Mapping networks of influence: tracking Twitter conversations through time and space

The increasing use of social media around global news events, such as the London Olympics in 2012, raises questions for international broadcasters about how to engage with users via social media in order to best achieve their individual missions. Twitter is a highly diverse social network whose conversations are multi-directional involving individual users, political and cultural actors, athletes and a range of media professionals. In so doing, users form networks of influence via their interactions affecting the ways that information is shared about specific global events. This article attempts to understand how networks of influence are formed among Twitter users, and the relative influence of global news media organisations and information providers in the Twittersphere during such global news events. We build an analysis around a set of tweets collected during the 2012 London Olympics. To understand how different users influence the conversations across Twitter, we compare three types of accounts: those belonging to a number of well-known athletes, those belonging to some well-known commentators employed by the BBC, and a number of corporate accounts belonging to the BBC World Service and the official London Twitter account. We look at the data from two perspectives. First, to understand the structure of the social groupings formed among Twitter users, we use a network analysis to model social groupings in the Twittersphere across time and space. Second, to assess the influence of individual tweets, we investigate the ageing factor of tweets, which measures how long users continue to interact with a particular tweet after it is originally posted. We consider what the profile of particular tweets from corporate and athletes’ accounts can tell us about how networks of influence are forged and maintained. We use these analyses to answer the questions: How do different types of accounts help shape the social networks? and, What determines the level and type of influence of a particular account

Project management in social data science : integrating lessons from research practice and software engineering

Online platforms, transaction processing systems, mobile sensors and other novel sources of data have shaped many areas of social research. The emerging discipline of social data science is subject to questions of epistemology, politics, ethics and responsibility, while the practice of doing social data science raises significant project management issues that include logistics, team communication, software system integration and stakeholder engagement. Keeping track of such a multitude of individual concerns while maintaining an overview of a social data science project as a whole is not trivial. This calls for provision of appropriate guidance for holistic project management. The project management issues in social data science are strikingly similar to those arising in software engineering. In this thesis, I adapt a particular software engineering project management tool – the SEMAT Essence model (Jacobson et al., 2013) – to the needs of social data science. This model offers a holistic management approach by addressing key project aspects, including the often overlooked yet crucially important ones such as maintaining stakeholder engagement and establishing the ways of working. The SEMAT Essence is a progress tracking model and does not assume any specific work process, which is valuable given the great diversity of social data science projects. To achieve this goal, I study the practice of doing social data science through participant observation of social data science projects and by providing ethnographic accounts for those. Using the ethnographic findings and the basic content and structure of the SEMAT model, I develop the Social Science Scorecard Deck – an agile project management tool for social data science. To assess the Scorecard Deck, I use the tool in management of a social data science project and then subject the tool to external validation by interviewing experts in social data science

Understanding the Changing Cultural Value of the BBC World Service and the British Council

This project investigated the changing cultural value of the BBC World Service (WS) and the British Council (BC) and how their cultural value can be assessed and measured. For eight decades, these organisations have been the face and voice of Britain overseas. Our research found that their attraction and influence abroad remains strong, but is on the wane, reflecting the UK’s declining economic and political significance on the world stage. Among the key findings of our historical and contemporary research: Cultural value is the catalyst of all aspects of value at WS and BC, founded on their capacity to act as transcultural intermediaries, fostering international understanding, and setting benchmarks in global standards for journalism and cultural relations work. Cultural value is relational, never independent of political and economic value. It is perspectival: audiences trust the quality and credibility of outputs; high professional standards and prestige benefit staff; funders appreciate the diplomatic and soft power assets. Cultural value accrues slowly over time but can be quickly lost. Social media afford new ways of connecting, informing and engaging citizens at home and abroad. Our case studies analysing the uses of Twitter and Facebook by BC and WS around global media events underscore the so far limited role of social media in democratising participation and promoting intercultural dialogue. We developed an innovative, theoretically grounded and empirically informed Cultural Value Model (CVM). This is an innovative device for conceptualising, analysing and assessing value in a multidimensional, composite, visual way. The CVM is designed for planning, monitoring and evaluating projects and organisations over time, alongside existing performance indicators and impact measures. It is currently being tested and developed on further projects at WS and BC as well as at the Swedish Institute

Audience research and social media data : Opportunities and challenges

The widespread adoption of social media platforms and other information and communication technology innovations not only pose new challenges for audience researchers but also provide exciting opportunities to re-invigorate audience research as an academic topic as well as a practical pursuit. In this paper, we outline some general methodological issues that arise when seeking to exploit these opportunities, drawing on our experiences of using Twitter as a resource for measuring audience engagement with the BBC World Service (BBCWS) in the context of global media events, specifically the London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012 and the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in 2014. We conclude by arguing that social media are not simply a new source of data about audiences but a new forum for unprecedented interaction and collaboration with the audience and, in this respect, they are phenomena to be studied in their own right.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Staging the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014 on Russia Today and BBC World News : From soft power to geopolitical crisis

This article compares how Russia Today (RT) and BBC World News (BBCWN) interacted with audiences on their social media platforms during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. From the outset, the sporting events were overshadowed by tensions between Russia and ‘western’ nations over human rights. By the time the Sochi Games closed, the world had plunged into one of the gravest geopolitical crises since the Cold War – the confrontation over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, following dramatic regime change in Ukraine. This confrontation led to a disruption of the carefully orchestrated strategies of RT and BBCWN for staging the Games. The collision of a soft power spectacle and geopolitical crisis was most acutely felt and apparent at the interface between international broadcasting and social media where dissonant and dissenting discursive regimes clashed. This geopolitical standoff brought prior international tensions to a head as BBCWN struggled to manage the transition from a celebratory global media event to a geopolitical crisis. Unimpeded by established media conventions, RT’s approach to the transition was to attack and repudiate ‘western’ media and political discourses. RT, while loathed and despised in western media circles as a crude propagandistic news channel, has proved to be particularly adept in its uses of social media at times of global political events. The article sheds light on RT’s appeal to international audiences interested in counter-hegemonic assaults on ‘western’ media and political debate, and suggests directions for future research. It argues that RT thrives in a 24-hour news environment in which global crises become subject to rumours, counter-rumours and unverified accounts superseding one another in a cauldron of conflicting information and unanswered questions - fertile territory for RT’s conspiratorial ethos.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe