Dwelling with feminicide data

In the 2015 European refugee crisis, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) offered help and actively advocated for millions of refugees. The current study aims to understand what communication strategies are most effective for NGOs to influence media coverage and the public’s social media conversations about refugees. We found that agenda building on traditional media and in social media conversations require different strategies. Specifically, although providing information subsidies could powerfully influence traditional media coverage, its effect waned in the context of social media conversations. In contrast, NGOs’ hyperlink network positions emerged as the one of the influential factors for NGOs’ prominence in social media conversations. Moreover, stakeholder-initiated engagement could influence agenda building both in traditional media coverage and social media conversations. Finally, organizational resources and characteristics are important factors as well. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Measuring international relations in social media conversations

This paper contributes to debates about the implications of digital technology for social research by proposing the concept of the redistribution of methods. In the context of digitization, I argue, social research becomes noticeably a distributed accomplishment: online platforms, users, devices and informational practices actively contribute to the performance of digital social research. This also applies more specifically to social research methods, and this paper explores the phenomenon in relation to two specific digital methods, online network and textual analysis, arguing that sociological research stands much to gain from engaging with their distribution, both normatively and analytically speaking. I distinguish four predominant views on the redistribution of digital social methods: methods-as-usual, big methods, virtual methods and digital methods. Taking up this last notion, I propose that a redistributive understanding of social research opens up a new approach to the re-mediation of social methods in digital environments. I develop this argument through a discussion of two particular online research platforms: the Issue Crawler, a web-based platform for hyperlink analysis, and the Co-Word Machine, an online tool of textual analysis currently under development. Both these tools re-mediate existing social methods, and both, I argue, involve the attempt to render specific methodology critiques effective in the online realm, namely critiques of the authority effects implicit in citation analysis. As such, these methods offer ways for social research to intervene critically in digital social research, and more specifically, to endorse and actively pursue the redistribution of social methods online.

This four-hour seminar provides the theoretical and methodological grounding needed to develop digital workflows for designing and carrying out qualitative research. The seminar illustrates how researchers can leverage digital tools – social media conversations, online interviews, AI for data transcription and analysis – in meaningful and reflexive ways. By the conclusion, participants will have generated their own digital qualitative research workflow to address their own research questions and study designs. Participants will be guided through a process of answering key questions to consider the consequences of adopting digital tools and spaces as part of their research workflow. An official Instats certificate of completion is provided, and the seminar offers 2 ECTS Equivalent points for European PhD students.

This four-hour seminar provides the theoretical and methodological grounding needed to develop digital workflows for designing and carrying out qualitative research. The seminar illustrates how researchers can leverage digital tools – social media conversations, online interviews, AI for data transcription and analysis – in meaningful and reflexive ways. By the conclusion, participants will have generated their own digital qualitative research workflow to address their own research questions and study designs. Participants will be guided through a process of answering key questions to consider the consequences of adopting digital tools and spaces as part of their research workflow. An official Instats certificate of completion is provided, and the seminar offers 2 ECTS Equivalent points for European PhD students.

This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called ‘interface methods’. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized the significant differences between prominent methods built into digital media and those of STS and sociology. This paper advocates a third approach, one that (a) highlights the dynamism and relative under-determinacy of digital methods, and (b) affirms that multiple methodological traditions intersect in digital devices and research. We argue that these two circumstances enable a distinctive approach to methodology in digital social research – thinking methods as ‘interface methods’ – and the paper contextualizes this approach in two different ways. First, we show how the proliferation of online data tools or ‘digital analytics’ opens up distinctive opportunities for critical and creative engagement with methods development at the intersection of sociology, STS and digital research. Second, we discuss a digital research project in which we investigated a specific ‘interface method’, namely co-occurrence analysis. In this digital pilot study we implemented this method in a critical and creative way to analyse and visualize ‘issue dynamics’ in the area of climate change on Twitter. We evaluate this project in the light of our principal objective, which was to test the possibilities for the modification of methods through experimental implementation and interfacing of various methodological traditions. To conclude, we discuss a major obstacle to the development of ‘interface methods’: digital media are marked by particular quantitative dynamics that seem adverse to some of the methodological commitments of sociology and STS. To address this, we argue in favour of a methodological approach in digital social research that affirms its maladjustment to the research methods that are prevalent in the medium.

We are motivated in our work by the following question: what factors influence individual participation in social media conversations? Conversations around user posted content, is central to the user experience in social media sites, including Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. Therefore, understanding why people participate, can have significant bearing on fundamental research questions in social network and media analysis, such as, network evolution, and information diffusion.Our approach is as follows. We first identify several key aspects of social media conversations, distinct from both online forum discussions and other social networks. These aspects include intrinsic and extrinsic network factors. There are three factors intrinsic to the network: social awareness, community characteristics and creator reputation. The factors extrinsic to the network include: media context and conversational interestingness. Thereafter we test the effectiveness of each factor type in accounting for the observed participation of individuals using a Support Vector Regression based prediction framework. Our findings indicate that factors that influence participation depend on the media type: YouTube participation is different from a weblog such as Engadget. We further show that an optimal factor combination improves prediction accuracy of observed participation, by ~9--13% and ~8--11% over using just the best hypothesis and all hypotheses respectively. Implications of this work in understanding individual contributions in social media conversations, and the design of social sites in turn, are discussed.

