Working the fields of big data: Using big-data-augmented online ethnography to study candidate–candidate interaction at election time

Laaksonen, Salla-Maaria; Nelimarkka, Matti; Tuokko, Mari; Marttila, Mari; Kekkonen, Arto; Villi, Mikko

doi:10.1080/19331681.2016.1266981

Cited by 28 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 71 publications

(45 reference statements)

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“…The 1-month period of data collection was selected based on practices identified in previous, similar studies (e.g. Larsson, 2015;Laaksonen et al, 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Right-wingers on the rise online: Insights from the 2018 Swedish elections

Larsson

2019

New Media & Society

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Political elections see several actors rise to the fore in order to influence and inform voters. Increasingly, such processes take place on social media like Facebook, where media outlets and politicians alike utilize seek promote their respective agenda. Given the recent rise of so-called hyperpartisan media—often described as purveyors of “fake news”—and populist right-wing parties across a series of western contexts, this study details the degree to which these novel actors succeed in overtaking their more mainstream or indeed established competitors when it comes to audience engagement on the mentioned platform. Focusing on the one-month period leading up to the 2018 Swedish national elections, the study finds that right-wing actors across the media and the political sector are more successful in engaging their Facebook followers than their competitors. As audience engagement is a key factor for social media success, the study closes by providing a discussion on the repercussions for professionals within the media and the political sector.

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“…The 1-month period of data collection was selected based on practices identified in previous, similar studies (e.g. Larsson, 2015;Laaksonen et al, 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Right-wingers on the rise online: Insights from the 2018 Swedish elections

Larsson

2019

New Media & Society

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“…This study employs a mixed-methods combination of computational corpus linguistics and sociological qualitative analysis. In this approach, computational text analysis methods complement rather than replace qualitative close reading (see, for example, Hillard et al, 2008; Laaksonen et al, 2017). With large datasets of online discussions, the methodological problem for empirical research often is one of finding the “needles in the haystack,” in our case, “political” talk (Graham, 2008).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We believe that an understanding of Overboard’s politics and culture also necessitates some ethnographic observation (Laaksonen et al, 2017)—“being there.” After designing the general research framework laid out above, we spent several weeks browsing the latest threads on Overboard, through a web browser like any other user. All three researchers participated in this fieldwork, during which we were in constant communication over online chat to exchange notes.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Going Overboard: How Ironic Group Style Becomes Political on an Anonymous Imageboard

Ylä-Anttila

Eranti

Hardwick

2020

Social Media + Society

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Anonymous online groups such as imageboards have increasing cultural influence. Recently, they have been connected with far-right political movements. This mixed-methods study investigates politics on Overboard, a Finnish imageboard. We use a convolutional neural network to learn linguistic features of the community’s own understanding of politics, studying two large text corpora, collected in 2014–2015 and 2018–2019. This enables us to find political messages in nominally non-political subforums and discount non-political “noise”—finding the “needles in the haystack.” We quantify the prevalence of political talk on Overboard, assess its themes using topic modeling, and evaluate changes in their popularity. Finally, we qualitatively analyze the style of Overboard. We find that around one-tenth of messages on Overboard are identifiable as “political.” Often, but not univocally, they voice far-right opinions, usually somewhat ironically. The prevalence of far-right themes has increased, likely because of importing global imageboard culture and in parallel with the increased popularity of nationalist-right politics in the broader Finnish public sphere. In terms of group style, the strong boundary between members and outsiders, together with the ironic and cynical speech norms, creates a bond between members. Such a group style lends itself to politicizing the collective.

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“…Al respecto Laaksonen et al (2017) indican los niveles de participación del investigador dentro de la etnografía:…”

Section: Metodologíaunclassified

Comunicación digital entre ediles y usuarios en Twitter: Oportunidad fallida en el fortalecimiento de imagen y vigencia en la esfera pública

Pereira

Quintero

Montaño

2020

anf

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Objetivo: determinar el uso de la red social Twitter por los concejales de Bucaramanga en su ejercicio como servidores públicos y líderes de opinión local, mediante la hipertextualidad, popularidad, interactividad, participación, multimedialidad e interacción. Metodología: se acude a la Netnografía con el uso de técnicas mixtas: entrevista semiestructurada y aplicación del Índice Global Potencial Persuasivo de Twitter. Resultados: se encontró que el Concejo en su proceso de divulgación pública utiliza un portal web, con información actualizada sobre sus actividades. Usa Facebook, Twitter y Youtube, pero sus registros de interacción y uso de multimedia son reducidos. Catorce de los diecinueve concejales tienen Twitter, tres de ellos marcan actividad y los contenidos difundidos sobre su ejercicio legislativo son limitados; el contenido multimedia publicado es bajo, igual que las respuestas e interacciones con usuarios. Conclusiones: se concluye que avanza la inmersión en la comunicación pública de las plataformas digitales y redes sociales para orientar y difundir el ejercicio político y más desde el campo legislativo, punto que ya los gobernantes locales y globales han entendido. Los concejales que participaron en esta investigación decepcionan al centrar el uso de Twitter en hablar de temas desligados de su función y pierden una gran oportunidad desde su microblogging para hacer propuestas relacionadas con las problemáticas sociales y contribuir desde su cuenta Twitter a consolidar su imagen y vigencia en la esfera pública y electoral.

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Working the fields of big data: Using big-data-augmented online ethnography to study candidate–candidate interaction at election time

Cited by 28 publications

References 71 publications

Right-wingers on the rise online: Insights from the 2018 Swedish elections

Right-wingers on the rise online: Insights from the 2018 Swedish elections

Going Overboard: How Ironic Group Style Becomes Political on an Anonymous Imageboard

Comunicación digital entre ediles y usuarios en Twitter: Oportunidad fallida en el fortalecimiento de imagen y vigencia en la esfera pública

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