Supporting policy-making with social media and e-participation platforms data: A policy analytics framework

E-participation enables citizens to have an impact on policy-making through electronic means. Two of the most popular channels are social media and dedicated e-participation platforms. However, the ideas, comments, discussions of citizens on these two channels generate a lot of data to be processed by political representatives or public agents afterwards. Despite the existence of various techniques for social media analytics, literature is scarce regarding the analysis techniques to mine e-participation platforms as well as the possible combination of insights between the two channels.In order to address these gaps, we design a policy analytics framework to leverage insights from e-participation platforms and social media through relevant data analytics to support policy-making. In order to do so, we rely on the Design Science Research methodology. Through the analysis of four different cities in Belgium (Liège, Mons, Marche-en-Famenne, Leuven), we identify policy-makers' requirements and needs of information from platforms and social media. Then, we explore data analysis techniques to address those requirements. Finally, we design an actionable framework, present it as an interactive dashboard and iteratively test it on the case of Liège. This policy analytics framework supports each step of the traditional policy-making process with appropriate data analytics applied to the two sources.     

Applying user analytics to uses and effects of social media in China

ABSTRACT

We introduce what user analytics can do in the first half of the paper and then illustrate how to do user analytics in the second half. In the current context, user analytics refers to a set of diverse communication research methods on uses and effects of social media. User analytics has evolved from TV ratings research to online user research. The history illustrates what data sources, measures, and analyses can be used for what types of research questions under user analytics. We discuss the similarities of and differences between user analytics and other methods of computational communication research (e.g. content mining and online experiments), and compare the strengths and weaknesses of user analytics with traditional quantitative methods (e.g. survey). Finally, we present an application study of Chinese bloggers to demonstrate how to employ user analytics methods to study the production, consumption, and effects of user-generated content.     

Use and evaluation of information from social media: A longitudinal cohort study

This cohort study examined longitudinal changes in undergraduates' use of social media as information sources in academic and everyday-life contexts, covering types of social media used, purposes of use, and evaluation strategies. Web surveys were used, collecting data from 1,355 and 928 undergraduates in 2013 and 2019. The study found that students used most types of social media less in 2019 than 2013 in both contexts. Only media-sharing services bucked this downward pattern. Overall, a majority of social media types underwent changes in the top three purposes of use. The 2019 cohort used most evaluation strategies more frequently in both contexts. However, they favored simplistic strategies relying on superficial physical cues when evaluating information. Based on the findings, this study provided recommendations for information literacy education and interface design, such as covering multimedia information evaluation, leveraging various heuristics to prime careful use of social media and analytical evaluation of information.     

A model for understanding new media literacy: Epistemological beliefs and social media use

New media literacy (NML) skills are regarded as crucial for the 21st century. However, there is limited research on the factors affecting NML skills. A robust model was built for exploring the antecedents of NML. The model incorporated epistemological beliefs and social media use purposes. Individuals` purposes of social media use were found to have an effect on beliefs about information. Further, interactional and communicational use of social media makes epistemological beliefs more sophisticated. However, it is more likely to have naïve beliefs with the use of social media for making new friends. Also, the purposes of social media use and epistemological beliefs affect NML skills. Accordingly, interactional use of social media might contribute to justifying information, in turn, increasing NML skills. This study indicates that knowledge of social media use and epistemological beliefs enables us to largely understand the NML skills.     

Project Me: understanding social identities through social media

Courses: Intercultural Communication, Communication and Identity, Interpersonal Communication

Objectives: After completing this semester-long activity, students should be able to (1) discuss and apply the concepts of social identities; (2) analyze the influence of self-identities on online communication practices of self to others and others to self; and (3) create critical, informational, and respectful online content that promotes conversations and learning about social identities.     

A social media strategy for academic libraries

This study was carried out to analyse strategies regarding the use of social media for academic library services in Ghana. The research design was quantitative and adopted the survey approach. Questionnaires served as the main data collection instrument. The study population comprised of one hundred and ten library staff from public and private universities in Ghana. As indicated by the study results, the library staff agreed that there was a need for a well-formulated social media strategy to help academic libraries identify the most appropriate social media tools, establish contact with targeted audience, and increase engagement rates to enable an effective and efficient distribution of its resources and services. The results also indicated that the academic libraries, however, seem to neglect these strategies which could drive patrons' use of such platforms. Recommendations therefore suggest the need to implement social media plans and policies, user engagement, social media update, and dedicated staff with the requisite skills in the use of social media platforms for library services delivery.     

