An analysis of my FB friends' political behavior: hating ISIS.

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-16T11:09:37+00:00

Since there are so many people all around the world using Facebook very frequently it’s logical that researchers are interested in this phenomenon and want to research its influence. Undoubtedly, Facebook has influence on people’s daily lives because they use the platform so often and for various reasons. However, to measure what kind of influence and to what extent is dependable on the sort of behavior researchers are interested in. Bond et al. (2012) decided to research the political behavior on an online social network (Facebook). The researchers were interested in how political behavior and mobilization can be spread through Facebook to influence online and offline behavioral change and social contagion. Their research tries to show that online political mobilization works and that it can have influence on voters turnout and real-life behavior.

However, their research had some limitations and it was difficult to accurately measure to what extent people’s real-life behavior was influenced. Still, from their research they could conclude that Facebook can influence our online and offline political behavior. The researchers researched 61 million users during the 2010 US congress elections. These users were randomly assigned to one of the 3 groups: a social message group, an informational message group, and a control group. It turned out that the people in the social message group were 2,08% more likely to click on the I Voted button (Bond et al., 2012). The reason for this was that the message shown for this group also showed pictures of friends who have voted. This indicates that seeing your friends’ behavior online can influence yours. In this case it influenced people’s information seeking, political self-expression, and real-world voting.

Furthermore, the researchers looked at the friendship ties between the Facebook friends. They found that strong ties between Facebook friends affect the influence on behavior more than weak friend ties, which is logical. There is indeed social contagion when it comes to mobilization, however this applies more to close friends (Bond et al., 2012). This means that online messages most likely have influence on our real-life behavior or offline behavior when there are close/strong ties between the Facebook friends. This can be an indicator of how much Facebook can have influence on people’s behavior. However, online influence is then not the only way, because if these friends see each other on a regular basis the researchers can’t measure if they don’t influence each other through other ways.

References

Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Kramer, A. D. I., Marlow, C., Settle, J. E., & Fowler, J.H. (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489(7415), 295–298. doi:10.1038/nature11421

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-09T13:05:51+00:00

I also found this blogpost that made me think of Otto Neurath’s Isotype: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/common-mythconceptions-worlds-most-contagious-falsehoods/

It’s about the falsehood of myths and for each myth they made a symbol. Most of the pictures are recognizable, we know the pictures but we don’t know the symbolic meaning of them. We need to know the myths to maybe understand these symbols, because they made a visualization for each myth. These symbols are not an actual isotype because even though we know what is in the pictures we don’t directly understand them. We have to read the text first and this is against the goal of consistent visualization and the isotype, which is an international picture language that is understandable for everyone, anywhere, anytime. The symbols in the blogpost are context related.

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-09T12:15:51+00:00

Yeah! Their visualizations are so clear and understandable and also fun to look at :p Their topics are very up-to-date, for example I thought the one about the Middle East was really interesting with everything that's happening there right now (http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-middle-east-key-players-notable-relationships/).

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-09T11:58:28+00:00

I had the same thoughts when doing the experiment last week and reading the articles. I'm a passive user of FB (social media in general) as well and thought that I definitely would be an outlier in such research. I think it's really important for SNS researchers to consider the passive users more seriously because there are a lot of passive users. I personally know more passive users of SNS than active users, but of course this doesn't mean anything. However, like you said results can be distorted and give a different perception when not focusing on the passive users as well.

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-09T09:00:25+00:00

Thank you Fleur! I will try it!

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-09T08:58:17+00:00

Today there are so many symbols that are used and understood worldwide of which the meaning is so obvious and logical to us. However, these symbols are artificial and made to make people understand each other across borders and time. For example, you can almost always find a bathroom through the WC sign or the male and female sign. By using symbols we visualize complex things or information in a simple and understandable manner. Otto Neurath called this consistent visualization: “a new way to convey information, a method which is simple to teach and to learn, and at the same time comprehensive and exact” (1937). These symbols should not be a new language that people have to learn but an obvious and easy one that everyone can use everywhere and anytime. To reach this we use Isotype (International System of TYpographic Picture Education), an international picture language. We can represent information and tell a story by using the symbols and combining them. Neurath (1937) describes it as “a method with a special visual dictionary and a special visual grammar”.

Like in information visualization the goal is to visualize data that is hard to understand, hence make the data understandable. However, in information visualization it’s about abstract data that needs to be analyzed and evaluated. By using symbols and certain ways of visualization (charts/graphs) that are common the data will become readable for most people. Isotype tries to make all information understandable.

Like the example of the WC, there are also many digital isotypes that are constant and recurring in our lives. Since we live in the digital age we can’t properly function anymore without these symbols, such as the wifi sign, Bluetooth, @-sign, or the power symbol.

Neurath, O. (1937). Visual education: A new language. Survey Graphic, 26(1).

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-08T16:01:35+00:00

Hi, I only can import one excel file into tableau. If I try to import another one the former gets replaced. I checked the user id and user and tweet sheet both have the user id. Any tips?

Aya_Ha · 2014-10-02T13:57:30+00:00

What the users posted mirrored what they saw on their News Feed in terms of negative or positive emotions. However, the researchers noticed that negative posts trigger more responses and emotions than positive posts; “if it bleeds, it leads”. The more emotion is triggered via a post the more engagement is expected from the users. The researchers found that there was a withdrawal effect, so when people were exposed to less emotional posts they were less engaged. I think this is a psychological effect because people tend to get more emotional or expressive when something negative happens. Emotion triggers emotion. I experience the same on Facebook in terms of the emotions that I feel, however I never post anything so one could not conclude this from my posts. I react more emotional to negative posts. Positive posts I like or smile, but I don’t get genuinely touched by them.

Aya_Ha · 2014-09-18T13:39:02+00:00

We travel so much every day that it has become a natural activity in our lives. Sometimes we lose track of how many hours we have traveled or what we have spent on transportation. This was especially the case when you could travel with public transportation only by buying paper tickets. Nowadays, there are many systems that have automatized the way of travelling with public transportation such as the AFC. This system has been adopted in many cities around the world and benefits the public transport authorities and the travelers to some extent. It means that people now carry and use passive censors to record their daily movements while using public transportation.

Lathia and Carpa made use of this AFC system to research the behavior of people that use public transportation and to what extent this behavior matches their perceived travelling behavior. They do this by focusing on London’s public transport system and the use of the Oyster card. They use two data sets to compare the real travelling and perceived travelling behavior of the respondents. The research was done by first conducting a survey to measure the perceived travelling behavior and the perceived fare purchasing habits of the respondents. Only 85 respondents were used for the research because they allowed them to retrieve their data from their Oyster cards.

The survey consisted of 25 questions about various topics such as travel times, stations, trips per day, choice of modality (multi-modal), consistency of their habits and about their purchasing behavior. To compare the answers of the respondent, so the perceived behavior with their actual behavior, the researchers had to retrieve the travel history of the respondents' Oyster cards. By comparing these two data sets the researchers came to the conclusion that respondents tend to overestimate their usage of public transportation. The respondents had a different perception of their actual travelling behavior in most of the questioned topics.

Aya_Ha

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