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Social media in Public Sector

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Major Question

  • How is the public sector using social media
    • Individual users
    • Congressmen, senators, govt agencies
  • How are people discussing public sector topics on social media
    • Analyzing groups and trends
    • how they talk about public sector issues?

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Analyzing individual users

  • Types of social media use
    • Broadcast/ sending information
      • Send some info to a lot of users
    • Request for feedback/ input
    • Conversation/interaction

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Analyzing individual users

  • Types of social media use
    • Broadcast/ sending information
    • Request for feedback/ input
      • Send an info, ask for opinions, polls
    • Conversation/interaction

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Analyzing individual users

  • Types of social media use
    • Broadcast/ sending information
    • Request for feedback/ input
    • Conversation/interaction
      • Send an information, start a conversation with the person, dialogue, discussion etc

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Questions for Analysis

  • Who is doing the posting?
  • Who are the target audience?
  • Why is the audience engaged on social media with the organization?
  • How is the user using social media?

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Questions for Analysis

  • Who is doing the posting?
    • Politician? PR team?
  • Who are the target audience?
  • Why is the audience engaged on social media with the organization?
  • How is the user using social media?

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Questions for Analysis

  • Who is doing the posting?
  • Who are the target audience?
    • Based on locality? based on supporters?
  • Why is the audience engaged on social media with the organization?
  • How is the user using social media?

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Questions for Analysis

  • Who is doing the posting?
  • Who are the target audience?
  • Why is the audience engaged on social media with the organization?
    • Police is only giving updates
    • Not looking at the comments
    • Users only want updates about what’s happening in the locality may be
  • How is the user using social media?

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Questions for Analysis

  • Who is doing the posting?
  • Who are the target audience?
  • Why is the audience engaged on social media with the organization?
  • How is the user using social media?
    • Phone? Desktop?
    • Phones – very frequent easy access
    • Desktop not as much

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Case Study: Solving a child abduction

  • Summer 2012, a 10 year old was walking home in PA
  • A man attempted to abduct the girl, but she fought him off and ran
  • Child did not know the attacker. But he was caught on several CCTV cameras

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Case Study: Solving a child abduction

  • PA Police made this footage available on social media
    • YouTube, twitter, facebook
  • Really fuzzy
  • Footage of his car too

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Case Study: Solving a child abduction

  • PA Police made this footage available on social media
    • YouTube, twitter, facebook
  • The suspect turned himself in within hours of the postings
  • Claimed: “He had nowhere to hide”

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Case Study: Solving a child abduction

  • Strategies from the PA police
  • Use social media for broadcast
  • They do not tweet too often (~ 10 times a day)
    • So, they do not overwhelm people with information
    • Only important things
  • Ask people to reach out through traditional methods like phone
    • Ask them to call 911 to give a tip about a suspect for example

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Case Study: Congressional use of Twitter

  • Golbeck, Grimes, Rogers, 2010 paper
  • Collected all tweets from the congresswomen and men
  • How are they using Twitter?

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Case Study: Congressional use of Twitter

  • How are they using Twitter?
    • Communication
    • Talking about activities
    • Providing information
    • Requesting action
    • Fundraising
  • Which one of these are the most common?
    • Posting information was most prevalent
    • Bills, position on an issue etc.
    • Activities, location, etc were next most important

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Case Study: Predicting elections and Astroturfing

  • Can analyzing social media activity indicate who might win an election?
  • Can politicians take advantage of this to make it look like they have more support than they do?
    • That’s where astroturfing come in
    • Fake profiles tweeting in support a lot
    • Fake grassroot users in support
    • Win other people over because they see a lot of support (even though its fake)
      • Fake grassroot 🡪 astroturf

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Case Study: Predicting elections and Astroturfing

  • Predicting elections are tough
  • Volumes of tweets about a candidate does not mean the candidate has a good chance
  • Some results are only slightly better than random guessing

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Astroturfing

  • Grass roots efforts are those initiated and led by members of the general public
  • Some campaigns mimic that, setting up fake accounts to simulate grass roots support
    • This is astroturfing
  • These accounts can be detected using network structure analysis
    • Retweet and follow behavior

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Astroturfing

  • Grass roots efforts are those initiated and led by members of the general public
  • Some campaigns mimic that, setting up fake accounts to simulate grass roots support
    • This is astroturfing
  • These accounts can be detected using network structure analysis
    • Retweet and follow behavior

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