Can electoral popularity be predicted using socially generated big data?

Today, our more-than-ever digital lives leave significant footprints in cyberspace. Large scale collections of these socially generated footprints, often known as big data, could help us to re-investigate different aspects of our social collective behaviour in a quantitative framework. In this contribution we discuss one such possibility: the monitoring and predicting of popularity dynamics of candidates and parties through the analysis of socially generated data on the web during electoral campaigns. Such data offer considerable possibility for improving our awareness of popularity dynamics. However they also suffer from significant drawbacks in terms of representativeness and generalisability. In this paper we discuss potential ways around such problems, suggesting the nature of different political systems and contexts might lend differing levels of predictive power to certain types of data source. We offer an initial exploratory test of these ideas, focussing on two data streams, Wikipedia page views and Google search queries. On the basis of this data, we present popularity dynamics from real case examples of recent elections in three different countries.Comment: To appear in Information Technolog

‘Changing it up’: the lived experiences of a wheelchair sport intervention amongst secondary school pupils aged 11-12 in Lincolnshire

Despite recent developments, related to adapted physical activity programs, much is still needed to enhance the contributions these programs make toward rearticulating conceptions of disability (Fitzgerald, 2005). Research often suggests that a superficial belief in traditional, ‘normalised’ physical education habiti is held within schools and is rarely questioned. Sport integration typically focuses on either the inclusion of disabled individuals within traditionally able-bodied sports, or the inclusion of disability sports as separate events within mainstream sport (Nixon, 2007). Based on this, a call to look beyond typical strategies of adaption and integration has been made, with an aim to identifying innovative methods to question dominant conceptions regarding disability and disability sport (Fitzgerald, 2005). The key aim of this study was to investigate changes in secondary school pupils’ perceptions of disability sport during a Lincolnshire County Sports Partnership intervention entitled ‘The LSP Wheelchair Sports Project.’ The intervention utilised a reverse-integration method of delivery, incorporating wheelchair basketball into pupils PE lessons for a 12 week period. Bourdieu’s theoretical standpoint was used to provide theoretical foundation for the study while Chris Shillings work (2003) provided context specific, theoretical foundation to explain potential perceptions of participants prior to the intervention. 50 pupils aged between 1 and 12 took part in this research. All pupils, regardless of physical status, took part in the intervention. Semi-embedded ethnographic observations were made over the 12 week intervention period at one school in the city of Lincoln. This highlighted key behaviour themes among pupils which were then discussed in guided group interviews. Guided group interviews with 40 of participants highlighted pupils perceptions of disability and disability sport prior to the intervention. They also provided pupils with an opportunity to discuss their experiences of the intervention and thus any potential perceptual changes

Genetic Variation in Resistance of Scotch Pine to Zimmerman Pine Moth

(excerpt) Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), a forest tree introduced from Eurasia, is commonly planted for Christmas tree and timber use in northeastern United States. In this country it has numerous insect enemies. Among the most important are European pine shoot moth, Rhyacionia buoliana (Schiffermiieller); pine root collar weevil, Hylobius radicis Buchanan;,European pine sawfly, Neodiprion sertifer (Geoffroy); and eastern white-pine shoot borer, Eucosma gloriola Heinrich. Previous studies (Wright et al., 1967; Wright and Wilson, 1972; Steiner, 1974) have revealed large genetic differences in resistance to some of these pests. Another destructive pest is the Zimmerman pine moth, Dioryctria zimmermani (Grote). In 1968 this insect, native to the United States, was found attacking trees in a Scotch pine provenance test in southwestern Michigan. The attack rate was heavy and by 1973 it was obvious that some rams or varieties were attacked more heavily than others. This is a report on those differences

Wikipedia traffic data and electoral prediction: towards theoretically informed models

This aim of this article is to explore the potential use of Wikipedia page view data for predicting electoral results. Responding to previous critiques of work using socially generated data to predict elections, which have argued that these predictions take place without any understanding of the mechanism which enables them, we first develop a theoretical model which highlights why people might seek information online at election time, and how this activity might relate to overall electoral outcomes, focussing especially on how different types of parties such as new and established parties might generate different information seeking patterns. We test this model on a novel dataset drawn from a variety of countries in the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament elections. We show that while Wikipedia offers little insight into absolute vote outcomes, it offers a good information about changes in both overall turnout at elections and in vote share for particular parties. These results are used to enhance existing theories about the drivers of aggregate patterns in online information seeking.Comment: submitted to EPJ Data Science. Additional File 1 available at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxaGC-YCTO6SWkJhRXlrMVRYVl

‘Not just a boys' game’: programme evaluation of a multi-agency cricket intervention designed to reduce gender inequity in a city in the east of England

Previous feminist research demonstrates that women’s participation in sport is subject to patriarchal values, which produce and reproduce gender inequity in elite sport (Rowe, D. (2004). Critical Reading: Sport, Culture and Media. Berkshire. McGraw Hill.). Cricket is one sport in which patriarchy remains prevalent. Despite the recent success of the England Women’s cricket team, female participation in elite cricket remains low. The latest Active People Survey suggests the number of women participating in cricket has decreased between 2008 and 2010, further widening the gender gap (Sport England, 2011). This key aim of this study was to evaluate an intervention with the stated aim of reducing gender inequity in cricket in a city in the East of England. The intervention was conducted in conjunction with a multi-agency partnership developed by the authors, including an ECB premier league club, county board and University. A needs assessment highlighted the lack of opportunities for women’s cricket. The intervention therefore targeted women of all cricket abilities, with a view to creating a sustainable women’s team. Project actions included sourcing facilities, staff and equipment, producing advertising material and facilitating partnership work. This study employed a theory-driven programme evaluation to assess the effectiveness of this cricket intervention. Programme evaluation uses programme theory to assess the efficacy of sports development interventions (Rossi et al., 2004, Evaluation: A systematic approach. Sage, London.). In this case, the programme’s theory is founded upon a feminist rationale. Critical success factors have been incorporated. These included assessing sustainable participation rates. Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and participants will be completed to evaluate programme effectiveness

How do European democracies compare when it comes to the length of ministerial careers?

Ministerial careers can be notoriously nasty, brutish, and short, with the doctrine of ministerial accountability leading to numerous prematurely ended political careers. But how do European democracies compare? Looking at evidence from seven countries, Jonathan Bright, Holger Doring, and Conor Little show that younger ministers survive longer, right-wing parties are more likely to dump ministers than left-wing ones, and that large coalitions offer greater stability for ministers

Does Campaigning on Social Media Make a Difference? Evidence from candidate use of Twitter during the 2015 and 2017 UK Elections

Social media are now a routine part of political campaigns all over the world. However, studies of the impact of campaigning on social platform have thus far been limited to cross-sectional datasets from one election period which are vulnerable to unobserved variable bias. Hence empirical evidence on the effectiveness of political social media activity is thin. We address this deficit by analysing a novel panel dataset of political Twitter activity in the 2015 and 2017 elections in the United Kingdom. We find that Twitter based campaigning does seem to help win votes, a finding which is consistent across a variety of different model specifications including a first difference regression. The impact of Twitter use is small in absolute terms, though comparable with that of campaign spending. Our data also support the idea that effects are mediated through other communication channels, hence challenging the relevance of engaging in an interactive fashion