Negative emotions boost users activity at BBC Forum

We present an empirical study of user activity in online BBC discussion forums, measured by the number of posts written by individual debaters and the average sentiment of these posts. Nearly 2.5 million posts from over 18 thousand users were investigated. Scale free distributions were observed for activity in individual discussion threads as well as for overall activity. The number of unique users in a thread normalized by the thread length decays with thread length, suggesting that thread life is sustained by mutual discussions rather than by independent comments. Automatic sentiment analysis shows that most posts contain negative emotions and the most active users in individual threads express predominantly negative sentiments. It follows that the average emotion of longer threads is more negative and that threads can be sustained by negative comments. An agent based computer simulation model has been used to reproduce several essential characteristics of the analyzed system. The model stresses the role of discussions between users, especially emotionally laden quarrels between supporters of opposite opinions, and represents many observed statistics of the forum.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figure

Participatory methods, guidelines and good practice guidance to be applied throughout the project to enhance problem definition, co-learning, synthesis and dissemination

Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

From the old path of shipbuilding onto the new path of offshore wind energy? The case of northern Germany

Wind energy-related employment has been surging recently in Germany: it rose from 9,200 in 1997 to 90,000 in 2007 and is estimated to be 112,000 in 2020. The industry particularly emerged in coastal, northern Germany. Recently big hopes are particularly set on the offshore wind energy industry. Two recently discussed evolutionary concepts explain the emergence of new industries, such as wind energy, in space in different ways: the windows of locational opportunity concept stresses the locational freedom in the earliest stages of industrial development, whereas path creation emphasises the role of existing industrial development paths, such as shipbuilding, from which new paths, such as wind energy, emerge. The paper aims at analysing whether the new path of offshore wind energy emerged out of existing paths, mainly shipbuilding, in the five states of coastal Germany. It concludes that shipbuilding only indirectly affected the emergence of the new development path of offshore the wind energy industry in northern Germany.

The legal framework to address “fake news”: possible policy actions at the EU level. CEPS Research Report, 2018

This paper argues that the current policy initiatives adopted by the European Commission are meaningful, but still incomplete. The policy response to online disinformation should ideally rely on: (i) the promotion of responsible behaviour in conveying information to end users; (ii) the enactment of a proactive media policy aimed at promoting pluralism and improving the exposure of diverse content to end users; and (iii) the empowerment of end users through media literacy initiatives, and supports to user behaviour. This document was prepared by Policy Department A at the request of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection