Erik Borra | University of Amsterdam (original) (raw)
Papers by Erik Borra
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Climaps.eu (is(an(online(atlas(providing(data,(visualizations(and(commentaries(about(climate(adap... more Climaps.eu (is(an(online(atlas(providing(data,(visualizations(and(commentaries(about(climate(adaptation(debate.( It(contains(33(issueHmaps.(Each(of(the(maps(focuses(on(one(issue(in(the(adaptation(debate(and(provides: ( o an(interactive(visualization;( o a(discussion(of(the(map(and(the(findings(that(it(discloses;( o a(description(of(the(protocol(through(which(the(map(has(been(created;( o the(raw(and(the(cleaned(data(on(which(the(map(is(based(and(the(code(employed(to(treat(them.( Climaps.eu(also(contains(5(issueHstories(guiding(the(users(in(the(combined(reading(of(several(maps.( The(atlas(is(addressed(to(climate(experts((negotiators,(NGOs(and(companies(concerned(by(global(warming,( journalists…)(and(to(citizens(willing(to(engage(with(the(issues(of(climate(adaptation.( It(employs(advanced(digital(methods(to(deploy(the(complexity(of(the(issues(related(to(climate(adaptation(and( information(design(to(make(this(complexity(legible.( Controversy(mapping(and(the('sprint'(workshops( Climaps.eu(has(been(produced(by(the(EUHfunded(project(EMAPS((www.emapsproject.com)(as(largest(experiment( tempted(so(far(with(the(method(of('controversy(mapping'.( Controversy(mapping(is(a(research(technique(developed(in(the(field(of(the(Sciences(and(Technology(Studies((STS)(to( deal(with(the(growing(intricacy(of(socioUtechnical(debates.(Instead(of(mourning(such(complexity,(it(aims(to(equip( engaged(citizens(with(tools(to(navigate(through(expert(disagreement.(Instead(of(lamenting(the(fragmentation( of(society,(it(aims(to(facilitate(the(emergence(of(more(heterogeneous(discussion(forums((cfr:( http://climaps.eu/#/controversyUmapping).( Such(objectives(are(pursued( o by(collaborating(with(experts(from(different(camps(in(the(debate,( o by(exploiting(digital(data(and(computation(to(follow(the(weaving((of(technoUscientific(discourses,( o and(by(using(design(to(make(such(complexity(readable(for(a(larger(public.( Because(of(the(necessity(to(organize(a(transHdisciplinary(collaboration(between(controversy(mappers,(issueU experts,(data(scientists(and(designers,(EMAPS(invented(a(new(format(research(format:(the('sprint'.( Inspired(by(openUsource(hackathons(and(digital(humanities(barcamps,(sprints(are(hybrid(forums(where(30H40( people(with(different(backgrounds(gather(to(work(intensively(for(a(full(week(to(map(a(given(socioUtechnical( issue.(Unlike (its(antecedents,(sprints(are(extensively(prepared(in(advanced((by(defining(the(research(questions,( collecting(and(cleaning(the(data,(forming(the(groups)(so(that(the(workshops(can(succeed(in(delivering(usable( results(in(oneUweek(time((cfr:(http://climaps.eu/#/sprints).( Findings(and(issueHstories( Adaptation(and(mitigation(in(the(UNFCCC( Analyzing( the( Earth( Negotiation( Bulletin,( we( identified( the( main( discussion( in( the( UN( Convention( on( Climate( Change ,( traced( their( visibility(over(time(and(the(countries(engaged(with(them.( Adaptation( and( mitigation( have( different( places( in( the( UNFCCC.( Mitigation( constitutes( the( main( object( of( the( convention,( is( present( everywhere( in( its( conversation( and( structures( the( articulation(of(the(debate.(Adaptation,(on(the(contrary,(appears(as( a( group( of( specific( discussions( and( has( a( limited( though( central( place(in(the(negotiations.( Although,( adaptation( is( present( from( the( beginning( in( UN( conferences( (in( particular( the( question( of( its( funding), ( an( 'adaptation( turn'( is( visible( from( 2004( with( the( rise( of( the( questions(of(vulnerability(and(of(climate(change(impacts.( cfr:( http://climaps.eu/#!/narrative/mitigationUandUadaptationU inUtheUunfcccUdebates( (
Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan iséén van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee be... more Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan iséén van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee bezig kan 1 houden de empirie. Kan empirie echter ook filosofische principes rechtvaardigen? In ons onderzoek gebruiken we simulatie, een vorm van empirie, om een tot nu toe onbewezen 2 theorie uit de taalfilosofie te testen.
