Introduction to the 2019 International Conference on Social Media & Society

This paper provides an introduction to the Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). The conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers, policy makers, and practitioners from around the world. Now in its 10th year, the 2019 conference is hosted by the Social Media Lab at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. The Proceedings features a total of 26 papers (the acceptance rate is 42%)

Investigating the patterns and prevalence of UK Trade Unionism on Twitter

This paper reports on on-going exploratory research into the prevalence and patterns of social media use by trade unions in the United Kingdom. Social media platforms, like Twitter, are used by unions to organize and mobilize existing and potential members by communicating relevant content, which often engages politicians and the news media. However, there is little empirical research examining how trade unions use social media in practice. This research addresses this gap by employing digital methods to analyze trade union activity on Twitter, namely, exploring key characteristics of Twitter use by UK unions and mapping dynamic networks of associations around labour movement issues. Findings are discussed in the context of collective and connective action. The methodological implications for studying civil society organizations online are also considered

Exploring the efficacy of Facebook groups for collective occupant learning about using their homes

The need for quality learning about how to use a home has been an issue gradually emerging from building performance evaluation (BPE) studies carried out in occupied energy efficient homes (Brown & Cole, 2009; Day & Gunderson, 2014). The BPE gap between the internal environment control as intended by designers and the actual inhabitant practices is associated with unpredicted energy consumption and poor indoor air quality (Balvers et al., 2012). The key inhabitant related causes of the ‘performance gap’ are a discrepancy between user needs and design intentions, lack of user understanding and skills to interact with the available controls and insufficient maintenance. These findings indicate that modifying tacit home use practices, adjusting them to new, more technically advanced contexts, is still not sufficiently addressed by the current learning opportunities offered by the professional actors. This paper explores how self-organised closed Facebook Groups set up independently by the residents of two UK case study urban developments have become supportive environments for such learning

The Wicked Problem of Data Literacy: A Call for Action

Calls for urgent action on data literacy are coming from all sectors of society, including educators, employers, journalists, non-profits, policy makers, scientists, and advocacy groups, but there is no consensus on what data literacy means today, how it should be developed, or who should take the lead. Our research contributes to the debate by reviewing existing conceptions and pedagogies for data literacy, identifying and classifying critical stakeholders, and suggesting a way forward. We used data from multiple sources, including academic, professional, and trade literature, agency publications, and books for non-specialist audiences, as well as websites of data-related organizations and project databases of funding bodies. We used Radical Change Theory to frame the changing context for data literacy development, the Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Saliency to identify groups with potential to influence developments, the Intellectus Model of Intellectual Capital to assess the role of libraries in advancing the data literacy movement, and Wicked Problem theory to analyze the problem and identify strategies for resolution. Definitions of the concept ranged from broad conceptions of data literacy as a life skill with general applicability through context-specific interpretations for particular professions and its positioning as an essential enabler for data-intensive research and data science. Academic, public, and school librarians are already involved in cross-sector initiatives that recognize the lifewide and lifelong data and information needs of students, workers, and citizens, and are well placed to participate in a global movement, building on promising practices in the field to develop a new integrative framework

