Karine Nahon

Fifteen Minutes of Fame: The Power of Blogs in the Lifecycle of Viral Political Information

This empirical study addresses dynamics of viral information in the blogosphere and aims to fill gaps in the literature. In this study, we present a new methodology which enables us to capture the dynamism and the time-factor of information diffusion in networks. Moreover, we argue that the blogosphere is not monolithic and illuminate the role of four important blog types: elite, toppolitical, top-general and tail blogs. We also create a map of the ‗life cycle‘ of blogs posting links to viral information, specifically viral videos at the 2008 US presidential election. Finally, we show that elite and top-general blogs ignite the virality process, which means that they get the chance to frame messages and influence agenda setting, while, top-political and tail blogs act as followers in the process. To accomplish this, we gathered data on blogs (n=9,765) and their posts (n=13,173) linking to 65 of the top US presidential election videos that became viral on the Internet during the period between March 2007 and June 2009.

Democracy.com: A Tale of Political Blogs and Content

The debate about the role of political blogs in politics generally and its effect on democracy and participation in particular has deepened since the 2008 U.S. presidential election. While some studies warn that the Internet may undermine deliberation, and replicate patterns of homophily and polarization among blogs with the same political inclination, other studies emphasize the potential of the Internet to strengthen cross-ideological discourse and participation. This paper suggests, using a hybrid theoretical framework which acknowledges homophily and the power law distribution among political blogs, and at the same time exhibits the use of the Internet also as a cross-participation platform and as strengthening participation. For that purpose, this paper looks at 83 videos that went viral during the 2008 election and examines patterns of behavior of the top 50 political blogs (conservative and liberal) in respect these videos over a period of two years.

Homophily in the Guise of Cross-Linking Political Blogs and Content

This study examines the behavior of influential political blogs (conservative and liberal) in reference to external viral content during March 2007 and June 2009. We analyze homophily and cross-ideological (heterophily) practices. We propose a multidimensional model that employs both qualitative and quantitative methods for examining homophily behaviors by looking at three dimensions: blog-to-blog, blog-to-video, blog post-to-video. Findings show that while homophily patterns prevail, some limited occurrences of cross-ideological practices exist. The cross-linking practices may include deliberative motives, but in essence they are not created for the purposes of discourse. Instead, these cross-linking practices strengthen previously held political stances of the users who create them and negatively portray and reframe content of alternative views. This represents homophily in the guise of cross-linking.

Information flows in events of political unrest

Social media, as the set of tools typified by blogs and other social networking platforms, is creating a user-generated dynamic, complex information ecosystem. The flow of information across multiple platforms means that traditional media gatekeepers (newspapers and other ‘mainstream media’) become just one of many pathways by which we learn about and make sense of new information. This research note reports preliminary results of a study based on a dataset of more than 65 million tweets related to the Occupy Wall Street movement, coupled with searches of LexisNexis, to examine information about six events related to Occupy sites in Maine, New York City, Oakland, and the University of California Davis. The study seeks to understand the relationships among newspapers, blogs, and Twitter as users of each platform report and comment on these events. The preliminary results suggest that the platforms perform distinct but overlapping roles at different periods in the information diffusion life cycle.

Negotiating Cultural Values in Social Media: A Case Study from Wikipedia

Wikipedia arguably is one of the most visible examples of the use of social media to enlist volunteers to contribute to a social good. Wikipedia was created to provide an accessible, encyclopedic information resource for people of all nations and cultures. Previous research has shown potential for unacknowledged cultural bias in socio-technical systems. However, the extent to which the technological and social structures of the English Wikipedia are shaped by its western origin and orientation has not been examined. We fill this gap by studying how Wikipedia editors created the culturally controversial article Jyllands-Posten Muhammad Cartoon Controversy. We use Carliles boundary-spanning model to illustrate how Wikipedia is unable to satisfactorily resolve the fundamental tension between its stated mission of global access and empowerment and the inherent (but unacknowledged) cultural bias of the technologies and processes employed by the English language Wikipedia community. This case study illustrates how knowledge management systems, even those intended to encompass multiple value systems through the use of an open social media design, have built-in (value) biases through the specific technologies and processes employed in the design.

