Follow to be followed: Analyzing The centrality of Ministries of Foreign Affairs in Twitter Networks

by Dr Ilan Manor 12/01/2024 Leave a Comment

Through Twitter, diplomats can comment on world events in near-real time, narrate their state’s actions and justify state policies.

by Dr Ilan Manor 12/01/2024 Leave a Comment

Although they are often described as antiquated and change resistant institutions, Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) have proven to be innovative, utilizing new digital technologies towards the obtainment of traditional diplomatic goals. Since 2008, MFAs have launched digital Embassies in virtual worlds, migrated to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter (now X), created digital diplomacy departments tasked with training diplomats, employed big data and sentiment analysis to inform the policy formulation process and launched dedicated smartphone applications. In a recent study, published in Policy & Internet, Elad Segev and I sought to analyze Twitter networks of MFAs. Previous studies suggest that although MFAs operate numerous social media profiles, they are most active on Twitter. Through Twitter, diplomats can comment on world events in near-real time, narrate their state’s actions and justify state policies. Moreover, Twitter enables diplomats to interact with elite audiences including journalists, policy makers and other diplomatic institutions. Indeed, studies suggest that diplomatic institutions follow one another on Twitter and that diplomats view their peers’ Twitter profile as an important source of information. For instance, MFAs may follow peers to identify policy shifts, diplomatic priorities and state’s positions on events shaping the world. Few studies to date have mapped MFA networks on Twitter or tried to examine which factors contribute to the popularity, or centrality of MFAs in a Twitter network of their peers. It is possible that Twitter networks of MFAs mirror offline networks of diplomacy. In such an instance, one might expect that world powers would attract the most peers on Twitter. Yet it is also possible that Twitter networks differ from offline networks and that MFAs from peripheral states may attract more peers than world powers. In our study, we strove to both map MFA networks on Twitter and identify factors that contribute to the network centrality of an MFA among a network of its peers. To do so, we analyzed the Twitter network…

Collective Action, Democracy

Hate speech by political actors on X. The Spanish case.

by Dr Elias Said-Hung 09/01/2024

Political agents utilize digital platforms as alternative venues to solidify their ideological stances, employing rhetorical tactics characterized by substantial emotional impact, disinformation content, and hate expressions against specific individuals or social groups.

by Dr Elias Said-Hung 09/01/2024

The widespread use of social networking platforms has facilitated enhanced communication between users and significantly influenced public opinion due to the vast amount of information readily available. Often, this information is shared anonymously and with immediate effect. Political figures have capitalized on this opportunity to engage with their audience directly, circumventing traditional media outlets. Their objective is to garner the attention of their potential voters by expressing their political perspectives on prominent issues and leaving a lasting impression on public opinion. Like numerous other countries, Spain grapples with political polarization and heightened tensions among actors in the prevailing landscape. During the early 2010s, Spain witnessed a significant increase in politically extreme groups, such as Vox, contributing to heightened political polarization. Political agents utilize digital platforms as alternative venues to solidify their ideological stances, employing rhetorical tactics characterized by substantial emotional impact, disinformation content, and hate expressions against specific individuals or social groups. This approach perpetuates prejudices and stereotypes among message recipients by repeatedly employing denigrant language. This phenomenon happens in a fragmented multi-party system like Spain’s, which comprises an array of national, local, and regional actors, and where the traditional two-party system is losing influence, and such tactics have attained greater significance. Digital platforms have emerged as the primary mode of interaction, facilitated by the echo chamber effect and homophily between users who typically engage in such scenarios. In these situations, political actors applied unidirectional communication to their voters. A form of communication that can involve the dissemination of disinformation and hate speech as tools for their rhetoric. This blog entry is based on a research paper titled “Promotion of hate speech by Spanish political actors on Twitter”, recently published in Policy & Internet (P&I). The study examines the extent and nature of hate speech on Twitter, as expressed by the 16 political groups in Spain’s Congress in 2020. We recognize the limitations of the scope of the paper. However, it…

