Can Synergy in Triple-Helix Relations be Quantified? A Review of the Development of the Triple-Helix Indicator

Triple-Helix arrangements of bi- and trilateral relations can be considered as adaptive eco-systems. During the last decade, we have further developed a Triple-Helix indicator of synergy as reduction of uncertainty in niches that can be shaped among three or more distributions. Reduction of uncertainty can be generated in correlations among distributions of relations, but this (next-order) effect can be counterbalanced by uncertainty generated in the relations. We first explain the indicator, and then review possible results when this indicator is applied to (i) co-author networks of academic, industrial, and governmental authors and (ii) synergies in the distributions of firms over geographical addresses, technological classes, and industrial-size classes for a number of nations. Co-variation is then considered as a measure of relationship. The balance between globalizing and localizing dynamics can be quantified. Too much synergy locally can also be considered as lock-in. Tendencies are different for the globalizing knowledge dynamics versus locally retaining wealth from knowledge in industrial innovations

Net-Activism on Twitter: McDonald’s and Coca Cola @Expo2015

In recent years political participations and political consumerism have highlighted the ethical and responsible side of consumptions practices. Internet at large and social media have increased the likelihood of engaging in political consumerism. According to previous researches, among social networking sites, Twitter is more focused on the sharing of opinions and information, thus is more likely to be used as a mean to debate about political consumerism. The paper presents the results of a qualitative analysis conducted on Twitter posts. The aim was to analyze Italian consumer reactions to the news concerning McDonald’s and Coca-Cola official sponsorship of Expo 2015

Examining the impact of using social networks on political knowledge and political attitude by Iranian university students

Social Network Sites (SNSs) play key role to raise individuals’ awareness in terms of political issues around the world. Young generation particularly university students utilize social networks for political activism and discussion. The present study investigates the effect of social network on political knowledge and attitude of Iranian university students. Mixed- method design was employed to collect quantitative data through a questionnaire followed by an emailed interview with Iranian media experts. The sample size in the study consisted of 382 Iranian students and 12 media experts. The findings of the current study showed that there is generally a direct and positive relation between the level of use of social networks and political knowledge, and attitude. Moreover, the results revealed that using social network sites have a significant positive effect on student’s level of political knowledge and political knowledge mediates the positive effect of social network use by Iranian university students on their political behavior. The results of interview corroborate that easy access to modern information sources has increased political knowledge of the students. The results also implied the necessity of deploying an intelligent filtering rather than indiscriminate blocking of the social network websites

TWITTER AND THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE – A GRAPH ANALYSIS OF GERMAN POLITICIANS

This paper examines the Twitter social graph of German politicians and political parties during a time period not potentially biased by nearby elections. Based on a data set of 1,719 politicians across the entire political spectrum of this important country in the EU, two graphs are constructed, which also reflect relationships within and between parties: the follower graph, consisting of all follower-followee relationships between German politicians, and the “mention graph”, which models direct references of politicians to their colleagues. Our main contributions are as follows: First, we analyse these graphs according to several statistics and graph metrics, characterizing political parties according to their collective participation in Twit-ter. We also investigate the openness for following ideas across political camps, resulting in the dis-covery of three distinct groups of political parties. We also find that membership in political parties itself explains only little of the variation in the formation of ties. There is also evidence that politicians with less activity exhibit a higher degree of openness than users with active engagement in tweets and discussions. This case study on social media adoption in politics leads to interesting insights into po-litical debate in the information society

Twitter and elections: are tweets, predictive, reactive, or a form of buzz?

The popular microblogging social media platform Twitter has been prominently covered in the press for its perceived role in activism, disaster recovery, and elections amongst other things. In the case of elections, Twitter has been used actively by candidates and voters alike in a diverse range of elections around the world including the 2010 UK elections, the 2012 US presidential elections, and the 2013 Italian elections. However, Twitter has often been found to be a poor predictor of electoral success. This article investigates what role tweets play during elections and whether they are more reactive than predictive. Using the specific case of the 2012 US Republican presidential primary elections, this article explores how candidate's Twitter presence affects electoral outcomes and whether the sentiment and frequency of candidate-related tweets is related to campaign success and offline success at the ballot box. This study finds that tweets were more reactive rather than predictive. Additionally, sentiment analysis revealed that tweets were generally neutral towards candidates. An interesting finding of our study is how candidates used Twitter to generate ‘buzz’, political capital that did not translate to success at the ballot box. We specifically explore how Huntsman's daughters used YouTube videos and tweets that were perceived as a ‘backstage’ look into the campaign and ultimately generated high levels of buzz. Though tweets do not seem to be reflective or predictive of an election campaign offline, they are being used for social media campaigns which can and do get covered by traditional media

What's Congress Doing on Twitter?

