Tweeting about Earth Day 2009

My final presentation of 2009 was completed last Friday at the ECREA conference “Media, Communication and the Spectacle” hosted by my department in Rotterdam. I presented a paper I’m currently writing about Twitter and Earth Day 2009.

The slides are available here, and below is a brief abstract:

This paper focuses on how citizens used Twitter to report their participation in Earth Day 2009 via use of the hashtag #earthtweet. The #earthtweet hashtag was created and promoted by Brighter Planet. Twitter users were encouraged to respond to the query “What are you doing to help celebrate Earth Day?” and were given the opportunity to win a variety of prizes for the best tips. In the weeks leading up to and after Earth Day (April 22, 2009), a selection of 171 tweets tagged with #earthtweet are analyzed.

Analysis is still in progress, but preliminarily findings are described on the slides. To be brief, of the 171 analyzed tweets:

•     21% followed the rules (and tweeted about how they would be celebrating Earth Day)

•     31% provided environmental news updates

•     16.4% used #earthtweet to promote the contest to their followers

•     9.3% engaged in (often business-oriented) self-promotion

and, more generally:

•     59.7% provided an external hyperlink

•     30.4% listed other hashtags in their tweet

Soundbites from the Googlization of Everything

In lieu of an actual blog post on this talk, below are some soundbites from Siva Vaidhyanathan’s keynote from Thursday at AoIR 10.0. Note: many of these are the result of rapid paraphrasing and should not be considered direct quotes. (The image below was taken from Flickr).

• We are not Google’s customers, we are Google’s products
• The perfect search engine would be like the mind of god
• Informal motto: “Don’t be Evil” – you can make money without doing evil (well, as long as you’re making money)
• The only reason we have corporate social responsibility is because we’ve retreated from public responsibility
• We now rely on marketing to improve the world – this is civic irresponsibility
• Not all hyperlinks are created equal – they provide votes of support but also of derision
• No search engine is neutral

slides from my AoIR presentation

The slides from my presentation at AoIR 10.0 are now available online.

First AoIR session: Elections and political parties

AoIR 10.0 is off to a smashing start. This morning, I moderated a panel on elections and political parties. The panel was diverse in many aspects. The topics ranged from exploring demographics of (US) blog readers, a content analysis of political party websites during a recent election campaign in Austria, and a hyperlink analysis of the online political world in Singapore.

Even while keeping an eye on the stopwatch, these presenters brought up a number of fascinating issues. During Aaron Veenstra’s presentation, I heard that there are few demographic predictors for who reads blogs, but there were important differences between liberal and conservative blog readers. For example, liberal blog readers are more likely to follow liberal news satire and public broadcasting, while conservatives lean more towards Fox and religious programs. No surprise there. However, liberal blog use also predicts participation, in terms of traditional and online participation and content creation. Aaron mentioned that this could very well be a reflection of Obama hype (data was collected in 2008).

Uta Russmann presented the first comprehensive look at political parties’ use of the internet in Austria. She discussed what is also an interesting question: what is the “full function of web campaigning”? Her feature analysis looked at information, participation, and mobilization features, though much of the codebook was focused on informative elements. Likewise, results showed that websites were mainly informative in their aims. So what is “full function” in this context? Do we find more informative features because we mainly look for these? Are parties and other political actors under-utilizing the internet, or is it a reflection on our methodology as researchers? And is it even possible to determine whether a feature encourages participation without having more information about how users actually perceive these features?

Carol Soon started by pointing out the differences in political culture in Singapore – with government control and regulation stemming from the days of independence – and she then described a hyperlink analysis of political actors (including bloggers and notably mrbrown.com, a satirical take on political issues in Singapore). One interesting finding is that the ruling political party also has the smallest online network. She pointed out that their political dominance means that they do not need to form alliances with opposition parties, which may contribute to their isolationist online strategy. Sounds like a fascinating direction for future research.

What a great start! Full papers available here. Up next: Soundbites from Siva Vaidhyanathan’s talk on “The Googlization of Everything.”

Heading to AoIR 10.0

In a couple days, I’m heading to the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) annual conference. Not far from my roots, Internet Research 10.0 – Internet Critical takes place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’ll enjoy a couple days listening to the latest research in Internet studies. Staying at the Hilton for a few nights isn’t such a bad deal, either.

I’m presenting a paper entitled “Youth Citizenship Online: Contrasting Web Producers’ Aims and Online Content” (PDF available here) which makes use of some data stemming from my PhD research. They have a really exciting line-up planned, and I look forward to learning more about blogging, the internet and elections, civic activism online, and the digital divide. I’ve attending AoIR twice in the past and the great thing about this conference is that it encompasses so many researchers from different disciplines, yet all with a passion for understanding – as Wikipedia puts it – “the interaction between the Internet and modern society, and the sociological and technological implications on one another.”

Since I’ll be surrounded by other techno-enthusiasts I’m excited for a lively Twitter conversation during the conference. From the looks of it #ir10 is already humming with activity. Stay tuned – the countdown has begun!

blogging at The Broker

I’m also maintaining a blog on the website of The Broker. I’ll focus on two main areas: How civil society organizations and issue campaigns use new communication technologies to inform and mobilize ordinary citizens, and how the academic world is adapting to Web 2.0 in the research and publication process.

I will continue to update this blog (here on my personal website).

Pondering slacktivism

Slacktivism is defined as “feel-good online activism that has zero political or social impact.” It’s meant to refer to actions like online petition-signing or Facebook group-joining. Evgeny Morozov, the author of “The brave new world of slacktivism,” discusses the potential dangers that slacktivism holds in terms of impact. In other words, will a person’s political mouse-clicks influence governments and institutions in the same ways that sit-ins and protests have in the past?

There are two types of citizens that are of interest here: the traditional activist (the one who has devoted her life to a political cause) and the ordinary citizen (the one who is more concerned with designer clothes and pet care). For the activist, Morozov points out that because of slacktivism she may embrace a more lazy citizenship, and instead of attending protests on Saturday afternoons will remain behind the computer screen and click her way to noble causes. This is an interesting point, but I would prefer to put forward a more positive argument: the traditional activist will linger, and will instead enhance her current offline actions with online options.

But let’s not forget about the ordinary citizen. It is also possible to argue that because of slacktivism, those less inclined to participate will do so, simply because it’s easier. The question I’m really interested in is this: Does slacktivism lead to more traditional activism? Does it provide a gentle nudge, slowly transforming a concern for the grocery list into a concern for the population of Darfur? Or is this new technology helping to stunt the next generation of citizens?

Stunting, of course, is only possible if slacktivism is indeed a waste of time and energy. Morozov makes an interesting point here, that the impact of online actions is largely unproven. Given this it does seem urgent to better understand the influence of slacktivism, both on potential targets of protest as well as on transforming passive citizens into more active participants in society.

So how to measure slacktivism? Technology is a great and potentially powerful tool for activism, and also allows us to actually see activism: For example, we can count how many people joined a Facebook group protesting the election outcome in Iran, or study online conversations showing how people form arguments around these issues. This makes it exciting for academics or anyone else who wants to measure effectiveness based on data.

Social Academia

I recently wrote a special report entitled “Social Academia: The Impact of Web 2.0 on Research Practices,” published in the August 2009 issue of The Broker. Have a look, particularly if you’re interested in how academics are using blogs and wikis in scholarly work.

The August issue of The Broker can be downloaded as a PDF here. An extended online version is also available online.

Wordle on the dissertation

One of these days, once teaching obligations have subsided, I’m going to start maintaining this blog on a more regular basis. Here’s a start: Below is the illustration that appeared on the cover of my dissertation. It is a creation from Wordle, “a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide.”

The text included in the image below was taken from the introduction of the dissertation. Try it – it’s a fascinating way to pull out key themes from a speech, a song, or even lengthy email correspondence.

G20 Voice’s Web 2.0 campaign

Here’s a great example of how Web 2.0 is being used in a current campaign.
G20 Voice is a project that aims to select 50 bloggers from around the world to participate in the G20 London Summit. Selected bloggers will have media accreditation on April 2, 2009. G20 Voice is looking for nominations for global bloggers, vloggers, tweeters, podcasters, or tumblrs. Nominees from developing countries are encouraged to attend and will receive some financial assistance to get them to London.

G20 Voice is organized by Oxfam GB, Comic Relief, Save the Children, ONE, Blue State Digital. Their goal is to ensure that the issues of poverty reduction and climate change are included on the agenda in addition to a focus on the current economic crisis.

G20 voice is widely utlizing Web 2.0 to spread their call for blogger coverage. See below:
Facebook Fanpage
Twitter
Tumblr
Moblog
YouTube
Flickr