of online content. Fact-
checking services, say Kriplean et al.,6
provide “… evaluation of verifiable
claims made in public statements
through investigation of primary and
secondary sources.” An international
Trust and
Distrust
in Online
Fact-Checking
Services
D O I : 1 0 . 1 1 4 5 / 3 1 2 2 8 0 3
Even when checked by fact checkers, facts are
often still open to preexisting bias and doubt.
BY PETTER BAE BRANDTZAEG AND ASBJØRN FØLSTAD
key insights
˽ Though fact-checking services play
an important role countering online
disinformation, little is known about whether
users actually trust or distrust them.
˽ The data we collected from social media
discussions—on Facebook, Twitter, blogs,
forums, and discussion threads in online
newspapers—reflects users’ opinions
about fact-checking services.
˽ To strengthen trust, fact-checking services
should strive to increase transparency
in their processes, as well as in their
organizations, and funding sources.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3122803
66 C O ...
Med2028 m media research methods & proposal designMeezan Bank
I have complete copy of this assignment. If you want to have complete draft of this work with no plagiarism, then contact me at my email id: projectwork185@gmail.com
A slide deck discussing the results of my semester-long analysis on the hashtag "fake news". Within the deck is a compilation of statistical charts to offer ideas on the significance of this hashtag, as well as a deep dive into the social dynamics attached to this topic.
Storytelling in the database era: uncertainty and science reportingPaul Bradshaw
Presentation at the Humboldt Foundation's International Journalists' Programmes 2020 about the changes within journalism around using interactivity for telling stories, and communicating uncertainty. The slides also include recommendations around avoiding mistakes.
This project analyses the relations on Twitter between politicians and journalists in the triangle of political communication in a hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013).
This primer - or "Big Data 101" specifically for the international development and humanitarian communities - explains the concepts behind using Big Data for social good in easy-to-understand language. Published by the United Nations' Global Pulse initiative, which is exploring how new, digital data sources and real-time analytics technologies can help policymakers understand human well-being and emerging vulnerabilities in real-time. www.unglobalpulse.org
The Politics of Open Data: Past, Present and FutureJonathan Gray
Slides for presentation on “The Politics of Open Data: Past, Present and Future” at the Data Power conference at the University of Sheffield, 22nd June 2015.
Add a section to the paper you submittedIt is based on the paper (.docxdaniahendric
Add a section to the paper you submittedIt is based on the paper ( 4th Sept 2019) check it out. The new section should address the following:
Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 | V O L . 6 0 | N O . 9 | C O M M U N I C AT I O N S O F T H E A C M 65
W H I L E T H E I N T E R N E T has the potential to give people
ready access to relevant and factual information,
social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have made
filtering and assessing online content increasingly
difficult due to its rapid flow and enormous volume.
In fact, 49% of social media users in the U.S. in 2012
received false breaking news through
social media.8 Likewise, a survey by
Silverman11 suggested in 2015 that
false rumors and misinformation
disseminated further and faster than
ever before due to social media. Polit-
ical analysts continue to discuss mis-
information and fake news in social
media and its effect on the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
Such misinformation challenges
the credibility of the Internet as a
venue for authentic public informa-
tion and debate. In response, over the
past five years, a proliferation of out-
lets has provided fact checking and
debunking of online content. Fact-
checking services, say Kriplean et al.,6
provide “… evaluation of verifiable
claims made in public statements
through investigation of primary and
secondary sources.” An international
Trust and
Distrust
in Online
Fact-Checking
Services
D O I : 1 0 . 1 1 4 5 / 3 1 2 2 8 0 3
Even when checked by fact checkers, facts are
often still open to preexisting bias and doubt.
BY PETTER BAE BRANDTZAEG AND ASBJØRN FØLSTAD
key insights
˽ Though fact-checking services play
an important role countering online
disinformation, little is known about whether
users actually trust or distrust them.
˽ The data we collected from social media
discussions—on Facebook, Twitter, blogs,
forums, and discussion threads in online
newspapers—reflects users’ opinions
about fact-checking services.