The Missing Link: Intention to Produce Online Content Accessible to People with Disabilities by Non-professionals

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework to analyze obstacles, challenges, and incentives which lead non-professional developers to design websites and produce information that are accessible to people with disabilities, and to describe the development of a reliable and validated instrument designed to test it. Results show that intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, influence of ones close community and the perception that others are responsible to design such websites influence ones behavior in creating accessible content for people with disabilities.

Data Ships: An Empirical Examination of Open (Closed) Data

As part of endorsing the open government data movement in many parts of the world, governments have worked to increase openness in actions where information technologies play a major role. Releasing public data was perceived by many governments and officials as a fundamental element to achieve transparency and accountability. Many studies have criticized this approach and illustrated that open government data does not necessarily lead to open government. Our study examines for the first time in a systematic, quantitative way the status of open government data in the US, by focusing on the disclosure of data by US federal agencies. Our findings suggest that most US federal agencies largely do not follow the open government policies of 2009 and 2013. The paper discusses the type of public data that is released, and analyzes the (non) strategy of its release.

Introduction to the Open Government, Transparency and Citizen Engagement Minitrack

This mini-track focuses on the interactions between citizens, government, and technology to promote, facilitate, and create open and transparent government. More specifically, this mini-track focuses on the dimensions the ways in which Digital Democracy are supported and furthered through open and transparent government, citizen engagement, and direct involvement of citizens in the development, use, and assessment of e-Government initiatives and systems. This mini-track brings together streams of research on this topic, while simultaneously offering a platform for emerging and innovative research in this subject. In its second year, this mini-track continues to draw considerable attention and the papers reflect a wide range of openness and transparency topics. The HICSS-45 (2012) mini-track contains five papers representing different methodologies, theories, conceptualizations, and assessment of open government, transparency and citizen engagement. In his paper “Identifying Informational Needs for Open Government: The Case of Egypt,” Ralf Kilschewski offers a perspective on understanding information needs of citizens and stakeholders for open access to data and information. The paper particularly focuses on the role of social media in political transformation. The findings suggest that both government and citizens can agree on basic principles of information sharing and use of social media for information sharing purposes to foster transparency. The second paper “E-Participation and Social Change: Are Local Governments Actively Promoting Responsible Behaviors and Offering Opportunities for Citizen Involvement?” co-authored by Sonia Royo, Basilio Acerete, and Ana Yetano, investigates the extent to which Internet-enabled technologies may increase citizen participation in government decisionmaking and stop the decline of trust in political institutions. This explores EU local governments’ use of the Internet to promote e-participation and environmental-friendly behaviors among their citizens. The results show that the developments on eparticipation are higher in those areas just giving information than in the areas related to interactivity. The third paper “Assessing Transparency in Government: Rhetoric, Reality, and Desire”, coauthored by Greta Nasi and Maria Cucciniello, addresses the tension between transparency as a value and an essential tool to enhance governments’ accountability, as a principle to activate for reducing corruption, and as a mean to diffuse government’s performance information. The paper assesses the degree of transparency in governments and ascertains which types of information external stakeholders, citizens in particular, are able to access to evaluate their governments performance. Yannis Charalabidis , David Osimo, Fenareti Lampathaki, and Gianluca Misuraca, in their paper “ICT for Governance and Policy Modeling: Research Challenges and Future Projects in Europe,” explore the role of collaborative technologies for empowering citizens and fostering citizen engagement. The paper concludes that ICT tools have the potential to effectively support policy modeling and governance and their use is growing continuously even if they still are as unyet fully realized in a number of key developmental, management, and policy areas. The final paper “Measurement of Open Government: Metrics and Process” by John Carlo Bertot, Patrice McDermott, and Ted Smith, develops a methodology and metrics for measuring open government initiatives. The paper presents preliminary findings using a measurement tool the study team developed, discusses the lessons learned using the instrument, and issues associated with collaborative measurement development. 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Challenges in Applying Machine Learning Methods: Studying Political Interactions on Social Networks

This document discusses the potential role of Machine Learning (ML) methods in social science research, in general, and specifically in studies of political behavior of users in social networks (SN). This paper explores challenges which occurred in a set of studies which we conducted regarding classification of comments to posts of politicians and suggests ways of addressing these challenges. These challenges apply to a larger set of online political behavior studies.

Introduction to HICCS-47 social networking and communities minitrack

Minitrack introduction.