Marko M. Skoric

Social media and citizen engagement: A meta-analytic review

This meta-analytic study reviews empirical research published from 2007 to 2013 with an aim of providing robust conclusions about the relationship between social media use and citizen engagement. It includes 22 studies that used self-reported measures of social media use and participation, with a total of 116 relationships/effects. The results suggest that social media use generally has a positive relationship with engagement and its three sub-categories, that is, social capital, civic engagement, and political participation. More specifically, we find small-to-medium size positive relationships between expressive, informational, and relational uses of social media and the above indicators of citizen engagement. For identity- and entertainment-oriented uses of social media, our analyses find little evidence supporting their relationship with citizen engagement.

My Name Is Khan: The Use of Twitter in the Campaign for 2013 Pakistan General Election

The 2013 Pakistan General Election was as a democratic milestone in the nations troubled political history which also witnessed the rise of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI, under its leader Imran Khan), from its marginal status to a formidable political status. This study focuses on the first ever Twitter campaign by Pakistani political parties to mobilize, inform and engage voters during the elections. Through a content analysis of tweets (n =10140) from top four parties, our study reveals significant differences in their usage patterns. PTIs twitter usage was the most distinctive as it involved greater interaction with the public, more campaign updates and greater mobilization of citizens to vote. Through triangulation of our findings with public ally available election data we also find that PTIs success (at a provincial level) was largely driven by a unique combination of Twitter communication and face-to-face campaigning aimed at increasing voter turnout, especially among the youth population.

I Shield Myself From Thee: Selective Avoidance on Social Media During Political Protests

This study examines the phenomenon of politically motivated selective avoidance on Facebook in the context of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement protests in 2014. We conceptualize selective avoidance as individual choices that users make to shield themselves from undesirable dissonant views by removing unwanted information and breaking social ties that transmit such information. Given the political turmoil and high level of polarization during the protests, we argue that selective avoidance was related to the socio-psychological factor of perceived out-group threat. We present an analysis of a survey of 769 students from Hong Kong conducted at the height of the street protests. We find that 15.6% of the respondents removed content and/or unfriended a Facebook friend during the protests. The use of Facebook for protest-related information and expression was associated with higher likelihood of selective avoidance, which in turn predicted actual participation in the street protests. The level of perceived out-group threat strengthened the positive relationship between Facebook use and selective avoidance. We thus argue that group conflict in a time of political turmoil may catalyze selective avoidance, transforming a heterogeneous socio-informational environment into a more insulated gated community. Such acts may promote protest participation but also lead to a more fragmented and polarized citizenry.

Social media, political expression, and participation in Confucian Asia

This study reviews and analyzes the published empirical research on the role of social media in promoting political expression and participation in Confucian Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In addition to providing a narrative review of the literature, our analyses show clear numerical estimates of the relationships among different types of social media use (i.e., informational, expressive, relational, and recreational), political expression, and participation in Confucian states. The findings reiterate the importance of the expressive use of social media, showing its moderately strong relationship with participation. The findings also show weak positive relationships with informational and relational uses. We also examine the role of political systems in these relationships and conclude that the strongest relationships are in democratic states, followed by hybrid and authoritarian systems.

Death of a Guild, Birth of a Network Online Community Ties Within and Beyond Code

To explore what helps and hinders long-term online community cohesion, a once strong but now withered 7-year-old guild in the online game EverQuest 2 was studied using mixed methods. It was found that the guild faced stresses on five distinct yet interrelated levels: personal, subgroup, guild, game, and company level. Strong intragroup ties can aid group cohesion but can also cause fragmenting along weaker ties if a strong subgroup leaves the guild. Continual leadership is vital, in part due to the game mechanics that give guild leaders most of the structural power over the guild. Communities may leave their space of origin but maintain ties across several other mediated spaces simultaneously. Game companies and guild leaders can control or influence some, but not all, of the stresses guilds face.