Challenge stressors from using social media for work and change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior: Effects of public service motivation and job involvement

There is a growing attention to the phenomenon of technostress in the workplace over the last decade. However, research to date has focused predominantly on the dark side of technostress, while empirical studies on the challenge aspect of technostress have been absent. Using data collected from government ministry employees in China, this study utilized a moderated mediation model to examine how two challenge stressors resulting from the use of social media for work purposes, time pressure, and learning demand, were related to change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (CO-OCB) in the public sector. Results showed that for employees with higher public service motivation (PSM), both time pressure and learning demand were positively related to CO-OCB via the mediating role of job involvement. For low-PSM employees, however, the indirect positive relationship with CO-OCB through job involvement was only significant for learning demand but not for time pressure.     

Capricious opinions: A study of polarization of social media groups

Experts claim that the world is increasingly polarized by emerging social media platforms. The political actors amplify the polarization through their agents' user-generated content. The extreme political ideologies sway the people sitting on the fence on these social media platforms. Using tweets on a recent policy change on identity in India, the present study seeks to perform a scientific analysis of the polarization of the debates within ordinary citizens' groups from a theoretical lens. We further highlight some of the crucial trends that triggered these polarized discussions in general. Through the lens of Echo chambers and Herd behavior, this study provides valuable insights surrounding the influencers and individuals involved in this discussion where the polarization of preferences is witnessed. Proposing a novel design of a root-level influencer, this study establishes them as polarization actors on a social media platform (Twitter). Through various engagement metrics, we also identify the role of targeted communication (hashtags) and similarity in the users' discussion across the political domain as potential behavioral explanations for opinion polarization on Twitter.     

Predicting elections from social media: a three-country,three-method comparative study

ABSTRACT

This study introduces and evaluates the robustness of different volumetric, sentiment, and social network approaches to predict the elections in three Asian countries – Malaysia, India, and Pakistan from Twitter posts. We find that predictive power of social media performs well for India and Pakistan but is not effective for Malaysia. Overall, we find that it is useful to consider the recency of Twitter posts while using it to predict a real outcome, such as an election result. Sentiment information mined using machine learning models was the most accurate predictor of election outcomes. Social network information is stable despite sudden surges in political discussions, for e.g. around elections-related news events. Methods combining sentiment and volume information, or sentiment and social network information, are effective at predicting smaller vote shares, for e.g. vote shares in the case of independent candidates and regional parties. We conclude with a detailed discussion on the caveats of social media analysis for predicting real-world outcomes and recommendations for future work.     

Making professional development more social: A systematic review of librarians' professional development through social media

To maintain relevancy with the ever-increasing competencies required of them, librarians on the job have frequently turned to professional development (PD) opportunities. One outlet that could potentially address barriers librarians face when accessing PD is social media, which can help librarians communicate across distances, are used at low to no cost, and can be accessed asynchronously as needed. Drawing from 25 studies conducted in 21 countries, this systematic literature review explored the empirical themes evident in the current research on librarians' adoption of social media for PD purposes. This review found (1) there is considerable potential in adopting social media for PD across contexts; (2) studies focused on the affordances provided by social media in areas where there is limited infrastructure, support, and resources for PD; (3) in congruence with prior research pertaining to the Technology Acceptance Model, librarians who felt more tech-savvy were more likely to adopt social media for PD; and (4) social media was viewed as democratic in creating a platform where diverse voices could participate. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for practitioners and recommendations for future research directions.     

e-GovQual: A multiple-item scale for assessing e-government service quality

A critical element in the evolution of governmental services through the internet is the development of sites that better serve the citizens' needs. To deliver superior service quality, we must first understand how citizens perceive and evaluate online. Citizen assessment is built on defining quality, identifying underlying dimensions, and conceptualizing measurements of these e-government services. In this article an e-gov service quality model (e-GovQual) is conceptualized and then a multiple-item scale for measuring e-gov service quality of governmental sites where citizens seek either information or service, is developed, refined, validated confirmed and tested.     

A critical examination of social media adoption in government: Introducing omnipresence

As government agencies at every level are adopting social media tools, scholarship is emerging that indicates dialogic potentials meant to increase citizen engagement might not be met. With that premise, we take a critical examination of the way social media can increase capacity for engagement rather encourage collaboration, depending upon the way the tools are constructed. To do so, we expand Lippmann's notion of the phantom public to introduce the theoretical constructs of Omnipresent Citizens and Omnipresent Administrators. These people are everywhere but nowhere and embody characteristics of accessibility, desire to participate, and the possibility of remaining anonymous. Each has implications for citizen participation.     

服务接触对图书馆服务质量的影响实证

图书馆服务接触是读者感知图书馆服务质量的基础.论文从图书馆服务接触视角人手,对服务环境、服务人员、服务方式建立观测量表,并在问卷调查的基础上,通过交叉分析、相关性分析、回归分析等方法,分析了用户的部分个体特征、服务接触相关因素对用户感知服务质量的影响.     

