18,552 research outputs found
Joint Topic-Semantic-aware Social Recommendation for Online Voting
Online voting is an emerging feature in social networks, in which users can
express their attitudes toward various issues and show their unique interest.
Online voting imposes new challenges on recommendation, because the propagation
of votings heavily depends on the structure of social networks as well as the
content of votings. In this paper, we investigate how to utilize these two
factors in a comprehensive manner when doing voting recommendation. First, due
to the fact that existing text mining methods such as topic model and semantic
model cannot well process the content of votings that is typically short and
ambiguous, we propose a novel Topic-Enhanced Word Embedding (TEWE) method to
learn word and document representation by jointly considering their topics and
semantics. Then we propose our Joint Topic-Semantic-aware social Matrix
Factorization (JTS-MF) model for voting recommendation. JTS-MF model calculates
similarity among users and votings by combining their TEWE representation and
structural information of social networks, and preserves this
topic-semantic-social similarity during matrix factorization. To evaluate the
performance of TEWE representation and JTS-MF model, we conduct extensive
experiments on real online voting dataset. The results prove the efficacy of
our approach against several state-of-the-art baselines.Comment: The 26th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge
Management (CIKM 2017
Polling bias and undecided voter allocations: US Presidential elections, 2004 - 2016
Accounting for undecided and uncertain voters is a challenging issue for
predicting election results from public opinion polls. Undecided voters typify
the uncertainty of swing voters in polls but are often ignored or allocated to
each candidate in a simple, deterministic manner. Historically this may have
been adequate because the undecided were comparatively small enough to assume
that they do not affect the relative proportions of the decided voters.
However, in the presence of high numbers of undecided voters, these static
rules may in fact bias election predictions from election poll authors and
meta-poll analysts. In this paper, we examine the effect of undecided voters in
the 2016 US presidential election to the previous three presidential elections.
We show there were a relatively high number of undecided voters over the
campaign and on election day, and that the allocation of undecided voters in
this election was not consistent with two-party proportional (or even)
allocations. We find evidence that static allocation regimes are inadequate for
election prediction models and that probabilistic allocations may be superior.
We also estimate the bias attributable to polling agencies, often referred to
as "house effects".Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures, 6 table
The Effect of Social Media on Civic Engagement
“The most serious danger Americans now face, greater than terrorism, is that our country’s future may not end up in the hands of a citizenry capable of sustaining the liberty that has been America’s most precious legacy.” (Damon, 2011) According to many, the younger generation of today is seen as politically unmotivated, uneducated, and uninterested. Declining levels of civic engagement have incited panic and have caused people to question the strength of American democracy. “If trends continue, young Americans will grow up without an understanding of the benefits, privileges, and duties of citizens in a free society, and without acquiring the habits of character needed to live responsibly in one.” (Damon, 2011) The conclusion drawn by many is that the younger generation’s lack of participation is a direct result of their lack of interest, respect, or any semblance of appreciation for politics and civic engagement more broadly. (Coley, 2012) If this is true, it certainly is a cause for panic, but are young people today really isolated and removed from the world of politics? Do they not feel a need to give back or participate in their community? This paper proposes that the question is not one of waning motivation or interest, but instead a matter of changing forums for action. Is it that the millennial generation has become less civically engaged or is it that forms of civic engagement have shifted in such a way that interests and motivations are not rewarded with the same recognition? Civic engagement is defined here as “individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern.” (APA, 2012) To understand the supposed lack of interest among the young, millennial generation, attention must be paid to the changing nature and environment in which civic engagement is occurring. The supposed terror that will ensue when the country is left in the hands of the millennials must be understood not as a consequence of disinterest or lack of involvement, but instead as a consequence of a changing world in which civic engagement has been relegated to the cyber realm through social media and the internet. The goal of this paper is to shift the discussion of civic engagement away from focusing solely on an individual’s intention or motivation for volunteering, and instead to focus on the resulting action or lack there-of
Co-operative Entrepreneurship : Co-operate for growth
Published with the support of the Scottish Government and the Economic & Social Research CouncilPublisher PD
Beyond "position" and "valence". A unified framework for the analysis of political issues
Starting from a review of models of positional and valence issues, the paper – by tapping into the original definition of valence issue – introduces a classification of issues based on their level of overall, dychotomic agreement. This allows the placement of both positional and valence issues on a same continuum. A second dimension is then introduced, which identifies how much specific issues are over- or undersupported within a specific party. A visual classification of issues based on these two dimensions (the AP diagram) is then introduced, highlighting risks and opportunities for a party in campaigning on specific issues. Specific indicators (namely, issue yield) and hypotheses derived from the AP model are tested on survey data from the EU Profiler project, which collected issue profiles of Internet users from the 27 EU Countries before the EP 2009 Elections. The results show that the suggested dimensions and indicators identify a wide cross-country and cross-issue variance. Also, indicators generated by the AP model are powerful predictors of issue saliency, even subsuming traditional Downsean indicators.political issues; valence; position; party competition; European elections
Does the factor theory of satisfaction explain political voting behaviour?
Purpose – The validity of the three factor theory of satisfaction in explaining consumer decision making for products and services is well established. This paper explains voter perceptions and voting behaviour in the 2010 UK General Election on the basis of this theory, by evaluating the differential impact of government performance on key political issues defined as hierarchical voter satisfaction factor types.
Design/methodology/approach – British Election Survey (2010) data is used to test the relative influence of hierarchical voter satisfaction factor types in predicting: (1) the perceived overall performance of the former Labour government; (2) actual voting behaviour. Sequential and multinomial logistic regression models are used in (1) and (2), respectively.
Findings – ‘Basic’ factors explain more of the variance in perceived overall government performance and voting behaviour than ‘performance’ factors. There are significant positive main and interaction effects on Conservative and Liberal Democrat party votes from Labour’s under performance on the ‘basic’ factors. The results have important implications for political marketing and voting behaviour research.
Originality/value – The study establishes the relevance of the three factor theory of satisfaction within a political marketing context. It demonstrates that, controlling for party loyalty, perceived government performance on the hierarchical voter satisfaction factors explains voter perceptions and voting behaviour to a significant degree. In particular, it highlights the criticality for voting behaviour of both the direct and indirect impacts of ‘basic’ factor under performance.
Keywords - political marketing, three factor theory, voting behaviour</p
- …