Overview
Social media today provide an impressive amount of data about users and their societal interactions, thereby offering computer scientists, social scientists, economists, and statisticians many new opportunities for research exploration. Arguably one of the most interesting lines of work is that of forecasting future events and developments based on social media data, as we have recently seen in the areas of politics, finance, entertainment, market demands, health, etc.

But what can successfully be predicted and why? Since the first algorithms and techniques emerged rather recently, little is known about their overall potential, limitations and general applicability to different domains.

Better understanding the predictive power and limitations of social media is therefore of utmost importance, in order to, for example, avoid false expectations, misinformation or unintended consequences. Today, current methods and techniques are far from being well understood, and it is mostly unclear to what extent or under what conditions the different methods for prediction can be applied to social media. While there exists a respectable and growing amount of literature in this area, current work is fragmented, characterized by a lack of common evaluation approaches. Yet, this research seems to have reached a suficient level of interest and relevance to justify a dedicated special issue.

This special issue aims to shape a vision of important questions to be addressed in this field and fill the gaps in current research by soliciting presentations of early research on algorithms, techniques, methods and empirical studies aimed at the prediction of future or present events based on user generated content in social media.

Topics
To address this guiding theme the special issue will be articulated around, but not limited to, the following topics:

1. Politics, branding, and public opinion mining (e.g., electoral, market or stock market prediction).
2. Health, mood, and threats (e.g., epidemic outbreaks, social movements).
3. Methodological aspects (e.g., data collection, data sampling, privacy and data de-identification).
4. Success and failure case studies (e.g., reproducibility of previous research or selection of base-lines).

Schedule
- Manuscript due date: June 1, 2012
- Decisions due: August 1, 2012
- Revised paper due: September 15, 2012
- Notification of acceptance: October 1, 2012
- Submission of final manuscript: October 31, 2012
- Publication date: late 2012 / early 2013 (tentative)

Submission
All submitted manuscripts should be original contributions and not be under consideration in any other venue.

Publication of an enhanced version of a previously published conference paper is possible if the review process determines that the revision contains significant enhancements, amplification or clarification of the original material. Any prior appearance of a substantial amount of a submission should be noted in the submission letter and on the title page.

Submissions must adhere to the Author Guidelines available at:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=intr
Detailed instructions will be announced later this year.

Guest editors
- Daniel Gayo-Avello [@PFCdgayo], University of Oviedo (Spain), dani@uniovi.es
- Panagiotis Takis Metaxas [@takis_metaxas], Wellesley College and Harvard University (USA), pmetaxas@seas.harvard.edu
- Eni Mustafaraj [@enimust], Wellesley College (USA), emustafa@wellesley.edu
- Markus Strohmaier [@mstrohm], Graz University of Technology (Austria), markus.strohmaier@tugraz.at
- Harald Schoen, University of Bamberg (Germany), harald.schoen@uni-bamberg.de
- Peter Gloor [@pgloor], MIT (USA), pgloor@mit.edu

Feel free to contact the guest editors if you have any question.

This is a very good natured book on how to approach academic writing. The simplest, while probably also the hardest, advice Silvia offers is to stick to a regular writing schedule instead of trusting the spur of the moment or the occasional inspiration to provide writing impulses. To this recovering binge writer this seems to be very sound advice, indeed. The upbeat prose and some practical tips for the journal submission process makes this a very agreeable and helpful read.

Clay Shirky (2010) Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Aged. The Penguin Press: New York.

There seems to be a pattern with me and books by Clay Shirky. I see the talk, like the basic idea and leave it at that, only to return a few months later to actually read the book and find much of value there. This was true for “Here Comes Everybody” and it’s also true this time around for “Cognitive Surplus”. Let’s see if the pattern holds in the future.

