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…

Politics & Government

Bursting the bubbles of the Arab Spring: the brokers who bridge ideology on Twitter

by David Sutcliffe 27/07/2018

Scholarly interest in online activism has grown with its use. Do social media really challenge traditional politics?

by David Sutcliffe 27/07/2018

Thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Friday May 13, 2011. Image by Hossam el-Hamalawy.

Online activism has become increasingly visible, with social media platforms being used to express protest and dissent from the Arab Spring to #MeToo. Scholarly interest in online activism has grown with its use, together with disagreement about its impact. Do social media really challenge traditional politics? Some claim that social media have had a profound and positive effect on modern protest — the speed of information sharing making online networks highly effective in building revolutionary movements. Others argue that this activity is merely symbolic: online activism has little or no impact, dilutes offline activism, and weakens social movements. Given online activity doesn’t involve the degree of risk, trust, or effort required on the ground, they argue that it can’t be considered to be “real” activism. In this view, the Arab Spring wasn’t simply a series of “Twitter revolutions”. Despite much work on offline social movements and coalition building, few studies have used social network analysis to examine the influence of brokers of online activists (i.e. those who act as a bridge between different ideological groups), or their role in information diffusion across a network. In her Policy & Internet article “Brokerage Roles and Strategic Positions in Twitter Networks of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution”, Deena Abul-Fottouh tests whether social movements theory of networks and coalition building — developed to explain brokerage roles in offline networks, between established parties and organisations — can also be used to explain what happens online. Social movements theory suggests that actors who occupy an intermediary structural position between different ideological groups are more influential than those embedded only in their own faction. That is, the “bridging ties” that link across political ideologies have a greater impact on mobilisation than the bonding ties within a faction. Indeed, examining the Egyptian revolution and ensuing crisis, Deena finds that these online brokers were more evident during the first phase of movement solidarity between liberals, islamists, and socialists than in…

Politics & Government, Social Data Science

In a world of “connective action” — what makes an influential Twitter user?

by David Sutcliffe 10/06/2018

The new level of connectivity (particularly of social media) raises important questions about its role in the political process.

by David Sutcliffe 10/06/2018

What is the difference between popularity and reputation on the process of social influence? Image: kris krüg (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

A significant part of political deliberation now takes place on online forums and social networking sites, leading to the idea that collective action might be evolving into “connective action”. The new level of connectivity (particularly of social media) raises important questions about its role in the political process. But understanding important phenomena, such as social influence, social forces, and digital divides, requires analysis of very large social systems, which traditionally has been a challenging task in the social sciences. In their Policy & Internet article “Understanding Popularity, Reputation, and Social Influence in the Twitter Society”, David Garcia, Pavlin Mavrodiev, Daniele Casati, and Frank Schweitzer examine popularity, reputation, and social influence on Twitter using network information on more than 40 million users. They integrate measurements of popularity, reputation, and social influence to evaluate what keeps users active, what makes them more popular, and what determines their influence in the network. Popularity in the Twitter social network is often quantified as the number of followers of a user. That implies that it doesn’t matter why some user follows you, or how important she is, your popularity only measures the size of your audience. Reputation, on the other hand, is a more complicated concept associated with centrality. Being followed by a highly reputed user has a stronger effect on one’s reputation than being followed by someone with low reputation. Thus, the simple number of followers does not capture the recursive nature of reputation. In their article, the authors examine the difference between popularity and reputation on the process of social influence. They find that there is a range of values in which the risk of a user becoming inactive grows with popularity and reputation. Popularity in Twitter resembles a proportional growth process that is faster in its strongly connected component, and that can be accelerated by reputation when users are already popular. They find that social influence on Twitter is mainly related to…

Interviews, Politics & Government

Does Twitter now set the news agenda?

by David Sutcliffe 10/07/2017

Matthew A. Shapiro and Libby Hemphill examine the extent to which he traditional media is influenced by politicians’ Twitter posts.

by David Sutcliffe 10/07/2017

To what extent is the traditional media influenced by politicians’ Twitter posts? [Original Tweet]

The information provided in the traditional media is of fundamental importance for the policy-making process, signalling which issues are gaining traction, which are falling out of favour, and introducing entirely new problems for the public to digest. But the monopoly of the traditional media as a vehicle for disseminating information about the policy agenda is being superseded by social media, with Twitter in particular used by politicians to influence traditional news content. In their Policy & Internet article, “Politicians and the Policy Agenda: Does Use of Twitter by the U.S. Congress Direct New York Times Content?” Matthew A. Shapiro and Libby Hemphill examine the extent to which he traditional media is influenced by politicians’ Twitter posts. They draw on indexing theory, which states that media coverage and framing of key policy issues will tend to track elite debate. To understand why the newspaper covers an issue and predict the daily New York Times content, it is modelled as a function of all of the previous day’s policy issue areas as well as all of the previous day’s Twitter posts about all of the policy issue areas by Democrats and Republicans. They ask to what extent are the agenda-setting efforts of members of Congress acknowledged by the traditional media; what, if any, the advantages are for one party over the other, measured by the traditional media’s increased attention; and whether there is any variance across different policy issue areas? They find that Twitter is a legitimate political communication vehicle for US officials, that journalists consider Twitter when crafting their coverage, and that Twitter-based announcements by members of Congress are a valid substitute for the traditional communiqué in journalism, particularly for issues related to immigration and marginalised groups, and issues related to the economy and health care. We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings: Ed.: Can you give a quick outline of media indexing theory? Does it basically say…

Interviews, Politics & Government, Social Data Science

Did you consider Twitter’s (lack of) representativeness before doing that predictive study?

by David Sutcliffe 10/04/2017

Do Twitter users share identical characteristics with the population interest? For what populations are Twitter data actually appropriate?

by David Sutcliffe 10/04/2017

Twitter data have many qualities that appeal to researchers, but are probably not suitable for research where representativeness is important. Image: Bernard Goldbach (Flickr).

Twitter data have many qualities that appeal to researchers. They are extraordinarily easy to collect. They are available in very large quantities. And with a simple 140-character text limit they are easy to analyse. As a result of these attractive qualities, over 1,400 papers have been published using Twitter data, including many attempts to predict disease outbreaks, election results, film box office gross, and stock market movements solely from the content of tweets. Easy availability of Twitter data links nicely to a key goal of computational social science. If researchers can find ways to impute user characteristics from social media, then the capabilities of computational social science would be greatly extended. However few papers consider the digital divide among Twitter users. But the question of who uses Twitter has major implications for research attempts to use the content of tweets for inference about population behaviour. Do Twitter users share identical characteristics with the population interest? For what populations are Twitter data actually appropriate? A new article by Grant Blank published in Social Science Computer Review provides a multivariate empirical analysis of the digital divide among Twitter users, comparing Twitter users and nonusers with respect to their characteristic patterns of Internet activity and to certain key attitudes. It thereby fills a gap in our knowledge about an important social media platform, and it joins a surprisingly small number of studies that describe the population that uses social media. Comparing British (OxIS survey) and US (Pew) data, Grant finds that generally, British Twitter users are younger, wealthier, and better educated than other Internet users, who in turn are younger, wealthier, and better educated than the offline British population. American Twitter users are also younger and wealthier than the rest of the population, but they are not better educated. Twitter users are disproportionately members of elites in both countries. Twitter users also differ from other groups in their online activities and their attitudes.…

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

Is Social Media Killing Democracy?

by Phil Howard 15/11/2016

Both the Brexit referendum and US election have revealed the limits of modern democracy, and social media platforms are currently setting those limits.

by Phil Howard 15/11/2016

Donald Trump in Reno, Nevada, by Darron Birgenheier (Flickr).

This is the big year for computational propaganda — using immense data sets to manipulate public opinion over social media. Both the Brexit referendum and US election have revealed the limits of modern democracy, and social media platforms are currently setting those limits. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook now provide a structure for our political lives. We’ve always relied on many kinds of sources for our political news and information. Family, friends, news organisations, charismatic politicians certainly predate the internet. But whereas those are sources of information, social media now provides the structure for political conversation. And the problem is that these technologies permit too much fake news, encourage our herding instincts, and aren’t expected to provide public goods. First, social algorithms allow fake news stories from untrustworthy sources to spread like wildfire over networks of family and friends. Many of us just assume that there is a modicum of truth-in-advertising. We expect this from advertisements for commercial goods and services, but not from politicians and political parties. Occasionally a political actor gets punished for betraying the public trust through their misinformation campaigns. But in the United States “political speech” is completely free from reasonable public oversight, and in most other countries the media organisations and public offices for watching politicians are legally constrained, poorly financed, or themselves untrustworthy. Research demonstrates that during the campaigns for Brexit and the U.S. presidency, large volumes of fake news stories, false factoids, and absurd claims were passed over social media networks, often by Twitter’s highly automated accounts and Facebook’s algorithms. Second, social media algorithms provide very real structure to what political scientists often call “elective affinity” or “selective exposure”. When offered the choice of who to spend time with or which organisations to trust, we prefer to strengthen our ties to the people and organisations we already know and like. When offered a choice of news stories, we prefer to read about the issues we already care about,…

Politics & Government

Rethinking Digital Media and Political Change

by Ralf Schroeder 23/08/2016

What are the dangers or new opportunities of digital media?

by Ralf Schroeder 23/08/2016

Did Twitter lead to Donald Trump’s rise and success to date in the American campaign for the presidency? Image: Gage Skidmore (Flickr).