˽ To strengthen trust, fact-checking services
should strive to increase transparency
in their processes, as well as in their
organizations, and funding sources.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3122803
66 C O ...
This is an invited talk I presented at the University of Zurich, speakers' series 2.10.2017. The presentation is based on the following paper: Brandtzaeg, P. B., & Følstad, A. (2017). Trust and distrust in online fact-checking services. Communications of the ACM. 60(9): 65-71
Slides from Susanne Hecker and Muki Haklay talk in an ECSA webinar about the ECSA Characteristics of Citizen science https://zenodo.org/communities/citscicharacteristics/ - covering the methodology and the main features of the document. The webinar is available here https://zenodo.org/record/3859970
‘वोटर्स विल मस्ट प्रीवेल’ (मतदाताओं को जीतना होगा) अभियान द्वारा जारी हेल्पलाइन नंबर, 4 जून को सुबह 7 बजे से दोपहर 12 बजे तक मतगणना प्रक्रिया में कहीं भी किसी भी तरह के उल्लंघन की रिपोर्ट करने के लिए खुला रहेगा।
31052024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
Future Of Fintech In India | Evolution Of Fintech In IndiaTheUnitedIndian
Navigating the Future of Fintech in India: Insights into how AI, blockchain, and digital payments are driving unprecedented growth in India's fintech industry, redefining financial services and accessibility.
हम आग्रह करते हैं कि जो भी सत्ता में आए, वह संविधान का पालन करे, उसकी रक्षा करे और उसे बनाए रखे।" प्रस्ताव में कुल तीन प्रमुख हस्तक्षेप और उनके तंत्र भी प्रस्तुत किए गए। पहला हस्तक्षेप स्वतंत्र मीडिया को प्रोत्साहित करके, वास्तविकता पर आधारित काउंटर नैरेटिव का निर्माण करके और सत्तारूढ़ सरकार द्वारा नियोजित मनोवैज्ञानिक हेरफेर की रणनीति का मुकाबला करके लोगों द्वारा निर्धारित कथा को बनाए रखना और उस पर कार्यकरना था।
role of women and girls in various terror groupssadiakorobi2
Women have three distinct types of involvement: direct involvement in terrorist acts; enabling of others to commit such acts; and facilitating the disengagement of others from violent or extremist groups.
27052024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
In a May 9, 2024 paper, Juri Opitz from the University of Zurich, along with Shira Wein and Nathan Schneider form Georgetown University, discussed the importance of linguistic expertise in natural language processing (NLP) in an era dominated by large language models (LLMs).
The authors explained that while machine translation (MT) previously relied heavily on linguists, the landscape has shifted. “Linguistics is no longer front and center in the way we build NLP systems,” they said. With the emergence of LLMs, which can generate fluent text without the need for specialized modules to handle grammar or semantic coherence, the need for linguistic expertise in NLP is being questioned.
03062024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
Welcome to the new Mizzima Weekly !
Mizzima Media Group is pleased to announce the relaunch of Mizzima Weekly. Mizzima is dedicated to helping our readers and viewers keep up to date on the latest developments in Myanmar and related to Myanmar by offering analysis and insight into the subjects that matter. Our websites and our social media channels provide readers and viewers with up-to-the-minute and up-to-date news, which we don’t necessarily need to replicate in our Mizzima Weekly magazine. But where we see a gap is in providing more analysis, insight and in-depth coverage of Myanmar, that is of particular interest to a range of readers.
ys jagan mohan reddy political career, Biography.pdfVoterMood
Yeduguri Sandinti Jagan Mohan Reddy, often referred to as Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, is an Indian politician who currently serves as the Chief Minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh. He was born on December 21, 1972, in Pulivendula, Andhra Pradesh, to Yeduguri Sandinti Rajasekhara Reddy (popularly known as YSR), a former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, and Y.S. Vijayamma.