Politics & Government

The Definition Conundrum: What is Online Political Advertising and How do we Regulate it?

by Dr Junyan Zhu 07/12/2023

With political advertising increasingly taking place online, the question of regulation is becoming inescapable. In their latest paper, published in Policy&Internet, Junyan Zhu explores the definition of online political advertising and identities key questions regulators must confront when devising effective frameworks.

by Dr Junyan Zhu 07/12/2023

The rapid surge of online political advertising in recent years has introduced a new dimension to election campaigns. Concerns have arisen regarding the potential consequences of this practice on democracy, including data privacy, voter manipulation, misinformation, and accountability issues. But what exactly is an online political advert? This kind of question is hard to answer, and indeed, reports show that 37 per cent of respondents in the 2021 Eurobarometer Survey couldn’t easily determine whether online content was a political advertisement or not. As of now, only a few platform companies, including Facebook and Google, have defined in their own terms what constitutes this form of content. To address the conceptual challenges faced by policymakers, in our latest paper, we conducted interviews with 19 experts from regulatory bodies, professional advertising associations, and civil society organisations engaged in discussions surrounding online political advertising in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. We delved into the policymakers’ perspectives, seeking to distil their understanding of what constitutes an “advert”, “online” platforms, and “political” content. Instead of crafting new definitions, we pinpointed these alternative factors and illustrated them through a sequence of decision trees. Specifically, our work led us to pose three questions that regulators need to confront: What does it mean for content to be considered an “advert”? When we inquired about the criteria for identifying an advert, a consistent key point that emerged was payment. The central idea revolves around whether payment is involved in content distribution or creation, and it also depends on the timing of the payment. Some interviewees also acknowledged the increasingly blurred boundaries between paid and unpaid content. There are organic ways of spreading material that don’t involve payment, such as an unpaid tweet. These differences matter as they suggest alternative criteria for determining what should or should not count as an advert. What does it mean for an advert to be “online”? This turned out to be the most challenging question…

Call for Papers, Submissions Closed

P&I Special Issue 2023 Call for Paper – Datafication. Platformisation. Metaverse. Global Internet Policy or a Fractured Communication Future?

by Jonathon Hutchinson 29/09/2022

Within our current online and hyper-connected lives, is it possible to have such a thing as global internet policy?

by Jonathon Hutchinson 29/09/2022

*Submissions for this event have closed. Please refer to the event page for further details* Datafication. Platformisation. Metaverse. Global Internet Policy or a Fractured Communication Future? Special Issue Call for Papers, Volume 15, Issue 4 Datafication. Platformisation. Metaverse. What is the state of global internet policy? Within our current online and hyper-connected lives, is it possible to have such a thing as global internet policy? Building off the 2022 Policy & Internet Conference, this special issue addresses the complex and multiple perspectives of internet policy from around the globe. As we evolve through the Anthropocene and attempt to navigate the significant challenges humanity currently faces, we are consistently reminded of the most pressing critical issues of our epoch. Economic systems are the point of breaking, industrial action mobilised by unions is at an all-time high, inflation is rising, workers’ pay continues to fall, and the stability of our political systems has come into question. Our health systems are under unfathomable stress, refugee numbers are increasing through displacement, and the war in Ukraine continues, all of which adds to the growing global societal, economic and political pressures. And yet, concurrently, our connectivity through digital media and its surrounding environments is at an all-time high, arguably from the rise of technology players providing suites of social media platforms and its supporting infrastructures that enable a seamless and convenient, always-on lifestyle. The same app that enables us to chat with our friends and family can also book our rideshares, order our food, pay for our purchases and tempt us to become internet celebrities. What was once framed as user generated content activity has now become a normalised cultural pastime, as TikTok influencers feed the demotic turn that sees ordinary folk become internet superstars in rather small timeframes. At the same time, policymakers are reforming legislation to address the incomprehensible imbalance of power that is generated by technology giants. One of the immediate issues…