Public library needs assessment to build a community-based library: Triangulation method with a social media data analysis

Public libraries must respond to the needs of the communities they serve in order to remain relevant, but assessing these needs is especially challenging in the midst of the rapid development of information technology. This study examines needs assessments to understand the user community, library services, and expected sources to determine user needs regarding space and services. The research employed a mixed-method approach including semi-structured interviews, a questionnaire assessment, and Social Network Site (SNS) big data analysis. The study assessed the needs and characteristics of users and non-users at Yongsan-gu Public Library, South Korea. Data collected were used to examine how the library was affected by COVID-19, the steps it taken to adjust and provide services, and how users have adapted to library use during the pandemic. The research results provide direction for building a future public library in regions that lack cultural infrastructure. The results also demonstrate that it is necessary to construct infrastructure linked to cultural projects by creating complex cultural and user-oriented spaces.     

A framework for interpreting social media interactions in the public sector

Social media applications are extending the information and communication technology landscape in the public sector and are used to increase government transparency, participation and collaboration in the U.S. federal government. The success, impact and performance of these new forms of bi-directional and networked interactions can provide insights to understand compliance with the mandate of the Open Government Initiative. Many government agencies are experimenting with the use of social media, however very few actively measure the impact of their digital interactions. This article builds on insights from social media directors in the U.S. federal government highlighting their current lack of measurement practices for social media interactions. Based on their articulated needs for measurement, existing rules regulating the extent of measurement practices and technological features of the main social media platforms, a framework is presented that traces online interactions to mission support and the resulting social media tactics. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Extracting the interdisciplinary specialty structures in social media data-based research: A clustering-based network approach

As science is becoming more interdisciplinary and potentially more data driven over time, it is important to investigate the changing specialty structures and the emerging intellectual patterns of research fields and domains. By employing a clustering-based network approach, we map the contours of a novel interdisciplinary domain – research using social media data – and analyze how the specialty structures and intellectual contributions are organized and evolve. We construct and validate a large-scale (N = 12,732) dataset of research papers using social media data from the Web of Science (WoS) database, complementing it with citation relationships from the Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) database. We conduct cluster analyses in three types of citation-based empirical networks and compare the observed features with those generated by null network models. Overall, we find three core thematic research subfields – interdisciplinary socio-cultural sciences, health sciences, and geo-informatics – that designate the main epicenter of research interests recognized by this domain itself. Nevertheless, at the global topological level of all networks, we observe an increasingly interdisciplinary trend over the years, fueled by publications not only from core fields such as communication and computer science, but also from a wide variety of fields in the social sciences, natural sciences, and technology. Our results characterize the specialty structures of this domain at a time of growing emphasis on big social data, and we discuss the implications for indicating interdisciplinarity.     

Weibo diplomacy: Foreign embassies communicating on Chinese social media

This study investigates public diplomacy on a Chinese social media platform – Weibo. Examining the traffic (i.e., the number of followers) of 30 foreign embassies on Weibo, this study confirms that under certain conditions, digital diplomacy can be effective even in closed information systems. The results suggest that the number of followers an embassy has does not always increase with the economic size of a country or its bilateral economic relationships with China; instead, the number of followers of an embassy's Weibo account grows with the embassy's daily posts. Weibo allows embassies to unshackle the limitations imposed by their economic weight or geopolitical influence and to attract a larger audience through active daily posts. Using Weibo can also help foreign government representations in China manage changes in international relations. This study provides further insights into how social media have changed the traditional pattern of information flow not only in an open Internet environment but also in a closed social media environment where the Internet is under heavy censorship. It also proposes some recommendations for policy makers.     

Aiming for service excellence: Implementing a plan for customer service quality at a blended service desk

ABSTRACT

This article discusses a public service review and redesign that resulted in a blended service desk combining reference and circulation functions, staffed by nonlibrarians. The redesign implements a number of organizational structures that encourage service excellence, as found in the business literature and in examples of nonlibrary organizations that excel in customer service. The article identifies key organizational structures that have been shown to support or hinder good service and discusses the process of implementing these structures in practice and the results of an assessment process designed around determining success.     

Representations of youth in local media: Implications for library service

This study is the first content analysis of news media representations of young adults specifically connected to the possible implications for library service for this age group. News and feature stories about young adults in two California newspapers surveyed over a consecutive three-month period between January and March 2007 identified common patterns in the collective representations of youth which raise questions about the potential institutional implications of these portrayals for young adult services. Analysis of the survey found young people were depicted routinely as troubled, troubling, and dangerous, a finding consistent with more than a decade of general media research. Examining these representations may help libraries become better and more critically informed about actual youth behaviors and thus initiate institutional debate about more effective service approaches with this age group which constitutes significant portion of library users.