In “Cognitive Surplus” Shirky argues that during the second half of last century the majority of people in the West suddenly found themselves with a lot of spare time on their hands. Shirky calls this the Cognitive Surplus. To Shirky social media would enable users to do better things with that surplus than watch TV. Shirky starts by describing the new media environment and the ermergent possibilities to use social media for social good. Still, he does not argue in favor of a simplistic technological determinism the likes of: “We have the tools now they will be used for good”. Instead, he discusses preconditions for the successful use of social media, the strongest being: intrinsic motivation of the contributors and a supportive culture among groups of users. He closes with some rules of thumb of elements that, in his experience, contribute to the success of social media ventures. Usually I am not a big fan of those list, but his remarks seem sensible enough and might actually help in the development of social media services.

As usual with Shirky, “Cognitive Surplus” is a very readable book. Shirky uses well chosen stories to illustrate the possibilities of social media use. He combines these stories with accounts of research relevant to his argument. For me “Cognitive Surplus” works as a very useful addition to his prior book “Here Comes Everybody”. While in his prior book he argued very convincingly in favor of the transformative potential of widespread social media use, in “Cognitive Surplus” he adds some useful conjectures on the reasons why people might be motivated to invest significant time and effort into producing content through social media.

Eva Schweitzer und Steffen Albrecht (Hrsg.): Das Internet im Wahlkampf: Analysen zur Bundestagswahl 2009

Just got news that Eva Schweitzer’s and Steffen Albrecht’s edited volume “Das Internet im Wahlkampf: Analysen zur Bundestagswahl 2009” is out. The book collects papers that address different aspects of the internet’s role in the campaign for the German general election of 2009. Pascal Jürgens and I contributed a paper on the use of Twitter during the campaign called “Wahlkampf vom Sofa aus: Twitter im Bundestagswahlkampf 2009″ [SpringerLink] [preprint in German].

The collection offers a broad perspective on the state of political internet use in Germany. It also contains interesting pieces by Steffen Albrecht who writes about blogs, Jesscia Kunert and Jan Schmidt who write about social networking sites, Thorsten Faas and Julia Partheymüller who write on political internet use in Germany, Thomas Roessing and Nicole Podschuweit who focus on political uses of Wikipedia, Christoph Bieber who comments on the role of online tools in the overall party campaigning strategies and Eva Schweitzer who focuses on political websites during the campaign. There are many other interesting articles in this collection so if you are interested in the topic be sure to check it out.

Conversation network of politically interested Twitter users on 9/1/2009

As shown above these highly interconnected individuals are crucial for the information flow through the network of politically interested Twitter users. For a more comprehensive discussion of this idea please see the blogpost or our forthcoming paper Pascal Jürgens and Andreas Jungherr (2011) “Wahlkampf vom Sofa aus: Twitter im Bundestagswahlkampf 2009″, in: Eva Johanna Schweitzer und Steffen Albrecht (Eds.), Das Internet im Wahlkampf: Analysen zur Bundestagswahl 2009, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag (forthcoming).

1) How important is the fact that social media became a tool for grassroot-rioting?

Protesters use social media channels for the distribution of information. This information is used internally to organize the protest (for example: Where and when do we meet? Where is the police? What are the reactions of the politicians?) as well as externally to get news and pictures of the protests to an international public. Both these functions are not new. A few years ago protesters used mobile phones to achieve similar goals. The widespread use of social media introduces a new speed and scale to the process. This facilitates the decentralized organization of a protest and increases the international visibility of protesters and the reactions to them by governments. Still, this does not make social media the trigger or reason for the protests.

2) What kind of changes will this bring? Should we get ready for the age of censorship on behalf of the scared governments?

A growing adoption of social media tools by activists will lead to a higher international visibility of their causes. While traditional news media in the West largely ignored the Egyptian protests an international public was kept aware of the daily developments by social media channels. Also the internationally accessible video stream on the website of Al Jazeera was a very important source of documentation. Social media channels lead to a circumvention of news selection biases in the West, which in turn massively increased the visibility of the protests. This phenomenon is likely to increase. Also the use of social media tools allows protesters to document themselves and thus avoid the filter of traditional news organizations. The iconic potential of pictures taken with camera phones during protests was demonstrated during the recent protests in Iran and will likely reassert itself during the ongoing protests in Tunisia, Egypt, India, and Yemen.

The attempt of the Egyptian government to defuse the protests by cutting access to the internet has been largely futile. Thus it probably serves more as an example of the limited effect that censorship attempts by governments hold than as an use case for future events.