Ethics, Governance & Security, Interviews

Censorship or rumour management? How Weibo constructs “truth” around crisis events

by David Sutcliffe 03/10/2017

Examining the content moderation strategies of Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblogging platform, in regulating discussion of rumours following the 2015 Tianjin blasts.

by David Sutcliffe 03/10/2017

On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions killed 173 people and injured hundreds at a container storage station at the Port of Tianjin. Tianjin Port by Matthias Catón (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

As social media become increasingly important as a source of news and information for citizens, there is a growing concern over the impacts of social media platforms on information quality—as evidenced by the furore over the impact of “fake news”. Driven in part by the apparently substantial impact of social media on the outcomes of Brexit and the US Presidential election, various attempts have been made to hold social media platforms to account for presiding over misinformation, with recent efforts to improve fact-checking. There is a large and growing body of research examining rumour management on social media platforms. However, most of these studies treat it as a technical matter, and little attention has been paid to the social and political aspects of rumour. In their Policy & Internet article “How Social Media Construct ‘Truth’ Around Crisis Events: Weibo’s Rumor Management Strategies after the 2015 Tianjin Blasts”, Jing Zeng, Chung-hong Chan and King-wa Fu examine the content moderation strategies of Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblogging platform, in regulating discussion of rumours following the 2015 Tianjin blasts. Studying rumour communication in relation to the manipulation of social media platforms is particularly important in the context of China. In China, Internet companies are licensed by the state, and their businesses must therefore be compliant with Chinese law and collaborate with the government in monitoring and censoring politically sensitive topics. Given most Chinese citizens rely heavily on Chinese social media services as alternative information sources or as grassroots “truth”, the anti-rumour policies have raised widespread concern over the implications for China’s online sphere. As there is virtually no transparency in rumour management on Chinese social media, it is an important task for researchers to investigate how Internet platforms engage with rumour content and any associated impact on public discussion. We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings: Ed.: “Fake news” is currently a very hot issue, with Twitter and Facebook both…

Governance & Security, Interviews, Methods

How policy makers can extract meaningful public opinion data from social media to inform their actions

by David Sutcliffe 07/07/2017

Examining how the information available on social media can support the actions of politicians and bureaucrats along the policy cycle.

by David Sutcliffe 07/07/2017

Social media analysis can provide insight into the mobilisation processes of stakeholders in response to government actions. Image of No-TAV protestors by Darren Johnson (Flickr: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The role of social media in fostering the transparency of governments and strengthening the interaction between citizens and public administrations has been widely studied. Scholars have highlighted how online citizen-government and citizen-citizen interactions favour debates on social and political matters, and positively affect citizens’ interest in political processes, like elections, policy agenda setting, and policy implementation. However, while top-down social media communication between public administrations and citizens has been widely examined, the bottom-up side of this interaction has been largely overlooked. In their Policy & Internet article “The ‘Social Side’ of Public Policy: Monitoring Online Public Opinion and Its Mobilisation During the Policy Cycle,” Andrea Ceron and Fedra Negri aim to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice, by examining how the information available on social media can support the actions of politicians and bureaucrats along the policy cycle. Policymakers, particularly politicians, have always been interested in knowing citizens’ preferences, in measuring their satisfaction and in receiving feedback on their activities. Using the technique of Supervised Aggregated Sentiment Analysis, the authors show that meaningful information on public services, programmes, and policies can be extracted from the unsolicited comments posted by social media users, particularly those posted on Twitter. They use this technique to extract and analyse citizen opinion on two major public policies (on labour market reform and school reform) that drove the agenda of the Matteo Renzi cabinet in Italy between 2014 and 2015. They show how online public opinion reacted to the different policy alternatives formulated and discussed during the adoption of the policies. They also demonstrate how social media analysis allows monitoring of the mobilisation and de-mobilisation processes of rival stakeholders in response to the various amendments adopted by the government, with results comparable to those of a survey and a public consultation that were undertaken by the government. We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings: Ed.: You say that this form of opinion…

