Measuring the effect of social connections on political activity on Facebook
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Transcript of Measuring the effect of social connections on political activity on Facebook
www.helsinki.fi/crc
Measuring the effect of social connections on political activity on
FacebookInternet, Politics, Policy 2012: Big Data, Big Challenges
Oxford, UK, Sep 20. 2012
Olli Parviainen, Petro Poutanen, Salla-Maaria Laaksonen & Mikael RekolaCommunications Research Centre CRC / University of Helsinki
Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Social Research / Media & Communication Studies
Outline1. Introduction2. Data, methods & variables3. Research questions4. Comparing support groups5. Comparing user and admin initiated
communication6. Discussion
Introduction
Basic details The study examines online political behavior
in Facebook Network analysis and statistical analysis are
used Case: Second round of the Finnish
presidential elections 2012 Massive campaigning on Facebook Comparative study of the two supporter
populations
Data, methods & variables
Data and method Data extracted post hoc from Facebook platform via it's
FQL2 interface Collected and analyzed using C++, Perl, Graph.pm, Gephi
and SPSS Data comprises FB pages’ activities (wallposts, comments,
wallpost likes, comment likes) and structures (friendship connections)
Social network analysis (Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Monge & Contractor, 2003) and traditional statistical methods (time series, correlation, and regression analysis)
Likes The number of likes the page has in the time of the post.
Number of wall post likes The number of likes the wall post has received
Number of comments The number of comments posted to the wall post
Number of comment likes The number of likes the comments within the wall post have received
Overall activity Sum of all activity (wall post likes, comments and comment likes). Measures the response for the post.
Active users Absolute number of different users activated in the post.
Activity level The share of the active users of page's all likers in the wall post . Measures the wall post's ability to engage the page likers (audience)
Number of wall post likers The number of different users liking the wall post
Number of commenters The number of different users commenting on the wall post
Number of comment likers The number of different users liking comments
Number of components Absolute number of friendship components within the post
Friendship network edges The number of friendship connections within the post
Friendship average component size
Mean of all friendship component sizes within the post
Friend average degree Mean of number of friends the active users of the post have each other
Friend overall degree Mean of number of friends the active users of the post have with all the active users in the two week time frame
Friend clustering coefficient The clustering coefficient of the friendships
Network friends percentage The percentage of the active users of the post who have at least one friend among the other active users
Poster friend count Number of friends the author of the post has within all the active users of the page
Research questions
What kinds of friendship structures are typical in large support groups (e.g. dyad, triads, bigger cliques, communities)?
How do people act in support pages (likes, comment likes, comments, wall posts)?
How activities are associated with the friendship structures of the support pages?
How the interaction patterns are associated with the friendship structures of the support pages?
Comparing two support pages
Count of likes and posts
Overall activities & active users
Network structure shows more clustering on the Niinistö page
Nodes Edges Diameter Radius Avg. path lg. Avg. degree central. Avg. clust. coeff.Niinistö 35372 189673 18 9 4.699 10.72 .1374Haavisto 57696 461744 13 7 6.804 16.01 .1129
Comparing admin and user initiated posts
Results:
Niinistö Haavisto050000
100000150000200000250000300000350000400000
Overall activity (count of all activities)
UserAdmin
Niinistö HaavistoUser 9435 17818Admin 84 127
Regression coefficients explaining user generated activity level
Number of components within the post
Avg. Friendship centrality degree within the post
Niinistö 1,075 0,511Haavisto 0,999 0,8
All coeffiecients are highly statistically significant
In admin-initiated posts users’ intra-post connedtedness is associated with bigger
activity in Niinistö page
Discussion
Conclusion
Niinistö Haavisto
Activity More admin initiated
More user initiated
Structure Cliques, wide Dense
Interaction More friendship based (”friends
interacting”)
More community based (”strangers
interacting)
Implications and challenges Practical implication
enhancing means for political campaining and public relations practice Scientific implications
Gaining more (accurate) information on social behaviour in online social networks
Methodological contribution: SNA & statistics & large real world data sets Challenges
The platform infrastrucutre determines the activity heavily. For example, how to identify the effects of the technology and include it in the analysis, for example FB Edgerank?
Content of the posts matters: combining textual content analysis with activity and network measures is needed
Contentual factors: external events, news media, gallups Privacy issues: demographic variables are difficult to incorporate