3.1 De pseudocode voor de berekening van de wijzigingsafstand door middelvandynamischprogrammeren... more 3.1 De pseudocode voor de berekening van de wijzigingsafstand door middelvandynamischprogrammeren.................. 14 3.2 Voorbeeld van een matrix gecreëerd voor de berekening van de wijzigingsafstand tussen van T= bcdeffghixkl en P= ...
Political campaigning and the corresponding advertisement money are increasingly moving online. S... more Political campaigning and the corresponding advertisement money are increasingly moving online. Some analysts claim that the U.S. elections were partly won through a smart use of (i) targeted advertising and (ii) social media. But what type of information do politicized users consume online? And, the other way around, for a given content, e.g. a YouTube video, is it possible to predict its political audience? To address this latter question, we present a large scale study of anonymous YouTube video consumption of politicized users, where political orientation is derived from visits to "beacon pages", namely, political partisan blogs. Though our techniques are relevant for targeted political advertising, we believe that our findings are also of a wider interest.
Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration - OpenSym '14, 2014
Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where di↵erent points of view lead t... more Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where di↵erent points of view lead to conflict. In Wikipedia, one of the most prominent examples of collaboration online, conflict is mediated by both policy and software, and conflicts often reflect larger societal debates.
Handelingen van de …, 2002
Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan is één van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee b... more Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan is één van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee bezig kan1 houden de empirie. Kan empirie echter ook filosofische principes rechtvaardigen? In ons onderzoek gebruiken we simulatie, een vorm van empirie, om ...
Journalism, Jan 1, 2011
This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by... more This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by the protestors of the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, Canada. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network, the network that coordinated the protests, urged participants to broadcast news using Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. This particular use of social media is studied in the light of the history and theory of alternative journalism. Analyzing a set of 11,556 tweets, 222 videos, and 3,338 photos, the article assesses user participation in social media protest reporting, as well as the resulting protest accounts. The findings suggest that social media did not facilitate the crowd-sourcing of alternative reporting, except to some extent for Twitter. As with many previous alternative journalistic efforts, reporting was dominated by a relatively small number of users. In turn, the resulting account itself had a strong event-oriented focus, mirroring often-criticized mainstream protest reporting practices.
Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '15, 2015
Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead ... more Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead to conflict. We focus on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone may edit, where disputes about content in controversial articles often reflect larger societal debates. While Wikipedia has a public edit history
and discussion section for every article, the substance of these sections is difficult to phantom for
Wikipedia users interested in the development of an article and in locating which topics were most controversial. In this paper we present Contropedia, a tool that augments Wikipedia articles and gives insight into the development of controversial topics. Contropedia uses an efficient language agnostic measure based on the edit history that focuses on wiki
links to easily identify which topics within a Wikipedia article have been most controversial and when.
CHI'15: 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings, Apr 2015
Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead ... more Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead to conflict. We focus on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone may edit, where disputes about content in controversial articles often reflect larger societal debates. While Wikipedia has a public edit history and discussion section for every article, the substance of these sections is difficult to phantom for Wikipedia users interested in the development of an article and in locating which topics were most controversial. In this paper we present Contropedia, a tool that augments Wikipedia articles and gives insight into the development of controversial topics. Contropedia uses an efficient language agnostic measure based on the edit history that focuses on wiki links to easily identify which topics within a Wikipedia article have been most controversial and when.
When looking for information on Wikipedia, Internet users generally just read the latest version ... more When looking for information on Wikipedia, Internet users generally just read the latest version of an article. However, in its back-end there is much more: associated to each article are the edit history and talk pages, which together entail its full evolution. These spaces can typically reach thousands of contributions, and it is not trivial to make sense of them by manual inspection. This issue also affects Wikipedians, especially the less experienced ones, and constitutes a barrier for new editor engagement and retention. To address these limitations, Contropedia offers its users unprecedented access to the development of an article, using wiki links as focal points.