01062024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
Mapping the 'Search Agenda' in Elections - ECREA Comms & Democracy 2013 Conference
1. Mapping the „Search Agenda:‟ A
Citizen-Centric Approach to
Political Information Flows in
Elections
Filippo Trevisan
University of Glasgow
ECREA Symposium „(Mis)understanding Political Participation‟
Munich, 12th Oct. 2013
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
2. 2
The Voter Ecology Project:
Project team: Andrew Hoskins, Sarah Oates, Filippo
Trevisan, Dounia Mahlouly.
Exploring search engine use in elections in established
democracies (United Kingdom, United States), challenged
democracies (Italy) and transitional states (Egypt)
Part of the ESRC-funded “Google Data Analytics Social Science
Research” initiative developed during the Google Forum UK
(2010-12)
1. Research framework: A citizen-centric approach
2. Methods and preliminary results: Mapping the „search
agenda‟ with Google Trends and nexus analysis
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
3. Informational Environment in
Elections – The story so far:
Traditional
News Media
Political
Parties/Candidates
Citizens (“Audience”)
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
3
4. A Citizen-Centric Approach: Information
gathering as purposive behaviour
Unexpected searches
Expected searches
Citizen Agenda
(Search Agenda)
News media
Agenda
Campaigns
Agenda
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
4
5. 5
Mapping the „Search Agenda:‟
Unexpected searches are user-driven and do not reflect
the priorities of journalists/editors and
candidates/parties. They could focus on, for example:
- Policy „elephants in the room‟
- Gaffes, gossip and/or scandal
- „Thematic leaps‟
- Generation-specific issues
Q: How can we compare the three agendas?
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
6. 6
Mapping the „Search Agenda:‟
Traditional pol comm scholarship: content analysis of news media and
election manifestos/websites (e.g. Gibson and Ward, 2003;
Gibson, 2013; Lilleker and Jackson, 2011)
But: resource-intensive and potentially distortive: applying old frames
to a new context.
Turn the process upside down: start from citizens/users
1.
Identify moments in which demand for online political information is
at its peak through Google Trends (google.com/trends)
2.
Examine key „search events‟ in detail through nexus analysis (Scollon
and Scollon, 2004) to establish what boosted user-interest in
politics, whether the issue(s) involved was also high on the news
and/or campaign agendas, and map its trajectory across both new
and traditional media.
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
7. 7
And in practice? Searching for leaders in the
2010 UK general election:
120
100
Google Trends score
80
60
David Cameron
Gordon Brown
Nick Clegg
40
20
10
/2
0
10
31
/0
5
/2
0
10
24
/0
5
/2
0
10
17
/0
5
/2
0
10
10
/0
5
/2
0
10
03
/0
5
/2
0
10
26
/0
4
/2
0
10
19
/0
4
/2
0
10
12
/0
4
/2
0
10
05
/0
4
/2
0
10
29
/0
3
/2
0
10
22
/0
3
/2
0
10
15
/0
3
/2
0
/0
3
08
01
/0
3
/2
0
10
0
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
8. pr
29 - 10
-A
pr
30 - 10
-A
p
01 r- 10
-M
a
02 y-10
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03 y-10
-M
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04 y-10
-M
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05 y-10
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06 y-10
-M
a
07 y-10
-M
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08 y-10
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09 y-10
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11 y-10
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13 y-10
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ay
-1
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13/05/2010
12/05/2010
11/05/2010
10/05/2010
09/05/2010
08/05/2010
07/05/2010
06/05/2010
05/05/2010
04/05/2010
03/05/2010
02/05/2010
01/05/2010
30/04/2010
29/04/2010
28/04/2010
27/04/2010
Bigot-gate: Search patterns vs.
