 Social Media for Public Interaction

Major Questions  How is the public sector using social media?  Analyzing individual users  How are people discussing public sector topics on social media?  Analyzing groups and trends

Analyzing Individual Users  Types of Social Media Use  Broadcast / Sending Information  Request for Feedback / Input  Conversation / Interaction

Questions for Analysis  Who is doing the posting?  Who are the target audience members?  Why is the audience engaged on social media with the organization? What are the goals of the user? Which of the three interaction methods above are they using?  How is the user using social media?  Do the user's actions support the goals?

Case Study: Solving a Child Abduction  Summer 2012, a 10-year-old girl and her 2-year-old brother were walking home  A man attempted to abduct the girl, but she fought him off and ran.  Children did not know attacker, but he was caught on several surveillance cameras

Footage

Outreach  Philadelphia Police posted video and images of the suspect  YouTube, Twitter, Facebook  Have caught close to 100 suspects using social media  This suspect turned himself in within hours of the postings, claiming he had nowhere to hide.

Strategies from the Philadelphia Police  Use social media mostly for broadcast  The do not tweet too often (~10 times/day) so they do not overwhelm people with information  Reach out on multiple channels with clear requests for feedback in more traditional ways

Case Study: Congressional Use of Twitter  How are members of Congress using Twitter?  Communication  Talking about activities  Providing information  Requesting Action  Fundraising  Which of these are most common?  (Golbeck, Grimes, Rogers, 2010)

Breakdown

Case Study: Predicting Elections and Astroturfing  Can analyzing social media activity indicate who might win an election?  Can politicians take advantage of this to make it look like they have more support than they do?

Predicting Elections  Results for predicting elections are mixed  Volume of tweets about a candidate does not imply that candidate will win  Some studies anecdotally do well  Others show results are only slightly better than random guessing.

Astroturfing  “Grass roots” efforts are those initiated and led by members of the general public.  Some campaigns mimic that, setting up fake accounts to simulate grass roots support. This is called astroturfing  These accounts can be detected using structural social network analysis, using retweet and follow behavior.

Structure and Astroturfing Prediction  Examples of Twitter behavior from (Ratkiewicz et al., 2011).  Dark edges indicate retweets and light edges indicate mentions.  Graphs (a) and (b) are astroturfing accounts, while graphs (c) and (d) are real accounts.

In Class Exercise  Find an elected official or government agency that is using some form of social media.  What types of interaction is he or she using (broadcast, input, communication)?  What appear to be his or her goals with social media?  Does the official post for him or herself, or does it seem the staff posts?  Analyzing the account, does your representative appear to be effective with social media? Why or why not?