Aslib Journal of Information Management, 2014
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce Digital Methods Initiative Twitter Capture a... more Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to introduce Digital Methods Initiative Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset, a toolset for capturing and analyzing Twitter data. Instead of just presenting a technical paper detailing the system, however, the authors argue that the type of data used for, as well as the methods encoded in, computational systems have epistemological repercussions for research. The authors thus aim at situating the development of the toolset in relation to methodological debates in the social sciences and humanities.
Design/methodology/approach
– The authors review the possibilities and limitations of existing approaches to capture and analyze Twitter data in order to address the various ways in which computational systems frame research. The authors then introduce the open-source toolset and put forward an approach that embraces methodological diversity and epistemological plurality.
Findings
– The authors find that design decisions and more general methodological reasoning can and should go hand in hand when building tools for computational social science or digital humanities.
Practical implications
– Besides methodological transparency, the software provides robust and reproducible data capture and analysis, and interlinks with existing analytical software. Epistemic plurality is emphasized by taking into account how Twitter structures information, by allowing for a number of different sampling techniques, by enabling a variety of analytical approaches or paradigms, and by facilitating work at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
Originality/value
– The paper opens up critical debate by connecting tool design to fundamental interrogations of methodology and its repercussions for the production of knowledge. The design of the software is inspired by exchanges and debates with scholars from a variety of disciplines and the attempt to propose a flexible and extensible tool that accommodates a wide array of methodological approaches is directly motivated by the desire to keep computational work open for various epistemic sensibilities.
First Monday, Jul 2, 2012
We developed Political Insights, an online searchable database of politically charged queries, wh... more We developed Political Insights, an online searchable database of politically charged queries, which allows you to obtain topical insights into partisan concern. In this paper we demonstrate how you can discover such political queries and how to lay bare which issues are most salient to political audiences. We employ anonymized search engine queries resulting in a click on U.S. political blogs to calculate the probability that a query will land on blogs of a particular leaning. We are thus able to ‘charge’ queries politically and to group them along opposing partisan lines. Finally, by comparing the zip codes of users submitting these queries with election results, we find that the leaning of blogs people read correlates well with their likely voting behavior.
ACM Web Science Conference, 2012
We present a novel approach to using anonymized web search query logs to analyze and visualize po... more We present a novel approach to using anonymized web search query logs to analyze and visualize political issues. Our starting point is a list of politically annotated blogs (left vs. right). We use this list to assign a numerical political leaning to queries leading to clicks on these blogs. Furthermore, we map queries to Wikipedia articles and to fact-checked statements from politifact.com, as well as applying sentiment analysis to search results. With this rich, multi-faceted data set we obtain novel graphical visualizations of issues and discover connections between the different variables. Our findings include (i) an interest in “the other side” where queries about Democrat politicians have a right leaning and vice versa, (ii) evidence that “lies are catchy” and that queries pertaining to false statements are more likely to attract large volumes, and (iii) the observation that the more right-leaning a query it is, the more negative sentiments can be found in its search results.
ACM SIGIR Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, 2012
We present Political Search Trends, a browser based web search analysis tool that (i) assigns a p... more We present Political Search Trends, a browser based web search analysis tool that (i) assigns a political leaning to web search queries, (ii) detects trending political queries in a given week, and (iii) links search queries to fact-checked statements. In terms of methodol- ogy, it showcases the power of analyzing queries leading to clicks on selected, annotated web sites of interest.
Journalism, 2012
This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by... more This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by the protestors of the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, Canada. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network, the network that coordinated the protests, urged participants to broadcast news using Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. This particular use of social media is studied in the light of the history and theory of alternative journalism. Analyzing a set of 11,556 tweets, 222 videos, and 3,338 photos, the article assesses user participation in social media protest reporting, as well as the resulting protest accounts. The findings suggest that social media did not facilitate the crowd-sourcing of alternative reporting, except to some extent for Twitter. As with many previous alternative journalistic efforts, reporting was dominated by a relatively small number of users. In turn, the resulting account itself had a strong event-oriented focus, mirroring often-criticized mainstream protest reporting practices.