3) Are you enthusiastic or skeptic about the instrumentalization of the social media by the revolutionaries?

On the one hand it is inspiring to see how activists are able to use social media tools to organize collective action, on the other hand the widespread use of these tools can also increase the volatility of public opinion and thus negatively effect the stability of states. Right now it is easy to applaud the protests since they address issues in the countries in question that are widely seen as negative (i.e. corruption, authoritarian style of government) but there is no guarantee that these tools will only be used by political actors who follow commonly accepted goals. Social media tools are themselves no agents for good or evil. Their role in stabilizing or destabilizing states will always depend on the goals of the actors who use them.

4) How important were the social media in triggering those events (in Egypt, Tunisia, India, Yemen)? Were the riots spontaneous or orchestrated via social media?

It is to early to answer what the role of social media was in triggering these events. Again, I do not think that social media were the trigger let alone reason for the protests. For those one has to look at the situation in each of the countries in question. It seems likely though that social media tools helped to distribute the news of successful protests in Tunisia to other countries. Egypt, India, and Yemen were also, albeit for different reasons, in a volatile state. So maybe the news of the events in Tunisia helped to inspire activists in those countries to take to the streets and get their country specific demands heard.

5) How justified are the claims that behind the social media are the western powers who use them in order to bring change in authoritarian countries?

Again, it is to early to answer this question. Personally I tend to doubt the claims that Western powers orchestrated social media protest to achieve regime change in authoritarian countries. It seems to me much more likely that the protests are emergent phenomena, that started in each country out of different reasons. The common theme is their successful use of the internet as a communication medium. But this common element should not lead us to underestimate the different reasons and motivations between the protests. To assume Western powers as conductors of these events seems to me an oversimplification of the events.

Herr Jungherr, als Mitglied der Arbeitsgemeinschaft KampagnenPraxis zeigen Sie Organisationen, wie sie das Internet für ihre Kommunikation erfolgreich nutzen können. Haben insbesondere Institutionen der öffentlichen Hand hier Nachholbedarf?

Ja. Dieser Nachholbedarf ist mit dem scheinbar geringen Anpassungsdruck von Kommunen an das Internet erklärbar. Politische Akteure waren spätestens seit dem Superwahljahr 2009 gezwungen, aktive Online-Präsenzen zu entwickeln. Verantwortlich dafür war die öffentliche Berichterstattung über die Online-Erfolge der Obama- Kampagne im Jahr 2008 und die damit plötzlich gestiegenen Erwartungen. Firmen haben ebenfalls ein großes Interesse daran, im Netz präsent zu sein, sei es zur Darstellung und Inszenierung der eigenen Marke oder um Kunden eine Dialogplattform zu bieten. Beispiele wie Dell-Hell oder United Breaks Guitars haben dazu geführt, dass viele Firmen Online-Kommunikation inzwischen sehr ernst nehmen. In den genannten Fällen sahen sich die Unternehmen Dell und United Airlines plötzlich heftiger Kritik im Netz gegenüber. Dieser Protest wurde so stark, dass die Firmeninhalte fast vollständig von den Inhalten der Kritiker verdrängt wurden. Die öffentliche Hand hat es da etwas leichter, weil sie quasi in zweiter Reihe steht. Wenn es in einer Kommune Probleme gibt, richtet sich der öffentliche Protest in der Regel erst einmal gegen die politischen Köpfe. Hier ist es interessant, ob Stuttgart 21 zu einer Änderung führt.

Wie verändern soziale Netzwerke das Kommunikationsverhalten der Bürger?

Soziale Netzwerke übernehmen gerade in jüngeren Altersgruppen zunehmend die Rolle von Informationsfiltern. Immer mehr Kommunikationsinhalte erreichen die Nutzer in Form von Links über ihre Freunde oder Kontakte auf dem jeweiligen Netzwerk. Dies gilt für Musikvideos und Angebote klassischer Medien ebenso wie für Materialien von politischen Akteuren. Und all diese Inhalte konkurrieren um die begrenzte Aufmerksamkeit der Nutzer. Der Nachrichtenwert wird dabei um einen sozialen Wert ergänzt: Die Frage ist nicht mehr, wie wichtig die Nachricht ist, sondern wer die Information verschickt hat.

