Hybrid 2018 campaigning: the social media habits of Italian political leaders and parties

The electoral communication flows produced by leaders, parties, and the main candidates are the result of hybrid media logics and this is due to the environment in which they develop, and to the communicative strategies used. These strategies are generated by the intersection of traditional media logics (TV, radio, press) with digital media logics (Internet). This article investigates the social media communication habits of the main Italian leaders and political parties on Twitter and Facebook. To understand how the hybrid campaign developed in the Italian con- text, specific indicators were identified to operationalize social media habits related to: (a) communicative strategy, based on the productivity of the account (broadcast) and on its degree of interactivity (conversational), (b) skillfulness, regarding the capability to use different features of the social media platform; and (c) engage- ment, related to the capacity of the account to involve the audience. Results show that a more skillful use of the platforms, combined with a conversational communication strategy, produce more engaging messages regard- less the specific political actor (leader or party). Finally, the outcomes show a significant strengthening of hybrid media campaigning during the last Italian general elections on 4 March 2018

Analysis of the Structure of Social Networks for Information Diffusion

The vast proliferation of Online Social Networks (OSN) is generating many new ways to interact and create social relationships with others. In OSN, information spreads among users following existing social relationships. This spread is influenced by the local properties and structures of the social relationships at individual level. Being able to understand these properties can be fundamental for the design of new communication systems able to predict the creation and sharing of content based on social properties of the users. While substantial results have been obtained in anthropology literature describing the properties of human social networks, a clear understanding of the properties of social networks built using OSN is still to be achieved. In this thesis, the structure of Ego networks formed online is compared with the properties of offline social relationships showing interesting similarities. These properties are exploited to provide a meaningful way to study the mechanisms controlling the formation of information diffusion chains in social networks (typically referred to as information cascades). Trough the analysis of synthetically generated diffusion cascades executed in a large Facebook communication datasets, is showed that the knowledge of tie strength of the social links is fundamental to infer which nodes will give rise to large information cascades and which links will be more used in the information diffusion process. We analysed the trade off between information spread and trustworthiness of information. Specifically, we have investigated the spread of information when only links of a certain trust value are used. Assuming, based on results from sociology, that trust can be quantised, we show that too strict limits on the minimum trust between users limit significantly information spread. In the thesis we investigate the effect of different strategies to significantly increase spread of information by minimally relaxing constraints on the minimum allowed trust level

Polarization and acculturation in US Election 2016 outcomes – Can twitter analytics predict changes in voting preferences

Elections are among the most critical events in a national calendar. During elections, candidates increasingly use social media platforms to engage voters. Using the 2016 US presidential election as a case study, we looked at the use of Twitter by political campaigns and examined how the drivers of voter behaviour were reflected in Twitter. Social media analytics have been used to derive insights related to theoretical frameworks within political science. Using social media analytics, we investigated whether the nature of social media discussions have an impact on voting behaviour during an election, through acculturation of ideologies and polarization of voter preferences. Our findings indicate that discussions on Twitter could have polarized users significantly. Reasons behind such polarization were explored using Newman and Sheth's model of voter's choice behaviour. Geographical analysis of tweets, users, and campaigns suggests acculturation of ideologies among voting groups. Finally, network analysis among voters indicates that polarization may have occurred due to differences between the respective online campaigns. This study thus provides important and highly relevant insights into voter behaviour for the future management and governance of successful political campaigns.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Information and Communication Technolog

Identifying the influential spreaders in multilayer interactions of online social networks

Online social networks (OSNs) portray a multi-layer of interactions through which users become a friend, information is propagated, ideas are shared, and interaction is constructed within an OSN. Identifying the most influential spreaders in a network is a significant step towards improving the use of existing resources to speed up the spread of information for application such as viral marketing or hindering the spread of information for application like virus blocking and rumor restraint. Users communications facilitated by OSNs could confront the temporal and spatial limitations of traditional communications in an exceptional way, thereby presenting new layers of social interactions, which coincides and collaborates with current interaction layers to redefine the multiplex OSN. In this paper, the effects of different topological network structure on influential spreaders identification are investigated. The results analysis concluded that improving the accuracy of influential spreaders identification in OSNs is not only by improving identification algorithms but also by developing a network topology that represents the information diffusion well. Moreover, in this paper a topological representation for an OSN is proposed which takes into accounts both multilayers interactions as well as overlaying links as weight. The measurement results are found to be more reliable when the identification algorithms are applied to proposed topological representation compared when these algorithms are applied to single layer representations

Blogging in Publishing: Best Practices for Establishing and Marketing Brands

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to explore the world of blogging and how it can be used to market and establish a publisher’s brand to the specific audience of current and potential authors and readers. While blogging has been a frequent topic in publishing circles, it has only recently emerged as a crucial marketing strategy that companies utilize to promote, strengthen, and progress their brands in various fields. All through this thesis, I will discuss the issues related to any social media advertising agent, analyze how communities are formed online and the advantage of doing so, the many ways blogging is used by publishers, and the best practices to ensure their blogs are not only sustainable but safe and successful in improving their brand and reputation