Blackwell Companion to New Media Dynamics
The research inquires into the liveliness of the Iranian web in times of censorship as well as op... more The research inquires into the liveliness of the Iranian web in times of censorship as well as oppression of voices critical to the regime. It offers a general approach to studying a "national web," and its health, by measuring the freshness and responsiveness of websites significant to a particular country. It also inquires into the effects of censorship in Iran on (critical) content production, with the lead question being whether censorship kills content. We have found an Iranian web that is fresh and responsive, despite widespread blockage of key websites. Secondly, we have found indications of routine censorship circumvention by Iranian web users. Finally, for the period of study (2009-2011), language critical of the regime continues to be published online, and its incidence has risen over time.
The work offers an approach to conceptualizing, demarcating and analyzing a national web. Instead of defining a priori the types of websites to be included in a national web, the approach put forward here makes use of web devices (platforms and engines) that purport to provide (ranked) lists of URLs relevant to a particular country. Once gathered in such a manner, the websites are studied for their properties, following certain of the common measures (such as responsiveness and page age), and repurposing them to speak in terms of the health of a national web. Are sites lively, or neglected? The case study in question is Iran, which is special for the degree of Internet censorship undertaken by the state. Despite the widespread censorship, we have found a highly responsive Iranian web. We also report on the relationship between responsiveness and blockage, i.e., whether blocked sites are still up, and also whether they have been recently updated. Blocked yet blogging, portions of the Iranian web show strong indications of an active Internet censorship circumvention culture. In seeking to answer, additionally, whether censorship has killed content, a textual analysis shows continued use of language considered critical by the regime, thereby indicating a dearth of self-censorship, at least for websites that are recommended by the leading Iranian platform, Balatarin. The study concludes with the general implications of the approach put forward for national web studies, including a description of the benefits of a national web health index.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Climaps.eu (is(an(online(atlas(providing(data,(visualizations(and(commentaries(about(climate(adap... more Climaps.eu (is(an(online(atlas(providing(data,(visualizations(and(commentaries(about(climate(adaptation(debate.( It(contains(33(issueHmaps.(Each(of(the(maps(focuses(on(one(issue(in(the(adaptation(debate(and(provides: ( o an(interactive(visualization;( o a(discussion(of(the(map(and(the(findings(that(it(discloses;( o a(description(of(the(protocol(through(which(the(map(has(been(created;( o the(raw(and(the(cleaned(data(on(which(the(map(is(based(and(the(code(employed(to(treat(them.( Climaps.eu(also(contains(5(issueHstories(guiding(the(users(in(the(combined(reading(of(several(maps.( The(atlas(is(addressed(to(climate(experts((negotiators,(NGOs(and(companies(concerned(by(global(warming,( journalists…)(and(to(citizens(willing(to(engage(with(the(issues(of(climate(adaptation.( It(employs(advanced(digital(methods(to(deploy(the(complexity(of(the(issues(related(to(climate(adaptation(and( information(design(to(make(this(complexity(legible.( Controversy(mapping(and(the('sprint'(workshops( Climaps.eu(has(been(produced(by(the(EUHfunded(project(EMAPS((www.emapsproject.com)(as(largest(experiment( tempted(so(far(with(the(method(of('controversy(mapping'.( Controversy(mapping(is(a(research(technique(developed(in(the(field(of(the(Sciences(and(Technology(Studies((STS)(to( deal(with(the(growing(intricacy(of(socioUtechnical(debates.(Instead(of(mourning(such(complexity,(it(aims(to(equip( engaged(citizens(with(tools(to(navigate(through(expert(disagreement.(Instead(of(lamenting(the(fragmentation( of(society,(it(aims(to(facilitate(the(emergence(of(more(heterogeneous(discussion(forums((cfr:( http://climaps.eu/#/controversyUmapping).