Cargando…
A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter
Substantial research is available on detecting influencers on social media platforms. In contrast, comparatively few studies exists on the role of online activists, defined informally as users who actively participate in socially-minded online campaigns. Automatically discovering activists who can p...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer US
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8192275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34131389 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11280-021-00887-2 |
_version_ | 1783706027424743424 |
---|---|
author | Primo, Flavio Romanovsky, Alexander de Mello, Rafael Garcia, Alessandro Missier, Paolo |
author_facet | Primo, Flavio Romanovsky, Alexander de Mello, Rafael Garcia, Alessandro Missier, Paolo |
author_sort | Primo, Flavio |
collection | PubMed |
description | Substantial research is available on detecting influencers on social media platforms. In contrast, comparatively few studies exists on the role of online activists, defined informally as users who actively participate in socially-minded online campaigns. Automatically discovering activists who can potentially be approached by organisations that promote social campaigns is important, but not easy, as they are typically active only locally, and, unlike influencers, they are not central to large social media networks. We make the hypothesis that such interesting users can be found on Twitter within temporally and spatially localised contexts. We define these as small but topical fragments of the network, containing interactions about social events or campaigns with a significant online footprint. To explore this hypothesis, we have designed an iterative discovery pipeline consisting of two alternating phases of user discovery and context discovery. Multiple iterations of the pipeline result in a growing dataset of user profiles for activists, as well as growing set of online social contexts. This mode of exploration differs significantly from prior techniques that focus on influencers, and presents unique challenges because of the weak online signal available to detect activists. The paper describes the design and implementation of the pipeline as a customisable software framework, where user-defined operational definitions of online activism can be explored. We present an empirical evaluation on two extensive case studies, one concerning healthcare-related campaigns in the UK during 2018, the other related to online activism in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8192275 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81922752021-06-11 A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter Primo, Flavio Romanovsky, Alexander de Mello, Rafael Garcia, Alessandro Missier, Paolo World Wide Web Article Substantial research is available on detecting influencers on social media platforms. In contrast, comparatively few studies exists on the role of online activists, defined informally as users who actively participate in socially-minded online campaigns. Automatically discovering activists who can potentially be approached by organisations that promote social campaigns is important, but not easy, as they are typically active only locally, and, unlike influencers, they are not central to large social media networks. We make the hypothesis that such interesting users can be found on Twitter within temporally and spatially localised contexts. We define these as small but topical fragments of the network, containing interactions about social events or campaigns with a significant online footprint. To explore this hypothesis, we have designed an iterative discovery pipeline consisting of two alternating phases of user discovery and context discovery. Multiple iterations of the pipeline result in a growing dataset of user profiles for activists, as well as growing set of online social contexts. This mode of exploration differs significantly from prior techniques that focus on influencers, and presents unique challenges because of the weak online signal available to detect activists. The paper describes the design and implementation of the pipeline as a customisable software framework, where user-defined operational definitions of online activism can be explored. We present an empirical evaluation on two extensive case studies, one concerning healthcare-related campaigns in the UK during 2018, the other related to online activism in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Springer US 2021-06-11 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8192275/ /pubmed/34131389 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11280-021-00887-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Primo, Flavio Romanovsky, Alexander de Mello, Rafael Garcia, Alessandro Missier, Paolo A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter |
title | A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter |
title_full | A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter |
title_fullStr | A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter |
title_full_unstemmed | A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter |
title_short | A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter |
title_sort | customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on twitter |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8192275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34131389 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11280-021-00887-2 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT primoflavio acustomisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT romanovskyalexander acustomisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT demellorafael acustomisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT garciaalessandro acustomisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT missierpaolo acustomisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT primoflavio customisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT romanovskyalexander customisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT demellorafael customisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT garciaalessandro customisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter AT missierpaolo customisablepipelineforthesemiautomateddiscoveryofonlineactivistsandsocialcampaignsontwitter |