Analyzing Social Media Data and Web Networks

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Biographical Note: Marta Cantijoch is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Also a member of the Manchester Q-Step Centre. She has published several articles on the effects of digital media on citizen politics. Rachel Gibson is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester, UK. She has held visiting positions at Universities in Australia, Germany, and Spain. She has published several books and articles on the use of digital media in political communication, particularly by parties, and for election campaigning and participation. Stephen Ward is a Reader in Politics at the University of Salford, UK. He was previously a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. He has published widely in areas such as: political participation, campaigns and elections online along with parties' use of digital technologies. Table of Contents: Introduction: The Importance of Method in the Study of the Political Internet'; Marta Cantijoch, Rachel Gibson, Laura Sudulich, Matthew Wall and Stephen WardPART I: STRUCTURE AND INFLUENCE1. Political Homophily on the Web; Robert Ackland and Jamsheed Shorish2. Blogosphere Authority Index 2.0: Change and Continuity in the American Political Blogosphere, 2007-2010; Dave Karpf 3. A Tool for Analysing Youtube Audience Reactions and Discussions; Mike ThelwallPART II: CONTENTS AND INTERACTIONS4. Social Data Analytics Tool: A Demonstrative Case Study of Methodology and Software; Ravi Vatrapu, Abid Hussain, Daniel Hardt, and Zeshan Jaffari5. Opportunities and Challenges of Analysing Twitter Content. A Comparison of the Occupation Movements in Spain, Greece and the US; Gema Garcia-Albacete and Yannis Theocharis 6. Stuttgart's Black Thursday on Twitter: Mapping Political Protests with Social Media Data; Andreas Jungherr and Pascal Jurgens 7. Analysing 'Super-participation' in Online Third Spaces; Todd Graham and Scott Wright PART III: MIXED METHODS AND APPROACHES FOR ANALYSIS OF WEB CAMPAIGNS8. A Mixed-Methods Approach to Capturing Online Local-Level Data; Rosalynd Southern. 9. From Web Sites to Web Presences. Interactive Behaviours in Web Campaigns During the 2010 UK General Election; Benjamin LeeNew Directions in Web Analysis: Semantic Polling and the Future of Opinion Surveys; Nick Anstead and Ben O'Loughlin Publisher Marketing: As governments, citizens and organizations have moved online there is an increasing need for academic enquiry to adapt to this new context for communication and political action. This adaptation is crucially dependent on researchers being equipped with the necessary methodological tools to extract, analyze and visualize patterns of web activity. This volume profiles the latest techniques being employed by social scientists to collect and interpret data from some of the most popular social media applications, the political parties' own online activist spaces, and the wider system of hyperlinks that structure the inter-connections between these sites. Including contributions from a range of academic disciplines including Political Science, Media and Communication Studies, Economics, and Computer Science, this study showcases a new methodological approach that has been expressly designed to capture and analyze web data in the process of investigating substantive questions.

Contributor Bio:  Gibson, Rachel Rachel Gibson lives in Idaho with her husband, three kids, two cats, and a dog of mysterious origin. She began her fiction career at age sixteen, when she ran her car into the side of a hill, retrieved the bumper, and drove to a parking lot, where she strategically scattered the car's broken glass all about. She told her parents she'd been the victim of a hit-and-run and they believed her. She's been making up stories ever since, although she gets paid better for them nowadays. Contributor Bio:  Ward, Stephen Stephen V. (Steve) Ward is widely known internationally for his work in the field of planning history. He is a former President of the International Planning History Society 1996-2002 and remains a member of its governing Council. He is also a former editor of the refereed journal Planning Perspectives and continues as a member of its Editorial Board. He is also an Editorial Board member of the American refereed Journal of Planning History. He has published widely on historical matters relating to planning with many books, book chapters, articles and other outputs to his name.