news media coverage
40
250
Bigot-gate searches
20
100
50
0
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
8
Bigot-gate popularity on Google.co.uk
120
Bigot-gate searches
100
80
60
Bigot-gate in the British press
200
0
150
All Text
Lead Paragraph
Headline
9. -A
p
29 r-10
-A
p
30 r-10
-A
01 p r- 1
-M 0
a
02 y - 1
-M 0
a
03 y - 1
-M 0
a
04 y - 1
-M 0
a
05 y - 1
-M 0
a
06 y - 1
-M 0
a
07 y - 1
-M 0
a
08 y - 1
-M 0
a
09 y - 1
-M 0
a
10 y - 1
-M 0
a
11 y - 1
-M 0
a
12 y - 1
-M 0
a
13 y - 1
-M 0
ay
-1
0
28
Bigot-gate Popularity
Bigot-gate popularity on the „Search
Agenda‟ and the „News Media Agenda:‟
120
100
80
60
UK Press (All text)
UK Press (Headlines)
40
Google.co.uk
20
0
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
9
10. Google Search score
Thematic Leap? Did voters search
for info about immigration policy?
In the U.S., Mitt Romney‟s “binders full of women” gaffe had
opposite results (i.e. the average search popularity for info about
women‟s rights/gender gap etc. increased following the episode)
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
10
11. 11
In conclusion:
Google Trends enables us to approach the study of information flows in
elections from the point of view of citizens, fundamentally integrating and
possibly overthrowing what we already know on the basis of news coverage and
campaign communication analysis.
Exploring search patterns with Google Trends provides opportunities to review
events that have become „crystallised‟ in academic and media literature from a
different perspective, possibly de-bunking speculative assumptions.
However…
Google Trends only provides a limited amount of information. As such, it is
useful to generate cues and raise new questions, but should only be used in
conjunction with other methods as part of a comprehensive inquiry strategy.
In addition, a useful longitudinal data series is best generated at the end of a
cycle of events (e.g. election campaign). Yet, it can be difficult to map the
media trajectories of events and messages retroactively.
www.voterecology.com www.filippotrevisan.net
Editor's Notes
Traditionally, two driving forces determine informational environment in elections: news media and political parties/candidates. Political communication concentrates on these and their interaction. Citizens/voters are seen as “audience” and cast at the receiving end of informational cycles.This changes with growth of online information and popularity of tools that allow voters to do their own information gathering.While new, interactive role for citizens is acknowledged, what we know still revolves overwhelmingly around information supply side: we know everything of what Obama and Romney tweeted and said, but not enough about whether that’s what people were interested in – did they listen, or instead turn their attention somewhere else?
A more useful way of conceptualising the current informational environment in elections is as a struggle among three competing, but not necessarily conflicting, agendas. These are defined on the basis of the actors that are primarily responsible for choosing the issues that populate them.Key is to understand that in the Internet era citizens/voters are more than passive information receivers. When citizens gather, consume, and interpret information, they do so in accordance to their own priorities and beliefs. Search engines sit right at the centre of this new model. They provide users with tools they trust to sort through virtually limitless information and build their own “elections agenda.”Key question: what lies in the citizen (search) circle that does not intersect with the other two? i.e. unexpected or unaccounted for searches. Also, looking at this from the perspective of campaign managers: what lies in campaigns circle that does not make it onto the other two agendas? (e.g policy flops).Dynamic environment – issues can move across, but we need to understand how and possibly why: map informational trajectories. How to go about it?
Policy elephants in the room: e.g. immigration during 2010 UK election campaign. Salient to voters (second most important issue according to BES), but politicians do not among candidate priorities.Gaffes, gossip, scandal: while of obvious interest to the news media, search can follow different patterns from news media coverage. Do searches for controversial episodes resemble quick bushfires? Or rather spread over a longer period of time?Thematic leaps are connected to gaffes/gossip/scandal: do voters follow up on such episodes to search for policy-related thematic information? This could lead to the inclusion of a policy elephant in the room in the search agenda.Generation-specific issues: search may reflect more closely the priorities of younger generations, which may not align too neatly with the issues covered in traditional mass media as well as election manifestos/campaign messages. Could be of particular relevance in countries where politicians exert a strong influence over media outlets (think Italy).Q: how to compare the three agendas?