( Such(objectives(are(pursued( o by(collaborating(with(experts(from(different(camps(in(the(debate,( o by(exploiting(digital(data(and(computation(to(follow(the(weaving((of(technoUscientific(discourses,( o and(by(using(design(to(make(such(complexity(readable(for(a(larger(public.( Because(of(the(necessity(to(organize(a(transHdisciplinary(collaboration(between(controversy(mappers,(issueU experts,(data(scientists(and(designers,(EMAPS(invented(a(new(format(research(format:(the('sprint'.( Inspired(by(openUsource(hackathons(and(digital(humanities(barcamps,(sprints(are(hybrid(forums(where(30H40( people(with(different(backgrounds(gather(to(work(intensively(for(a(full(week(to(map(a(given(socioUtechnical( issue.(Unlike (its(antecedents,(sprints(are(extensively(prepared(in(advanced((by(defining(the(research(questions,( collecting(and(cleaning(the(data,(forming(the(groups)(so(that(the(workshops(can(succeed(in(delivering(usable( results(in(oneUweek(time((cfr:(http://climaps.eu/#/sprints).( Findings(and(issueHstories( Adaptation(and(mitigation(in(the(UNFCCC( Analyzing( the( Earth( Negotiation( Bulletin,( we( identified( the( main( discussion( in( the( UN( Convention( on( Climate( Change ,( traced( their( visibility(over(time(and(the(countries(engaged(with(them.( Adaptation( and( mitigation( have( different( places( in( the( UNFCCC.( Mitigation( constitutes( the( main( object( of( the( convention,( is( present( everywhere( in( its( conversation( and( structures( the( articulation(of(the(debate.(Adaptation,(on(the(contrary,(appears(as( a( group( of( specific( discussions( and( has( a( limited( though( central( place(in(the(negotiations.( Although,( adaptation( is( present( from( the( beginning( in( UN( conferences( (in( particular( the( question( of( its( funding), ( an( 'adaptation( turn'( is( visible( from( 2004( with( the( rise( of( the( questions(of(vulnerability(and(of(climate(change(impacts.( cfr:( http://climaps.eu/#!/narrative/mitigationUandUadaptationU inUtheUunfcccUdebates( (
Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan iséén van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee be... more Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan iséén van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee bezig kan 1 houden de empirie. Kan empirie echter ook filosofische principes rechtvaardigen? In ons onderzoek gebruiken we simulatie, een vorm van empirie, om een tot nu toe onbewezen 2 theorie uit de taalfilosofie te testen.
3.1 De pseudocode voor de berekening van de wijzigingsafstand door middelvandynamischprogrammeren... more 3.1 De pseudocode voor de berekening van de wijzigingsafstand door middelvandynamischprogrammeren.................. 14 3.2 Voorbeeld van een matrix gecreëerd voor de berekening van de wijzigingsafstand tussen van T= bcdeffghixkl en P= ...
Political campaigning and the corresponding advertisement money are increasingly moving online. S... more Political campaigning and the corresponding advertisement money are increasingly moving online. Some analysts claim that the U.S. elections were partly won through a smart use of (i) targeted advertising and (ii) social media. But what type of information do politicized users consume online? And, the other way around, for a given content, e.g. a YouTube video, is it possible to predict its political audience? To address this latter question, we present a large scale study of anonymous YouTube video consumption of politicized users, where political orientation is derived from visits to "beacon pages", namely, political partisan blogs. Though our techniques are relevant for targeted political advertising, we believe that our findings are also of a wider interest.
Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration - OpenSym '14, 2014
Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where di↵erent points of view lead t... more Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where di↵erent points of view lead to conflict. In Wikipedia, one of the most prominent examples of collaboration online, conflict is mediated by both policy and software, and conflicts often reflect larger societal debates.
Handelingen van de …, 2002
Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan is één van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee b... more Als filosofie de rechtvaardiging van kennis is, dan is één van de onderwerpen waar zij zich mee bezig kan1 houden de empirie. Kan empirie echter ook filosofische principes rechtvaardigen? In ons onderzoek gebruiken we simulatie, een vorm van empirie, om ...