Bürgerproteste gegen Großprojekte organisieren sich zunehmend in solchen Netzwerken. Wie können Kommunen hier gegenhalten?

Indem sie präsent sind. Momentan finden viele Diskussionen im Netz über Infrastrukturprojekte oder Kommunen fast ausschließlich ohne Beteiligung der Städte und Gemeinden statt. Das lässt sich sehr leicht erklären: Wenn eine Kommune ein Projekt kommunizieren will, beruft sie eine Pressekonferenz ein. Bürgerinitiativen haben es da schwerer, die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit zu erregen. Deshalb haben sie schon früh den Weg ins Netz gefunden und informieren auf eigenen Web- Seiten und in sozialen Netzwerken über ihre Anliegen. Dies tun Kommunen nur unzureichend. Der interessierte Bürger trifft im Web also meist nur auf die Informationen der Kritiker von umstrittenen Projekten. Hier gilt es für Städte und Gemeinden, frühzeitig auf eigenen Internet-Seiten und Profilen in sozialen Netzwerken mit verständlich aufbereiteten Inhalten über ihre Projekte zu informieren.

Wie würden Sie eine Kampagne für ein bei Bürgern umstrittenes Vorhaben einer Stadt aufsetzen?

Kommunen müssen frühzeitig mögliche Streitpunkte identifizieren. Hier bieten sich demoskopische Umfragen mit offenen Fragen bei von dem Projekt betroffenen Bürgern an. Auf Basis dieser Ergebnisse sollte entweder die Projektplanung angepasst werden oder frühzeitig Informationsveranstaltungen stattfinden, welche die Streitpunkte adressieren und entschärfen. Im eher fortgeschrittenen Stadium sollte das Projekt auf einer Internet-Seite ausführlich und verständlich dargestellt werden. Eine eigene Projektpräsenz in sozialen Netzwerken ist in den meisten Fällen wahrscheinlich übertrieben. Allerdings sollten die Informationen auf der Web-Seite leicht verlinkbar sein, sodass Unterstützer sie in sozialen Netzwerken verwenden können. Zusätzlich sollten Stadt oder Projektplaner verfolgen, ob und wie im Netz über das Vorhaben gesprochen wird. Wenn sich dort gesteigertes Interesse zeigt, ist es entscheidend, dass Stadt oder Planer aktiv auf die vorgebrachten Kritikpunkte reagieren.

Wie muss eine Kommunikationsstrategie aussehen, um die Bürger zu überzeugen?

Ziel sollte es sein, bei interessierten Bürgern um Zustimmung für das Projekt zu werben. Hierzu gilt es, relevante Informationen verständlich und leicht zugänglich zu präsentieren. Wichtig ist aber auch, dass der Prozess nicht irgendwann auf halber Strecke als abgeschlossen betrachtet wird. Die Stadt muss über den gesamten Verlauf der Planung und Umsetzung eines Projektes versuchen, Ängste und Sorgen der Bürger zu identifizieren und dazu klar Stellung zu beziehen.

Welche technischen Hilfsmittel empfehlen Sie?

Inzwischen gibt es sehr gute und einfach zu bedienende Hilfsmittel, um online zu kommunizieren. Allerdings ist die technische Entwicklung so schnell, dass es wenig hilft, einzelne Anbieter zu empfehlen. Bei der Wahl der Hilfsmittel oder Online-Plattformen sollten sich Kommunen vielmehr zwei Fragen stellen: Wo lassen sich Informationen umfassend und leicht zugänglich bereitstellen und wo halten sich die Adressaten der Kommunikationsinhalte auf? Als Antwort auf die erste Frage bietet sich momentan das Betreiben einer eigenen Web-Seite an. Um die zweite Frage zu beantworten, muss geprüft werden, welche sozialen Netzwerke in der Region stark genutzt werden.

Wie beurteilen Sie die Wirkung von Social Media, führen soziale Netzwerke zu neuen Formen der politischen Partizipation oder wird deren Einfluss überschätzt?

