19,624 research outputs found
Analyzing Large-Scale Public Campaigns on Twitter
Social media has become an important instrument for running various types of public campaigns and mobilizing people. Yet, the dynamics of public campaigns on social networking platforms still remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we present an in-depth analysis of over one hundred large-scale campaigns on social media platforms covering more than 6 years. In particular, we focus on campaigns related to climate change on Twitter, which promote online activism to encourage, educate, and motivate people to react to the various issues raised by climate change. We propose a generic framework based on a crowdsourcing to identify both the type of a given campaign as well as the various actions undertaken throughout its lifespan: official meetings, physical actions, calls for action, publications on climate related research, etc. We study whether the type of a campaign is correlated to the actions undertaken and how these actions influence the flow of the campaign. Leveraging more than one hundred different campaigns, we build a model capable of accurately predicting the presence of individual actions in tweets. Finally, we explore the influence of active users on the overall campaign flow
Using Twitter to Understand Public Interest in Climate Change: The case of Qatar
Climate change has received an extensive attention from public opinion in the
last couple of years, after being considered for decades as an exclusive
scientific debate. Governments and world-wide organizations such as the United
Nations are working more than ever on raising and maintaining public awareness
toward this global issue. In the present study, we examine and analyze Climate
Change conversations in Qatar's Twittersphere, and sense public awareness
towards this global and shared problem in general, and its various related
topics in particular. Such topics include but are not limited to politics,
economy, disasters, energy and sandstorms. To address this concern, we collect
and analyze a large dataset of 109 million tweets posted by 98K distinct users
living in Qatar -- one of the largest emitters of CO2 worldwide. We use a
taxonomy of climate change topics created as part of the United Nations Pulse
project to capture the climate change discourse in more than 36K tweets. We
also examine which topics people refer to when they discuss climate change, and
perform different analysis to understand the temporal dynamics of public
interest toward these topics.Comment: Will appear in the proceedings of the International Workshop on
Social Media for Environment and Ecological Monitoring (SWEEM'16
Analyzing the Digital Traces of Political Manipulation: The 2016 Russian Interference Twitter Campaign
Until recently, social media was seen to promote democratic discourse on
social and political issues. However, this powerful communication platform has
come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions
in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. A case in point is the ongoing U.S.
Congress' investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election
campaign, with Russia accused of using trolls (malicious accounts created to
manipulate) and bots to spread misinformation and politically biased
information. In this study, we explore the effects of this manipulation
campaign, taking a closer look at users who re-shared the posts produced on
Twitter by the Russian troll accounts publicly disclosed by U.S. Congress
investigation. We collected a dataset with over 43 million election-related
posts shared on Twitter between September 16 and October 21, 2016, by about 5.7
million distinct users. This dataset included accounts associated with the
identified Russian trolls. We use label propagation to infer the ideology of
all users based on the news sources they shared. This method enables us to
classify a large number of users as liberal or conservative with precision and
recall above 90%. Conservatives retweeted Russian trolls about 31 times more
often than liberals and produced 36x more tweets. Additionally, most retweets
of troll content originated from two Southern states: Tennessee and Texas.
Using state-of-the-art bot detection techniques, we estimated that about 4.9%
and 6.2% of liberal and conservative users respectively were bots. Text
analysis on the content shared by trolls reveals that they had a mostly
conservative, pro-Trump agenda. Although an ideologically broad swath of
Twitter users was exposed to Russian Trolls in the period leading up to the
2016 U.S. Presidential election, it was mainly conservatives who helped amplify
their message
The Usage of Personal Data as Content in Integrated Marketing Communications
Personal user data has proven extremely valuable for firms in the digital age. The wealth of data available to firms has provided unprecedented access into the world of the consumer. Companies hoping to capitalize on their user's data have turned to several interesting outlets. This research addresses the repurposing of user data as content in marketing. By analyzing four cases of data presented as marketing communications across two companies, this research provides new insights into the public release of private user data for marketing purposes. Four cases of personal data used in marketing communications were chosen specifically for their time proximity, characteristics of the sending firms, and their disparate outcomes. These instances of marketing communications, two by Spotify and two by Netflix, were released during November and December of 2017 and each resulted in a diverse range of public opinion. An analysis of these cases was conducted using the comprehensive framework of integrated marketing communications (Tafesse & Kitchen, 2017). There is a significant difference in the perceptual outcomes of integrated marketing communication campaigns which display user data as content. This analysis provides insights into the characteristics of marketing communications and how their outcomes fit into broader marketing strategies. These case studies provide opportunities for marketers to improve their campaigns in line with their desired audience outcome. Patterns of scope, strategy, mode, and outcome do not suggest success or failure in the context of marketing communications, but rather a set of insights marketers should keep in mind when pursuing communication strategies which harness personal user data.No embargoAcademic Major: Marketin
Use of Social Media in Presidential Campaigns: Do Social Media Have an Effect on the Political Behavior of Voters Aged 18-24?
Today, the idea of social media is radically different from the media of a decade ago. While a decade ago the Internet was considered new media, our society now turns to Facebook, Twitter, and blogs as sources of information. In the United States during election cycles, the use of social media by presidential candidates has become a way for many voters to find out about candidates. As a result, presidential candidates have had to adapt their campaign strategies to work with these media in a way that will effectively target these audiences. This study examines whether campaigns that are more “social media savvy” will ultimately garner more votes, specifically from those aged 18-24. By analyzing social media tactics of the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections and surveying voters in this age range, I ultimately found that there was no relationship between social media use and young voter participation or likelihood of voting for Democratic candidates. However, there was a relationship between social media usage and likelihood of voting for Republican candidates: when social media was used, participants were less likely to vote for the Republican candidate than when no social media use was present
Medium as King: Social Media & the Political Campaign
There is a growing need for a greater understanding of the intersection between great content, effective targeting and proper media usage in mediated communication and especially in American politics. As more campaigns move their efforts online in an attempt to reach a rapidly growing digital constituency, more content will continue to be less visible. The major quest for this study will be to challenge the long-standing idea that “content is king” which Bill Gates termed at the inception of the internet. A theoretical background of Marshall McLuhan and Kathleen Hall Jamieson will not only allow us to answer this question, but then will also allow for future researchers to build upon these concepts. This study will aim to demonstrate how the Ted Cruz presidential campaign of 2016, prior to his departure from the race, was an excellent example of the sweet spot in content creation, voter targeting and medium implementation
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