As Twitter becomes a more common means for officials to communicate with their constituents, it becomes more important that we understand how officials use these communication tools. Using data from 380 members of Congress’ Twitter activity during the winter of 2012, we find that officials frequently use Twitter to advertise their political positions and to provide information but rarely to request political action from their constituents or to recognize the good work of others. We highlight a number of differences in communication frequency between men and women, Senators and Representatives, Republicans and Democrats. We provide groundwork for future research examining the behavior of public officials online and testing the predictive power of officials’ social media behavior

Doing What I Say: Connecting Congressional Social Media Behavior and Congressional Voting

Public officials’ communication has been explored at length in terms of how such their statements are conveyed in the traditional media, but minimal research has been done to examine their communication via social media. This paper explores the kinds of statements U.S. officials are making on Twitter in terms of the actions they are trying to achieve. We then analyze the correlation between these statements, Congressional communication network structures, and voting behavior. Our analysis leverages over 29,000 tweets by members of Congress in conjunction with existing DW-NOMINATE voting behavior data. We find that pro-social and self-promoting statements correlate with Congressional voting records but that position within the Congressional communication network does not correlate with voting behavior.Sponsorship: Social Networks Research Group at IIT, IIT Graduate Colleg

The ideology of media. Measuring the political leaning of Spanish news media through Twitter users’ interactions

The news media have a strong influence on people’s perception of reality. But despite claims to objectivity, media organizations are, in general, politically biased (Patterson & Donsbach, 1996; Gaebler, 2017). The link between news media outlets and political organizations has been a critical question in political science and communication studies. To assess the closeness between the news media and particular political organizations, scholars have used different methods such as content analysis, undertaking surveys or adopting a political economy view. With the advent of social networks, new sources of data are now available to measure the relationship between media organizations and parties. Assuming that users coherently retweet political and news information (Wong, Tan, Sen & Chiang, 2016), and drawing on the retweet overlap network (RON) method (Guerrero-Solé, 2017), this research uses people’s perceived ideology of Spanish political parties (CIS, 2020) to propose a measure of the ideology of news media in Spain. Results show that scores align with the result of previous research on the ideology of the news media (Ceia, 2020). We also find that media outlets are, in general, politically polarized with two groups or clusters of news media being close to the left-wing parties UP and PSOE, and the other to the right-wing and far-right parties Cs, PP, and Vox. This research also underlines the media’s ideological stability over time.Los medios de comunicación tienen una fuerte influencia sobre la percepción de la realidad que tiene la gente. A pesar de su pretensión de objetividad, los medios tienen, en general, un sesgo político (Patterson & Donsbach, 1996; Gaebler, 2017). La relación entre los medios y las organizaciones políticas ha sido una cuestión crucial en los estudios de ciencias políticas y comunicación. Para evaluar la proximidad entre los medios de comunicación y organizaciones políticas concretas, los investigadores han empleado distintos métodos como el análisis de contenido, las encuestas o la adopción de una visión político-económica. Con la llegada de las redes sociales, aparecen nuevas fuentes de datos disponibles para medir la relación entre los medios de comunicación y los partidos políticos. Asumiendo que los usuarios retuitean coherentemente información política y mediática (Wong, Tan, Sen & Chiang, 2016), y haciendo uso del método RON (Retweet Overlap Network) (Guerrero-Solé, 2017), este estudio utiliza la ideología percibida por la población de los partidos políticos españoles (CIS, 2020) para proponer una medida de la ideología de los medios de comunicación en España. Los resultados muestran que las puntuaciones obtenidas siguen la línea de estudios realizados previamente sobre la ideología de los medios (Ceia, 2020). También se ha descubierto que los medios, en general, están polarizados políticamente, con dos grupos de medios más próximos a los partidos de izquierda UP y PSOE, y los otros a los partidos de derecha y ultraderecha Cs, PP y Vox. Esta investigación también remarca la estabilidad ideológica de los medios a lo largo del tiempo

Cloud risk communication on social media: The case of Premera Blue Cross

Abstract Cloud computing has been growing at a fast pace. This growth has been fueled by this technology's inherent benefits such as cost reduction and convenience. However, the increasing amount and variety of data processed on the cloud have raised the number of security breaches. Although cloud providers were responsible for data security in the past, the new threats require that both cloud providers and users coordinate efforts to minimize losses and ensure data recovery. Our study aims to explore how cloud providers and users can leverage social media to mitigate data security breaches through effective risk communication. We analyzed public data collected from Twitter regarding the security breach faced by the Premera Blue Cross web application between January and April 2015. Preliminary results indicate that Premera Blue Cross (cloud provider) acted as an information source for Twitterers seeking relevant and accurate information during this security breach. Future steps for this study are discussed