Die zunehmend aktive Nutzung von Social Media, wie zum Beispiel Blogs, Podcasts und Videos, in Kombination mit der steigenden Popularität von sozialen Netzwerken führt zu einer stärkeren Sichtbarkeit von politischem Protest. Interpretiert man dies positiv, führen originelle Videos, Poster-Remixe und hohe Unterstützerzahlen auf Facebook dazu, dass die politische Elite stärker basisdemokratisch kontrolliert wird. Interpretiert man es negativ, führt es dazu, dass durch polarisierende Inhalte und hohe Unterstützerzahlen für Ad-hoc-Kampagnen ein quasi-plebiszitäres Element in den politischen Prozess drängt, das durch das Grundgesetz in dieser Form bewusst nicht vorgesehen war. Welche Wertung man der Entwicklung auch gibt, öffentliche Akteure sehen sich einer volatileren öffentlichen Meinung gegenüber, in der auch Anliegen von Kleingruppen plötzlich eine hohe Sichtbarkeit und Unterstützung erfahren können. Vor diesem Hintergrund langfristige und nachhaltige Projekte umzusetzen, ist eine neue Herausforderung.

Das Interview führte Alexander Schaeff.

Präsent sein. Ein Interview von Alexander Schaeff mit Andreas Jungherr. Kommune21. 1/2011. S.20f.

More on that here.

Supporter Networks, Blogs, Tweets, and YouTube Videos: Political Campaigns Online

Social media tools have become common features in election campaigns around the world. Still, their adoption varies from country to country and campaign to campaign. This offers a valuable opportunity for researchers interested in political communication and political campaigns. Campaigns exist in specific political, cultural and technological contexts. These contexts determine the way political actors use social media tools in their campaigns. By comparing online campaigns in different countries and of different political leanings we can learn more about the nature of political communication online independent of specific local contexts. To this end the panel “Supporter Networks, Blogs, Tweets, and YouTube Videos: Political Campaigns Online” invites papers that examine recent political campaigns and their use of online channels and social media tools in their specific political, cultural or technological contexts. Questions that might be addressed are: Which social media tools did the campaign in question choose to use and why? How were these decisions grounded, in specific local contexts or advice from international campaigning professionals? Did the campaign achieve its goals and how was this evaluated? From a methodological perspective we are open to different approaches, be it in the form of qualitative case studies, quantitative analysis or work based on the digital methods approach. Also we invite papers that connect specific campaigns to concepts from communication theory, be it for example a discussion in the context of professionalization, mobilization, the digital divide or political learning.

The panel was called “Online Political Organizing in Regional and Local Campaigns” and moderated by Antonella Napolitano [@svaroschi]. With Nicolas Vanbremeersch [@versac] from France, Dino Amenduni [@doonie] from Italy, and Lluis Recorder [@lluisrecoder] from Spain we discussed short case studies in which we tried to illustrate the potential of social media for campaigns on a regional or local level.

Nicolas talked about his experiences using social media to facilitate closer contact between citizens and regional branches of the French government. Dino talked about the highly media centered campaigns he did with the Italian agency Proforma for two Italian politicians, Michele Emiliano and Nichi Vendola. Lluís Recorder, mayor of Sant Cugat del Vallès, talked about his experiences in using social media channels and their influence on his governing practice. These talks were highly stimulating and the presented cases illustrated the potential of social media in different European and political contexts. If you are interested there is an audio recording of the panel available on the PDF Europe site.

On the panel I talked about the social media elements in three recent CDU campaigns – Hessen 2009, the general election 2009 and Nordrhein-Westfalen 2010. In the presentation I tried to highlight the continuity between the campaigns, which exemplify an interesting cycle of campaign learning that build on the lessons of the preceding campaigns. As my presentation design focuses on visuals I hope the recording of the panel gives you the context you need for the slides above.

[Update: 2010/10/15]
Antonella Napolitano has posted a written a little wrap up on the session on the PDF Europe blog: From PdF Europe 2010: Online Political Organizing in Regional and Local Campaigns.