Determining citizens’ opinions about stories in the news media: analysing Google, Facebook and Twitter

We describe a method whereby a governmental policy maker can discover citizens’ reaction to news stories. This is particularly relevant in the political world, where governments’ policy statements are reported by the news media and discussed by citizens. The work here addresses two main questions: whereabouts are citizens discussing a news story, and what are they saying? Our strategy to answer the first question is to find news articles pertaining to the policy statements, then perform internet searches for references to the news articles’ headlines and URLs. We have created a software tool that schedules repeating Google searches for the news articles and collects the results in a database, enabling the user to aggregate and analyse them to produce ranked tables of sites that reference the news articles. Using data mining techniques we can analyse data so that resultant ranking reflects an overall aggregate score, taking into account multiple datasets, and this shows the most relevant places on the internet where the story is discussed. To answer the second question, we introduce the WeGov toolbox as a tool for analysing citizens’ comments and behaviour pertaining to news stories. We first use the tool for identifying social network discussions, using different strategies for Facebook and Twitter. We apply different analysis components to analyse the data to distil the essence of the social network users’ comments, to determine influential users and identify important comments

Influence of social networks on communication and culture

Má bakalářská práce je zaměřena na problematiku sociálních sítí a jejich vliv na dnešní společnost. Zabývá se jejich historií od prvotních pokusů až po nejnovější globální sociání sítě. Poté práce vysvětluje základní myšlenku vedoucí k vytvoření sociálních sítí i jejich charakteristické znaky. Dále nastiňuje problémy související se snadnou dostupností a nadměrným využíváním sociálních sítí, které následně ovlivňuje lidskou společnost. Práce se věnuje vlivu sociálních sítí na jazyk, mezilidskou komunikaci a kulturní adaptaci.My bachelor thesis is focused on issues with social networking services and their influence on modern society. It addresses their history from the very first attempts to create a social networking service to the modern global ones. Later the thesis provides an explanation of the creation of a social networking service and its characteristic traits. Furthermore it outlines problems connected with the availability and overuse of social networking services that are subsequently influencing the human society. The thesis also analyzes the influence of social networks on language, interpersonal communication and cultural adaptation.

A pedagogy of abundance

The digitisation of content combined with a global network for delivery and an open system for sharing has seen radical changes in many industries. The economic model which has underpinned many content based industries has been based on an assumption of scarcity. With a digital, open, networked approach we are witnessing a shift to abundance of content, and subsequently new economic models are being developed which have this as an assumption. In this article the role of scarcity in developing higher education practice and pedagogy is explored. The shift to abundant content has as profound implications for education as it has for content industries. The possible contenders for a ‘pedagogy of abundance’ are examined and the necessary requirements for such a pedagogy outlined

Interactivity, the global conversation and World Service research: Digital China

This paper examines the relationship between a broadcaster’s research methods and aspects of the environment in which it operates, specifically its accountability to its funders and the growth of interactivity by its users. It is concerned with (1) how the BBC World Service’s funding by the UK government’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) means that it has to account for its activities to some extent in terms of the global conversation which it fosters; and (2) how the recent growth of interactive and social media enhances possibilities for worldwide engagement and conversation, but also increases the complexities of measurement. This is because users are dispersed across the globe (they are no longer confined to a geographical area of radio reception) and they are interactive: instead of merely listening or viewing, they talk back to the BBC, and they talk with one another. New tools and techniques are needed to measure these new flows and forms of interaction (and they also beg new professional and organisational practices). In a case study of the BBC’s Chinese service, the paper explores what the BBC knows of its audience or users; and, in a content analysis of online forums, it explores some of the issues and possibilities that arise in researching online interaction, the sort of research data and analysis that might be seen as necessary in the context of organisational accountability and the emerging interactive media environment

Challenges for fruitful participation of smallholders in large-scale water resource management organisations: Selected case studies in South Africa

In South Africa, the 1998 National Water Act has created two user-driven water resource management organisations, namely the Water User Association at the local level and the Catchment Management Agency at a larger catchment level. The paper investigates some challenges concerning the participation of smallholders in water resource management organisations involving also large-scale users. Specifically, the paper analyses the possible discrepancies between the needs of smallholders with regard to water and the functions of these organisations. A simple typology of needs concerning water is presented and used to classify the main problems faced by smallholders in selected case studies. In some of the cases studied, smallholders need above all funds for investment in waterworks and their operation. They are not directly affected by water resource management issue, a lack of overlap between their needs and the functions of a water resource management organisation might lead to their unsustainable presence within the organisation. In such cases, one alternative is to achieve cross-subsidization. The National Water Act calls for it, without providing specific requirement. The proposed creation of small-scale user forums in the Olifants Water Management area can be described as cross-subsidization. It might improve the internal organisation among smallholders and give them a voice. Some funds will be dedicated to forumsÂ’ activities, but they are not entrenched as part of the core functions of the Catchment Management Agency. This analysis shows the importance of undertaking an assessment of smallholder water related needs to orientate the public participation process.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

A HCI principles based framework to assess the user perception of web based Virtual Research Environments. Special issue on Capacity building for post disaster infrastructure development and management

Due to various challenges and opportunities such as globalisation of research agenda and advancements in information and communication technologies, research collaborations (both international and national) have become popular during the last decade more than ever before. Within this context, the concept of Virtual Research environments(VRE) is an emerging concept looking at addressing the complex challenges associated with conducting collaborative research. Even though concept of VRE is at its infancy, it is important to assess user perception about those, both to establish its success of uptake and future development strategies. However, to date, there is no formal method established to evaluate VREs .This paper reports a strategy adopted within an international collaborative research project (EURASIA) to evaluate its custom built VRE, VEBER, using the well known Computer Human Interaction principles

Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse

The goal of argumentation mining, an evolving research field in computational linguistics, is to design methods capable of analyzing people's argumentation. In this article, we go beyond the state of the art in several ways. (i) We deal with actual Web data and take up the challenges given by the variety of registers, multiple domains, and unrestricted noisy user-generated Web discourse. (ii) We bridge the gap between normative argumentation theories and argumentation phenomena encountered in actual data by adapting an argumentation model tested in an extensive annotation study. (iii) We create a new gold standard corpus (90k tokens in 340 documents) and experiment with several machine learning methods to identify argument components. We offer the data, source codes, and annotation guidelines to the community under free licenses. Our findings show that argumentation mining in user-generated Web discourse is a feasible but challenging task.Comment: Cite as: Habernal, I. & Gurevych, I. (2017). Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse. Computational Linguistics 43(1), pp. 125-17