Culture, technologies and democracy: A cross-national analysis of political development

Communication technologies have been hailed as having a potential to promote democracy and freedom, and this paper aims to examine these claims in a comparative, international context. Our analysis focuses on the mediating role of horizontal communication networks (i.e., telephone, mobile telephone and the Internet) in the relationship between culture and political development. Using cultural value indicators of the World Values Survey and the measures of communication technology development, this study tests the mediating path from culture to communication technologies and to political development. The results suggest that cultural values have a role in shaping the structural characteristics of horizontal networks such as accessibility and decentralization, and that these features of horizontal networks are positively related to institutional and effective democracy as well as to economic competitiveness of nations.

The implications of big data for developing and transitional economies: Extending the Triple Helix?

This study examines the implications of the predicted big data revolution in social sciences for the research using the Triple Helix (TH) model of innovation and knowledge creation in the context of developing and transitional economies. While big data research promises to transform the nature of social inquiry and improve the world economy by increasing the productivity and competitiveness of companies and enhancing the functioning of the public sector, it may also potentially lead to a growing divide in research capabilities between developed and developing economies. More specifically, given the uneven access to digital data and scarcity of computational resources and talent, developing countries are at disadvantage when it comes to employing data-driven, computational methods for studying the TH relations between universities, industries and governments. Scientometric analysis of the TH literature conducted in this study reveals a growing disparity between developed and developing countries in their use of innovative computational research methods. As a potential remedy, the extension of the TH model is proposed to include non-market actors as subjects of study as well as potential providers of computational resources, education and training.

Twitter and 2013 Pakistan General Election: The Case of David 2.0 Against Goliaths

This study followed the online activity on Twitter during Pakistan’s landmark 2013 General Election, also hailed as Pakistan’s first Twitter election, which marked the first ever transfer of power between two elected civilian governments. This election saw the unexpected emergence of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), the political underdog which followed close at the heels of well-established dynastic parties to grab the third-largest number of seats in the National Assembly. The rise of this party and its leader is attributed to the estimated 30 million young Pakistanis who voted for the first time and the advent of social media, as well as the leadership of Imran Khan, the most famous sports celebrity in the country. This study focused on the Twitter campaigns of Pakistan’s political parties with the aim to investigate how the medium was used by political parties for information dissemination, interaction, mobilization and engagement of voters. Our investigation was related and discussed in the context of the actual success achieved by each party. The approach followed was systematic automatic and manual content analyses and a social network analysis of the tweets (n = 10,140) posted by the top four political parties and their leaders in the month leading up to Pakistan’s general election. Our findings identify that every party used Twitter for different purposes. PTI used Twitter in the most diverse ways—they interacted with voters, provided real time detailed campaign updates, discussed specific social and political issues and called for a greater mobilization of citizens to vote. Through triangulation of our findings with the publically available election data provided by the Election Commission of Pakistan we further conclude that the success story of PTI, especially at the provincial level, was a blend of the party riding on personality politics paradigm with a combination of an increase in voter turnout and strategized online-offline campaigning targeted at the youth.

Play Together, Stay Together? Community Cohesion and Stability in an MMO

Small-scale qualitative studies have shown group cohesion in games can be strong enough to allow groups to transfer to new settings, but this phenomenon has not been studied with a large-scale dataset to see if it is widespread or rare. Using a three-year scrape of an MMO, World of Warcraft, the guild membership and playing time of over 90,000 characters was observed for patterns indicating group cohesion or character pairings. Groups of players who play together do stay together across time and guild changes, sometimes across multiple guild changes, indicating social ties. An average of 2/3 of the characters seen both week-to-week and across four-week periods stay in the same guild, suggesting a baseline for social stability. Previously documented rupture events, although important to study, are actually rare and unrepresentative of the continual slow turnover found here.

Introduction to Social Media and Social Networking and Government Minitrack

Social networks, which have almost become part of our daily lives, have established new communication structures and behaviors in society. While citizens and businesses have already extensively used social networks for years, governments continuously increase their interest in the new communication technologies. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In provide a mechanism for individuals to come together based on a variety of factors such as existing friendships, common interests, or work. People have discovered how the use of social networks can facilitate communication and the exchange/sharing of thoughts and ideas. Governments have also discovered the potential for these sites to aid in government information sharing and outreach. The Social Media and Social Networking and Government Minitrack tackles social media and networks relating to e-government which may include the use of social media and networks by any level of government, the implementation challenges, trust and privacy issues, different patterns and trends of social networks, information sharing, information overload, and mobile social networking.