Even though the technological developments of web 2.0 and social media opened up a multitude of possibilities for companies to communicate with their customers, marketers, to a certain extent, lost direct control of their brands. Users are able to exchange opinions about companies, products, services, or brands independent of corporate influences at high speed and almost no cost. Marketing research has quickly picked up the new technological developments, generating enormous numbers of studies. However, the findings are highly diverse and confusing at the same time. This paper provides a systematic overview of top-tier social media research. A main emphasis is put on empirical studies that investigate the effects of user-generated content on measurable corporate performance indicators. A total of 102 articles are used as input for the conducted qualitative meta-analysis. Findings are sorted along the proposed framework of the “social media value chain”. The analysis encompasses effects of electronic word-of-mouth on corporate consumer mindset metrics, product and market performance indicators, and financial performance measures. The analysis extracts the inherent moderators of electronic word-of-mouth-effects and provides a suitable framework for discussion. In addition, the dual role of companies as moderators of ongoing social media communication and content creators within viral marketing campaigns is also dissected. Social media conversations are a powerful force that shows effect along the whole value chain. Pure volume measures show the strongest effect. Even though valence measures contain a high degree of information, inconsistent results can be observed depending on valence operationalization and empirical methods used. Research needs to develop a better and deeper understanding of valence measures. Further, experimental field studies provide a good starting point for future empirical work. The multitude of moderator effects reveals that the impact of electronic word-of-mouth is not generalizable across industries, product categories, and social media platforms. However, social media conversations contain rich information that has to be utilized by the marketing profession.

This paper estimates the impact of social media conversations on consumer valuation of brand characteristics and demand for carbonated soft drinks (CSDs). We formulate a random coefficient, discrete choice model of consumer demand that includes social media conversations, and estimate it matching Nielsen sales data on carbonated soft drinks to social media conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Empirical results indicate that consumers’ conversations about brands and nutritional aspects of CSDs have a significant impact on their valuation of brand characteristics and ultimately on their choices of CSDs. These findings have important implications not only for firms using social media as a strategic tool for effective brand promotion and product design but also for public health policies aimed at reducing the consumption of sugary beverages and high-calorie foods.

PurposeThe rise of social media and its resultant impact on brand management has become a critical factor in guarding the reputation of the firm. Consumer‐generated content has the potential to spread rapidly over social networks and the implications are that advertising as traditionally used by brand managers, now offers little control over the communication message. Brand managers need a better tool to gauge the changing mood in social media conversations. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a powerful method, Chernoff Faces, to compare six Sauternes wine brands based on social conversation measurement.Design/methodology/approachThis study describes a source of data relating to wine brand visibility in social media, and then presents a simple yet powerful graphical tool for portraying this information. This tool facilitates the communication, understanding, and assimilation of the relevant information.FindingsThe findings of this paper are presented in six social media wine faces. Facial features are allocated to eyes, facial line, hair density and others to reflect “Social Mention” data measuring brand strength, positive and negative sentiment and related elements such passion for the brand. A brief subjective interpretation of the differences between the wine brands offers a match between Chernoff faces representation and historical data on the brands being compared.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper has some limitations related to the dynamic nature of social media. This study provides more of a snapshot in time rather than an ultimate set of results. Future research could be done by closely monitoring the results for a set of brands over a period. A new option to overcome this by using longitudinal data is offered as a option in future research.Originality/valueSince social media are multi‐dimensional and attempts to understand conversations it requires tracking different measures simultaneously. It is important to find the best way to portray and communicate this data so that wine marketing decision makers can quickly and easily compare changes in brand images. Using faces to accomplish this is an easy and novel way compared to more demanding multidimensional scaling techniques.

ConnectedN, a content curation platform that enables professionals to easily engage in social media conversations, stands out for the workflow capabilities and simple user interface that enable busy experts to participate in the social conversation by building on third-party content. ConnectedN’s singular focus is on getting busy subject matter experts directly participating in social media.

As a new way of communication, social media conversations on the Internet do have some characteristics that are different from common face-to-face conversations. One of the differences lies in the existence of systemic cohesion in addition to the established conventional cohesion. Systemic cohesion is a form of structural and textual unity which is generated by the system of a social media platform and is not available in offline discourse. This article is aimed at describing the phenomena of systemic cohesion of social media conversations, particularly on Facebook and Twitter, by analyzing them based on the classification of cohesive devices made by Halliday and Hasan (1976, 1985). In general, systemic cohesion can be distinguished into structural and textual cohesion. The former is represented by the functions of conversation components, indentation, and vertical line whereas the latter is implemented in the form of mention and hashtag. Facebook and Twitter share both similarities and differences in either case.

The price of attention: an analysis of the intersection of media coverage and public sentiments about eggs and egg prices.

Significant portions of the states in FEMA region 7 (Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, and Iowa) were in drought in 2022–23. Culling data gathered from a prominent social media platform and from focus group discussions, this research examines how drought information was communicated between the public officials and the general public. Through the lens of the two-step flow of communication theory, the central research question explored the differences between public conversations about drought among individuals experiencing it and the viewpoints of experts who work on drought-related issues. Results from social media conversations were examined, along with insights from focus group discussions involving local, state, and federal officials, to assess communication patterns about this complex issue. Social media analyses suggested a broad disconnection between public discussion of drought effects, when compared to most officials’ communication, which was limited to responses to acute symptoms of drought. Further, officials during focus groups suggested that barriers to deeper discussions about drought were limited, in part, because of siloed agencies and concerns about audience perceptions. Tying back to the role of positional opinion leaders in communication, the results suggest that larger discussions of drought that involve behavioral change or mitigation strategies were sought by members of the public but not often addressed in most official communication during this event. Significance Statement The study compared drought discussion from social media conversations and focus groups of key officials. Results indicated that residents often sought help with individualized effects of drought, including damaged crops or financial hardships. Conversely, most Twitter communication from officials focused on monitoring conditions of rainfall or water levels, signaling a disconnection in drought communication between the two groups. Drought officials noted that they often design their communication strategies based on their audiences. These findings suggest that managing drought conditions may not allow for incremental change or solid resource management, unless clearly defined communication strategies are developed.

Towards a more representative and effective security council