Tijs Adriaan van den Broek

Opening Moves --- Drivers, Enablers and Barriers of Open Data in a Semi-public Organization

Governments around the world are opening up their data to increase transparency and stimulate re-use of their data. Semi-public organizations follow, but often for different purposes as they also aim to realize commercial gains with their data. Many organizations, however, find the process of opening up data cumbersome as changes need to be made to different organizational layers. This paper identifies drivers, enablers, and barriers of open data, by reviewing literature and by conducting a case study of open data in a semi-public organization in the Netherlands. We found that while the drivers for opening up data remain the same in every phase of the process, the enablers and barriers shift between the different phases. While in the beginning of the process, organizational factors such as having an implementation strategy and ensuring data quality gained much attention, this attention shifted to factors related to re-use of data. Further research should thus focus on how to develop valuable open data business models, how to foster re-use and build strategic partnerships with users.

On the Impact of Twitter-based Health Campaigns: A Cross-Country Analysis of Movember

Health campaigns that aim to raise awareness and subsequently raise funds for research and treatment are commonplace. While many local campaigns exist, very few attract the attention of a global audience. One of those global campaigns is Movember, an annual campaign during the month of November, that is directed at men’s health with special foci on cancer & mental health. Health campaigns routinely use social media portals to capture people’s attention. Recently, researchers began to consider to what extent social media is effective in raising the awareness of health campaigns. In this paper we expand on those works by conducting an investigation across four different countries, while not only restricting ourselves to the impact on awareness but also on fundraising. To that end, we analyze the 2013 Movember Twitter campaigns in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Modes of Governance in Inter-Organizational Data Collaborations

Big data and data-driven innovation are drivers for economic growth. To capture this growth, data often need to be shared among organisations. However, many challenges to sharing data among organisations exist. This paper investigates how governance is organised in inter-organisational data collaborations. First, based on literature, four archetypical modes of governance are identified: Market, Hierarchy, Bazaar and Network. Subsequently, these theoretical modes are investigated empirically by exploring governance modes in four use cases. Based on a cross-case comparison, we find that major challenges to data sharing are the commercially sensitive nature of data and privacy risks. Due to legal implications, sharing of personal data always takes place hierarchically. Therefore, coordination and control over data need to be firmly in place before organisations engage in data sharing. Further research should look into how these aspects can be organised in inter-organisational data collaborations to foster innovation.

#WhoAmI in 160 characters? Classifying social identities based on Twitter profile descriptions

We combine social theory and NLP methods to classify English-speaking Twitter users’ online social identity in profile descriptions. We conduct two text classification experiments. In Experiment 1 we use a 5-category online social identity classification based on identity and self-categorization theories. While we are able to automatically classify two identity categories (Relational and Occupational), automatic classification of the other three identities (Political, Ethnic/religious and Stigmatized) is challenging. In Experiment 2 we test a merger of such identities based on theoretical arguments. We find that by combining these identities we can improve the predictive performance of the classifiers in the experiment. Our study shows how social theory can be used to guide NLP methods, and how such methods provide input to revisit traditional social theory that is strongly consolidated in offline settings.

Activist versus Slacktivist: A Dual Path Model of Online Protest Mobilization

Business protests, aimed at changing firm behavior, increasingly make use of websites to mobilize large numbers of participants. However, we know little about how protest organizers can motivate a ...

Open Data Innovation Capabilities: Towards a Framework of How to Innovate with Open Data

Innovation based on open data lags behind the high expectations of policy makers. Hence, open data researchers have investigated the barriers of open data publication and adoption. This paper contributes to this literature by taking a capabilities perspective on how successful open data re-users create value out of the available data sources. First, a framework of IT, organization and skills capabilities required to innovate with data is derived from literature. Second, a case study including a survey and interview with managers from 12 frontrunners in the Netherlands was conducted. The analysis reveals that skills are valued the highest closely followed by organizational capabilities. Setting up a multi-disciplinary team with motivated employees and giving this team the mandate to experiment with data, is essential when innovating with open data. Theoretically, this study contributes to open data research by offering a new capabilities perspective on the organizational level. Our results highlight the importance of entrepreneurship theories to explain value creation with open data. Practically, our study suggests that digital skills and start-ups are important to the open government data policies.

#SupportTheCause: Identifying Motivations to Participate in Online Health Campaigns

We consider the task of automatically identifying participants’ motivations in the public health campaign Movember and investigate the impact of the different motivations on the amount of campaign donations raised. Our classification scheme is based on the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (van Zomeren et al., 2008). We find that automatic classification based on Movember profiles is fairly accurate, while automatic classification based on tweets is challenging. Using our classifier, we find a strong relation between types of motivations and donations. Our study is a first step towards scaling-up collective action research methods.

Identity and collective action via computer-mediated communication: A review and agenda for future research

Since the start of large-scale waves of mobilisation in 2011, the importance of identity in the study of collective action via computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been a source of contention. Hence, our research sets out to systematically review and synthesise empirical findings on identity and collective action via CMC from 2012 to 2016. We found that the literature on the topic is broad and diverse, with contributions from multiple disciplines and theoretical and methodological approaches. Based on our findings, we provide directions for future research and propose the adoption of an integrative approach that combines the study of identity and networks to advance our understanding of collective action via CMC. This review contributes to the crossroad of social movement, collective action, communication and media studies. Our results also have practical implications for the organisation of collective action in a society characterised by the pervasive influence of CMC.

Reviewing the Role of Media Attributes in Mobilizing Protest Participation

Activist groups increasingly use computer-mediated communication (CMC) channels to mobilize large groups of consumers to persuade incumbent firms to change their contested strategies or practices. The attributes of CMC channels change the effectiveness of persuasion processes in organizations. Similarly, attributes may change the effectiveness of protest mobilization. Yet, organizational research to date has mostly neglected this potential effect. This paper systematically reviews the effect of CMC attributes on the antecedents of protest participation. We construct a conceptual framework based on social movement and media choice theory, which guides the systematic collation of online activism research. Three main themes emerge from the literature. First, we find that the interactivity of online activism decreases the need for formal mobilizing structures, while increasing the importance of informal mobilizing structures for protest diffusion and global cooperation between activist groups. Second, increased interactivity and user control provide an alternative media channel for consumers and resource-poor activist groups to express and bundle their grievances. Third, the degree of publicness and interactivity seems to stimulate the formation of multiple, online collective identities that are rather interest-based than identity-based. We conclude this paper with a conceptual model that highlights the most prominent relations found in literature and discuss the implications for future research and practitioners