One of the major debates in relation to digital media in the United States has been whether they contribute to political polarisation. I argue in a new paper (Rethinking Digital Media and Political Change) that Twitter led to Donald Trump’s rise and success to date in the American campaign for the presidency. There is plenty of evidence to show that Trump received a disproportionate amount of attention on Twitter, which in turn generated a disproportionate amount of attention in the mainstream media. The strong correlation between the two suggests that Trump was able to bypass the gatekeepers of the traditional media. A second ingredient in his success has been populism, which rails against dominant political elites (including the Republican party) and the ‘biased’ media. Populism also rests on the notion of an ‘authentic’ people—by implication excluding ‘others’ such as immigrants and foreign powers like the Chinese—to whom the leader appeals directly. The paper makes parallels with the strength of the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant party which, in a similar way, has been able to appeal to its following via social media and online newspapers, again bypassing mainstream media with its populist message. There is a difference, however: in the US, commercial media compete for audience share, so Trump’s controversial tweets have been eagerly embraced by journalists seeking high viewership and readership ratings. In Sweden, where public media dominate and there is far less of the ‘horserace’ politics of American politics, the Sweden Democrats have been more locked out of the mainstream media and of politics. In short, Twitter plus populism has led to Trump. I argue that dominating the mediated attention space is crucial. One outcome of how this story ends will be known in November. But whatever the outcome, it is already clear that the role of the media in politics, and how they can be circumvented by new media, requires fundamental rethinking. Ralph Schroeder is Professor and director…

Politics & Government, Social Data Science

Digital Disconnect: Parties, Pollsters and Political Analysis in #GE2015

by Helen Margetts 11/05/2015

The Oxford Internet Institute undertook some live analysis of social media data over the night of the 2015 UK General Election.

by Helen Margetts 11/05/2015

‘Congratulations to my friend @Messina2012 on his role in the resounding Conservative victory in Britain’ tweeted David Axelrod, campaign advisor to Miliband, to his former colleague Jim Messina, Cameron’s strategy adviser, on May 8th. The former was Obama’s communications director and the latter campaign manager of Obama’s 2012 campaign. Along with other consultants and advisors and large-scale data management platforms from Obama’s hugely successful digital campaigns, Conservative and Labour used an arsenal of social media and digital tools to interact with voters throughout, as did all the parties competing for seats in the 2015 election. The parties ran very different kinds of digital campaigns. The Conservatives used advanced data science techniques borrowed from the US campaigns to understand how their policy announcements were being received and to target groups of individuals. They spent ten times as much as Labour on Facebook, using ads targeted at Facebook users according to their activities on the platform, geo-location and demographics. This was a top down strategy that involved working out was happening on social media and responding with targeted advertising, particularly for marginal seats. It was supplemented by the mainstream media, such as the Telegraph for example, which contacted its database of readers and subscribers to services such as Telegraph Money, urging them to vote Conservative. As Andrew Cooper tweeted after the election, ‘Big data, micro-targeting and social media campaigns just thrashed “5 million conversations” and “community organising”’. He has a point. Labour took a different approach to social media. Widely acknowledged to have the most boots on the real ground, knocking on doors, they took a similar ‘ground war’ approach to social media in local campaigns. Our own analysis at the Oxford Internet Institute shows that of the 450K tweets sent by candidates of the six largest parties in the month leading up to the general election, Labour party candidates sent over 120,000 while the Conservatives sent only 80,000, no more than…

Collective Action, Politics & Government

Political polarisation on social media: do birds of a feather flock together on Twitter?

by Anatoliy Gruzd 05/05/2015

Twitter’s connections tend to be less about strong social relationships and more about connecting with people for the purposes of commenting and information sharing.

by Anatoliy Gruzd 05/05/2015

Twitter has exploded in recent years, now boasting half a billion registered users. Like blogs and the world’s largest social networking platform, Facebook, Twitter has actively been used for political discourse during the past few elections in the US, Canada, and elsewhere but it differs from them in a number of significant ways. Twitter’s connections tend to be less about strong social relationships (such as those between close friends or family members), and more about connecting with people for the purposes of commenting and information sharing. Twitter also provides a steady torrent of updates and resources from individuals, celebrities, media outlets, and any other organisation seeking to inform the world as to its views and actions. This may well make Twitter particularly well suited to political debate and activity. Yet important questions emerge in terms of the patterns of conduct and engagement. Chief among them: are users mainly seeking to reinforce their own viewpoints and link with likeminded persons, or is there a basis for widening and thoughtful exposure to a variety of perspectives that may improve the collective intelligence of the citizenry as a result? Conflict and Polarisation Political polarisation often occurs in a so-called ‘echo chamber’ environment, in which individuals are exposed to only information and communities that support their own viewpoints, while ignoring opposing perspectives and insights. In such isolating and self-reinforcing conditions, ideas can become more engrained and extreme due to lack of contact with contradictory views and the exchanges that could ensue as a result. On the web, political polarisation has been found among political blogs, for instance. American researchers have found that liberal and conservative bloggers in the US tend to link to other bloggers who share their political ideology. For Kingwell, a prominent Canadian philosopher, the resulting dynamic is one that can be characterised by a decline in civility and a lessening ability for political compromise to take hold. He laments the emergence…