Interviews

Social media and the battle for perceptions of the U.S.–Mexico border

by David Sutcliffe 07/06/2017

The U.S.–Mexico border is a complex region encompassing both positives and negatives — but understanding these narratives could have a real-world impact on policy along the border.

by David Sutcliffe 07/06/2017

The U.S.–Mexico border to be the location of an annual legal flow of economic trade of $300 billion each year, the frontier of 100 years of peaceful coexistence between two countries, and the point of integration for the U.S.–Mexico relationship. Image: BBC World Service (Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

The US-Mexican border region is home to approximately 12 million people, and is the most-crossed international border in the world. Unlike the current physical border, the image people hold of “the border” is not firmly established, and can be modified. One way is via narratives (or stories), which are a powerful tool for gaining support for public policies. Politicians’ narratives about the border have historically been perpetuated by the traditional media, particularly when this allows them to publish sensational and attention grabbing news stories. However, new social media, including YouTube, provide opportunities for less-mainstream narratives of cooperation. In their Policy & Internet article “Do New Media Support New Policy Narratives? The Social Construction of the U.S.–Mexico Border on YouTube”, Donna L. Lybecker, Mark K. McBeth, Maria A. Husmann, and Nicholas Pelikan find that YouTube videos about the U.S.–Mexico border focus (perhaps unsurprisingly) on mainstream, divisive issues such as security and violence, immigration, and drugs. However, the videos appear to construct more favourable perspectives of the border region than traditional media, with around half constructing a sympathetic view of the border, and the people associated with it. The common perceptions of the border generally take two distinct forms. One holds the U.S.–Mexico border to be the location of an annual legal flow of economic trade of $300 billion each year, a line which millions of people legally cross annually, the frontier of 100 years of peaceful coexistence between two countries, and the point of integration for the U.S.–Mexico relationship. An alternative perspective (particularly common since 9/11) focuses less on economic trade and legal crossing and more on undocumented immigration, violence and drug wars, and a U.S.-centric view of “us versus them”. In order to garner public support for their “solutions” to these issues, politicians often define the border using one of these perspectives. Acceptance of the first view might well allow policymakers to find cooperative solutions to joint problems. Acceptance of…

Governance & Security, Interviews

We aren’t “rational actors” when it comes to privacy—and we need protecting

by David Sutcliffe 05/05/2017

The popularity of technologies and services that reveal insights about our daily lives paints a picture of a public that is voluntarily offering itself up to increasingly invasive forms of surveillance.

by David Sutcliffe 05/05/2017

We are increasingly exposed to new practices of data collection. Image by ijclark (Flickr CC BY 2.0).

As digital technologies and platforms are increasingly incorporated into our lives, we are exposed to new practices of data creation and collection—and there is evidence that American citizens are deeply concerned about the consequences of these practices. But despite these concerns, the public has not abandoned technologies that produce data and collect personal information. In fact, the popularity of technologies and services that reveal insights about our health, fitness, medical conditions, and family histories in exchange for extensive monitoring and tracking paints a picture of a public that is voluntarily offering itself up to increasingly invasive forms of surveillance. This seeming inconsistency between intent and behaviour is routinely explained with reference to the “privacy paradox”. Advertisers, retailers, and others with a vested interest in avoiding the regulation of digital data collection have pointed to this so-called paradox as an argument against government intervention. By phrasing privacy as a choice between involvement in (or isolation from) various social and economic communities, they frame information disclosure as a strategic decision made by informed consumers. Indeed, discussions on digital privacy have been dominated by the idea of the “empowered consumer” or “privacy pragmatist”—an autonomous individual who makes informed decisions about the disclosure of their personal information. But there is increasing evidence that “control” is a problematic framework through which to operationalize privacy. In her Policy & Internet article “From Privacy Pragmatist to Privacy Resigned: Challenging Narratives of Rational Choice in Digital Privacy Debates,” Nora A. Draper examines how the figure of the “privacy pragmatist” developed by the prominent privacy researcher Alan Westin has been used to frame privacy within a typology of personal preference—a framework that persists in academic, regulatory, and commercial discourses in the United States. Those in the pragmatist group are wary about the safety and security of their personal information, but make supposedly rational decisions about the conditions under which they are comfortable with disclosure, logically calculating the costs and…