Journalism, Jan 1, 2011
This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by... more This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by the protestors of the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, Canada. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network, the network that coordinated the protests, urged participants to broadcast news using Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. This particular use of social media is studied in the light of the history and theory of alternative journalism. Analyzing a set of 11,556 tweets, 222 videos, and 3,338 photos, the article assesses user participation in social media protest reporting, as well as the resulting protest accounts. The findings suggest that social media did not facilitate the crowd-sourcing of alternative reporting, except to some extent for Twitter. As with many previous alternative journalistic efforts, reporting was dominated by a relatively small number of users. In turn, the resulting account itself had a strong event-oriented focus, mirroring often-criticized mainstream protest reporting practices.
Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '15, 2015
Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead ... more Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead to conflict. We focus on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone may edit, where disputes about content in controversial articles often reflect larger societal debates. While Wikipedia has a public edit history
and discussion section for every article, the substance of these sections is difficult to phantom for
Wikipedia users interested in the development of an article and in locating which topics were most controversial. In this paper we present Contropedia, a tool that augments Wikipedia articles and gives insight into the development of controversial topics. Contropedia uses an efficient language agnostic measure based on the edit history that focuses on wiki
links to easily identify which topics within a Wikipedia article have been most controversial and when.
CHI'15: 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings, Apr 2015
Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead ... more Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead to conflict. We focus on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone may edit, where disputes about content in controversial articles often reflect larger societal debates. While Wikipedia has a public edit history and discussion section for every article, the substance of these sections is difficult to phantom for Wikipedia users interested in the development of an article and in locating which topics were most controversial. In this paper we present Contropedia, a tool that augments Wikipedia articles and gives insight into the development of controversial topics. Contropedia uses an efficient language agnostic measure based on the edit history that focuses on wiki links to easily identify which topics within a Wikipedia article have been most controversial and when.
When looking for information on Wikipedia, Internet users generally just read the latest version ... more When looking for information on Wikipedia, Internet users generally just read the latest version of an article. However, in its back-end there is much more: associated to each article are the edit history and talk pages, which together entail its full evolution. These spaces can typically reach thousands of contributions, and it is not trivial to make sense of them by manual inspection. This issue also affects Wikipedians, especially the less experienced ones, and constitutes a barrier for new editor engagement and retention. To address these limitations, Contropedia offers its users unprecedented access to the development of an article, using wiki links as focal points.
Aslib Journal of Information Management, 2014
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce Digital Methods Initiative Twitter Capture a... more Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to introduce Digital Methods Initiative Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset, a toolset for capturing and analyzing Twitter data. Instead of just presenting a technical paper detailing the system, however, the authors argue that the type of data used for, as well as the methods encoded in, computational systems have epistemological repercussions for research. The authors thus aim at situating the development of the toolset in relation to methodological debates in the social sciences and humanities.
Design/methodology/approach
– The authors review the possibilities and limitations of existing approaches to capture and analyze Twitter data in order to address the various ways in which computational systems frame research. The authors then introduce the open-source toolset and put forward an approach that embraces methodological diversity and epistemological plurality.
Findings
– The authors find that design decisions and more general methodological reasoning can and should go hand in hand when building tools for computational social science or digital humanities.
Practical implications
– Besides methodological transparency, the software provides robust and reproducible data capture and analysis, and interlinks with existing analytical software. Epistemic plurality is emphasized by taking into account how Twitter structures information, by allowing for a number of different sampling techniques, by enabling a variety of analytical approaches or paradigms, and by facilitating work at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
Originality/value
– The paper opens up critical debate by connecting tool design to fundamental interrogations of methodology and its repercussions for the production of knowledge. The design of the software is inspired by exchanges and debates with scholars from a variety of disciplines and the attempt to propose a flexible and extensible tool that accommodates a wide array of methodological approaches is directly motivated by the desire to keep computational work open for various epistemic sensibilities.
First Monday, Jul 2, 2012
We developed Political Insights, an online searchable database of politically charged queries, wh... more We developed Political Insights, an online searchable database of politically charged queries, which allows you to obtain topical insights into partisan concern. In this paper we demonstrate how you can discover such political queries and how to lay bare which issues are most salient to political audiences. We employ anonymized search engine queries resulting in a click on U.S. political blogs to calculate the probability that a query will land on blogs of a particular leaning. We are thus able to ‘charge’ queries politically and to group them along opposing partisan lines. Finally, by comparing the zip codes of users submitting these queries with election results, we find that the leaning of blogs people read correlates well with their likely voting behavior.