Penggunaan Instagram Dalam Medan Sosial Seni Rupa Di Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta sebagai salah satu kota besar yang marak dalam kegiatan seni menjadi tempat tinggal banyak seniman sekaligus tempat mereka melakukan aktivitas seninya. Salah satu barometer dari banyaknya seniman yang berdomisili di Yogyakarta adalah banyak Galeri Seni atau Rumah Seni yang menyelenggarakan pameran setiap tahunnya. Dari banyak seniman yang berdomisili di Yogyakarta jika dicari pada Instagram banyak yang mempunyai akun seperti Eko Nugroho (ekonugroho_studio), Djoko Pekik (platarandjokopekik), Putu Sutawijaya (putu_sutawijaya), Ugo Untoro (ugountoro) dan lainnya. Instagram sebagai salah satu media sosial yang semakin masif pada akhirnya menjadi media yang mempunyai kemampuan mediatisasi. Bentuk-bentuk baru media yang ada saat ini tidak menggantikan media massa yang sudah ada sebelumnya seperti surat kabar dan televisi tetapi lebih kepada menambahkan kompleksitas pada keseluruhan lingkungan media. Memahami media berarti melihat bagaimana logika media mengurai dan menciptakan kerangka kerja konseptual untuk memahami bagaimana media, budaya, dan masyarakat berinteraksi satu sama lain, dan bagaimana media membentuk struktur, baik dalam masyarakat pada umumnya maupun dalam konteks lokal sehari-hari, berkomunikasi, bertindak, dan memulai hubungan sosial. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan fenomenologi dan netnografi untuk menemukan esensi dari pengalaman umum atau pengalaman bersama sekelompok orang di Instagram

Using Social Media Data to Analyse Issue Engagement During the 2017 German Federal Election

A fundamental tenet of democracy is that political parties present policy alternatives, such that the public can participate in the decision-making process. Parties, however, strategically control public discussion by emphasising topics that they believe will highlight their strengths in voters' minds. Political strategy has been studied for decades, mostly by manually annotating and analysing party statements, press coverage, or TV ads. Here we build on recent work in the areas of computational social science and eDemocracy, which studied these concepts computationally with social media. We operationalize issue engagement and related political science theories to measure and quantify politicians' communication behavior using more than 366k Tweets posted by over 1,000 prominent German politicians in the 2017 election year. To this end, we first identify issues in posted Tweets by utilising a hashtag-based approach well known in the literature. This method allows several prominent issues featuring in the political debate on Twitter that year to be identified. We show that different political parties engage to a larger or lesser extent with these issues. The findings reveal differing social media strategies by parties located at different sides of the political left-right scale, in terms of which issues they engage with, how confrontational they are and how their strategies evolve in the lead-up to the election. Whereas previous work has analysed the general public's use of Twitter or politicians' communication in terms of cross-party polarisation, this is the first study of political science theories, relating to issue engagement, using politicians' social media data

Hyperpartisanship, Disinformation and Political Conversations on Twitter: The Brazilian Presidential Election of 2018

This paper examines the role of hyperpartisanship and polarization on Twitter during the 2018 Brazilian Presidential Election. Based on a mixed-methods approach, we collected and analyzed a dataset of over 8 million tweets about Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right candidate from the Social Liberty Party. Our results show that there is a strong connection between polarization, hyperpartisanship and disinformation. As the centrality of hyperpartisan outlets on Twitter grew, more traditional media outlets became less central and conversations became more polarized. We also confirmed that hyperpartisan outlets often shared disinformation or biased information, presented as a “truth-telling” alternative to journalistic outlets. And while disinformation was more frequently observed in the far-right group, it was also present in the anti-Bolsonaro cluster, especially towards the runoff period

Overheating in retrofitted flats: occupant practices, learning and interventions

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group The overheating risk in flats (apartments) retrofitted to energy-efficient standards has been identified by previous studies as one that is particularly high. With climate change and rising mean temperatures this is a growing concern. There is a need to understand the kinds of practices, learning and interventions adopted by the occupants of individual homes to try to reduce overheating, as this area is poorly understood and under-researched. This case study focuses on the impact of different home-use practices in relation to the severity of overheating in 18 flats in one tower block in northern England. Internal temperatures monitored in comparable flats show that the percentage of time spent above the expected category II threshold of thermal comfort according to BS EN 15251 can differ by over 70%. Extensive monitoring, covering a full year, including two summer periods, has identified emergent changes in heatwave practices linked with increased home-use skills and understanding among the research participants. Close analysis of design intentions versus reality has identified key physical barriers and social learning opportunities for appropriate adaptation in relation to heatwaves. Recommendations for designers and policy-makers are highlighted in relation to these factors