Ethics, Politics & Government

Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: Fake News and Filter Bubbles

by David Sutcliffe 27/01/2017

Do social media divide us, hide us from each other? Are you particularly aware of what content is personalised for you, what it is you’re not seeing?

by David Sutcliffe 27/01/2017

This is the second post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: Fake News and Filter Bubbles! Fake news, post-truth, “alternative facts”, filter bubbles—this is the news and media environment we apparently now inhabit, and that has formed the fabric and backdrop of Brexit (“£350 million a week”) and Trump (“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period”). Do social media divide us, hide us from each other? Are you particularly aware of what content is personalised for you, what it is you’re not seeing? How much can we do with machine-automated or crowd-sourced verification of facts? And are things really any worse now than when Bacon complained in 1620 about the false notions that “are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein”? 1. Bernie Hogan: How Facebook divides us [Times Literary Supplement] 27 October 2016 | 1000 words | 5 minutes “Filter bubbles can create an increasingly fractured population, such as the one developing in America. For the many people shocked by the result of the British EU referendum, we can also partially blame filter bubbles: Facebook literally filters our friends’ views that are least palatable to us, yielding a doctored account of their personalities.” Bernie Hogan says it’s time Facebook considered ways to use the information it has about us to bring us together across political, ideological and cultural lines, rather than hide us from each other or push us into polarised and hostile camps. He says it’s not only possible for Facebook to help mitigate the issues of filter bubbles and context collapse; it’s imperative, and it’s surprisingly simple. 2. Luciano Floridi: Fake news and a 400-year-old problem: we need to resolve the ‘post-truth’ crisis [the Guardian] 29 November 2016 | 1000…

Politics & Government

Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: The US Election

by David Sutcliffe 20/01/2017

Here are five pieces that consider the interaction of social media and democracy—the problems, but also potential ways forward.

by David Sutcliffe 20/01/2017

Image from Gage Skidmore via Flickr Creative Commons

This is the first post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: The US Election. This was probably the nastiest Presidential election in recent memory: awash with Twitter bots and scandal, polarisation and filter bubbles, accusations of interference by Russia and the Director of the FBI, and another shock result. We have written about electoral prediction elsewhere: instead, here are five pieces that consider the interaction of social media and democracy—the problems, but also potential ways forward. 1. James Williams: The Clickbait Candidate 10 October 2016 | 2700 words | 13 minutes “Trump is very straightforwardly an embodiment of the dynamics of clickbait: he is the logical product (though not endpoint) in the political domain of a media environment designed to invite, and indeed incentivise, relentless competition for our attention […] Like clickbait or outrage cascades, Donald Trump is merely the sort of informational packet our media environment is designed to select for.” James Williams says that now is probably the time to have that societal conversation about the design ethics of the attention economy—because in our current media environment, attention trumps everything. 2. Sam Woolley, Philip Howard: Bots Unite to Automate the Presidential Election [Wired] 15 May 2016 | 850 words | 4 minutes “Donald Trump understands minority communities. Just ask Pepe Luis Lopez, Francisco Palma, and Alberto Contreras […] each tweeted in support of Trump after his victory in the Nevada caucuses earlier this year. The problem is, Pepe, Francisco, and Alberto aren’t people. They’re bots.” It’s no surprise that automated spam accounts (or bots) are creeping into election politics, say Sam Woolley and Philip Howard. Demanding bot transparency would at least help clean up social media—which, for better or worse, is increasingly where presidents get elected. 3. Phil Howard:…