ACM Web Science Conference, 2012
We present a novel approach to using anonymized web search query logs to analyze and visualize po... more We present a novel approach to using anonymized web search query logs to analyze and visualize political issues. Our starting point is a list of politically annotated blogs (left vs. right). We use this list to assign a numerical political leaning to queries leading to clicks on these blogs. Furthermore, we map queries to Wikipedia articles and to fact-checked statements from politifact.com, as well as applying sentiment analysis to search results. With this rich, multi-faceted data set we obtain novel graphical visualizations of issues and discover connections between the different variables. Our findings include (i) an interest in “the other side” where queries about Democrat politicians have a right leaning and vice versa, (ii) evidence that “lies are catchy” and that queries pertaining to false statements are more likely to attract large volumes, and (iii) the observation that the more right-leaning a query it is, the more negative sentiments can be found in its search results.
ACM SIGIR Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, 2012
We present Political Search Trends, a browser based web search analysis tool that (i) assigns a p... more We present Political Search Trends, a browser based web search analysis tool that (i) assigns a political leaning to web search queries, (ii) detects trending political queries in a given week, and (iii) links search queries to fact-checked statements. In terms of methodol- ogy, it showcases the power of analyzing queries leading to clicks on selected, annotated web sites of interest.
Journalism, 2012
This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by... more This article examines the appropriation of social media as platforms of alternative journalism by the protestors of the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto, Canada. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network, the network that coordinated the protests, urged participants to broadcast news using Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. This particular use of social media is studied in the light of the history and theory of alternative journalism. Analyzing a set of 11,556 tweets, 222 videos, and 3,338 photos, the article assesses user participation in social media protest reporting, as well as the resulting protest accounts. The findings suggest that social media did not facilitate the crowd-sourcing of alternative reporting, except to some extent for Twitter. As with many previous alternative journalistic efforts, reporting was dominated by a relatively small number of users. In turn, the resulting account itself had a strong event-oriented focus, mirroring often-criticized mainstream protest reporting practices.
Blackwell Companion to New Media Dynamics
The research inquires into the liveliness of the Iranian web in times of censorship as well as op... more The research inquires into the liveliness of the Iranian web in times of censorship as well as oppression of voices critical to the regime. It offers a general approach to studying a "national web," and its health, by measuring the freshness and responsiveness of websites significant to a particular country. It also inquires into the effects of censorship in Iran on (critical) content production, with the lead question being whether censorship kills content. We have found an Iranian web that is fresh and responsive, despite widespread blockage of key websites. Secondly, we have found indications of routine censorship circumvention by Iranian web users. Finally, for the period of study (2009-2011), language critical of the regime continues to be published online, and its incidence has risen over time.
The work offers an approach to conceptualizing, demarcating and analyzing a national web. Instead of defining a priori the types of websites to be included in a national web, the approach put forward here makes use of web devices (platforms and engines) that purport to provide (ranked) lists of URLs relevant to a particular country. Once gathered in such a manner, the websites are studied for their properties, following certain of the common measures (such as responsiveness and page age), and repurposing them to speak in terms of the health of a national web. Are sites lively, or neglected? The case study in question is Iran, which is special for the degree of Internet censorship undertaken by the state. Despite the widespread censorship, we have found a highly responsive Iranian web. We also report on the relationship between responsiveness and blockage, i.e., whether blocked sites are still up, and also whether they have been recently updated. Blocked yet blogging, portions of the Iranian web show strong indications of an active Internet censorship circumvention culture. In seeking to answer, additionally, whether censorship has killed content, a textual analysis shows continued use of language considered critical by the regime, thereby indicating a dearth of self-censorship, at least for websites that are recommended by the leading Iranian platform, Balatarin. The study concludes with the general implications of the approach put forward for national web studies, including a description of the benefits of a national web health index.