The temptation here would be to map both election coverage in news media and using party/candidate websites as proxies for the campaigns agenda. However, one has to ask whether a complete knowledge of news media coverage and campaigns agenda can realistically be achieved, or is in fact necessary. In addition, this brings us back to the beginning: placing excessive emphasis on the traditional ‘supply side’ in analysing the elections informational environment.Instead: start from citizens/users. Identify key moments in which the demand for political information is at its top/users appear to be be particularly interested in political content.A useful tool to assess this is Google Trends. 1. Identify “Search events”; 2. then focus on them by analysing “real world” events (i.e. what might have happened that pushed up political info demand), mass media coverage, politicians/campaigns messages and/or reactions.Nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon, 2004): “the study of the semiotic cycles of people, objects and discourses in and through moments of socio-cultural importance.”But how does it work in practice? Example to help clarify.
A good place to start to find out when demand for online political information is at its peak is by exploring search trends for party leaders.A few interesting points emerge immediately:Election announcement = search watershed: sparks online interest surge (6th April)Televised leader debates clearly connected to search peaks, tendency for search rises to be spurred by TV/mass media events across all countries, although with substantially different modalities (UK: immediate search – complement debate info; US: search peak on following day – replay and reflect on what was said; Italy: TV appearances by leaders push up search rates in initial campaign phase, esp. Berlusconi and Monti, but have substantially less impact as election gets closer)Nick Clegg trend confirms fundamental role of debates to his visibility and that he “won” the debates among search users.However, even more interesting and somewhat odd-looking: search for info about Gordon Brown peaks on 28th April. What happened then that spurred the most significant rise in searches for information about a political leader (except for the day in which GB resigned/DC was appointed as new PM)?
Huge media hype. However, no empirical study on the coverage of this episode.Seemingly a trivial episode, but does it signal something more substantial? Why did people search for information about it? Did it spur any other search waves on related issues?Let’s compare the popularity of bigot-gate on the search agenda to this episode’s level of coverage on British newspapers (NewsBank). Frequencies useful, but to clarify further data can be re-scaled into a popularity index from 0-100.
This is what we obtained combining the two graphs above. This is just a start, but provides some useful cues that will inform further research about the informational trajectory of this episode:Unsurprisingly, the most intense period of search is the same in which bigot-gate constituted headline news. Search peaks first (28th Apr) than headlines (29th Apr.), although this may be due to the exclusion of broadcast content from this preliminary analysis;On 30th April, bigot-gate basically leaves the ‘search agenda’. Sharp decline, while mentions of the episode in all-txt continue to rise (peak on 30th April).Although searches focused on the episode nearly halt on 1st May, further peaks in newspaper coverage: 2nd May, 3rd May (headlines), 6th May (election day), 7th May.Initial impression: as online interest in the episode per se declines very quickly, news media embrace it as integral part of the campaign or indeed commentary on Brown and the Labour Party – move from headlines (news per se) to body text of articles (attribute/commentary). Also, return to headlines following the election is conceivably linked to importance attributed to the episode in analysing election results and hypothesising their causes.But is this the full picture? Possibly even more important to ask whether, past the initial search frenzy, users were prompted to take a thematic leap and search for related policy issues. In particular, did users search for information about immigration policy (a central theme in ‘bigot-gate’)?
Although immigration was high among the priorities of voters (see BES 2012 results), parties and leaders refrained from making it a major campaign theme. Both commentators and scholars claimed that bigot-gate suddenly pushed immigration policy onto the agenda, but did it really?Overall, no substantial increase in searches for immigration issues following gaffe, most of which concentrated on immigration technicalities for Britons leaving the UK (visas, etc.) according to Google Trends associated terms. In addition, Google Trends records suggest that users searched for info on immigration policy more frequently in the week prior to the gaffe than in the one that followed.Results in contrast with the arguments of those who claimed that bigot-gate established immigration as key campaign topic. Instead, they seem to support those claiming that mass media narrative associated this episode with GB dysfunctional personality/leadership and inability to connect with ordinary people.One episode for which we also tried the analysis and that returned opposite results was Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” gaffe during the US presidential debates in October 2012.