Category Archives: Twitter

Election 2012: A #SocialElection Driven By The Data

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Social media was a bigger part of the election season of 2012 than ever before, from the enormous volume of Facebook updates and tweets to memes during the Presidential debates to public awareness of what the campaigns were doing there in popular culture. Facebook may even have booted President Obama’s vote tally.

While it’s too early to say if any of the plethora of platforms played any sort of determinative role in 2012, strong interest in what social media meant in this election season led me to participate in two panels in the past two weeks: one during DC Week 2012 and another at the National Press Club, earlier today. Storifies of the online conversations during each one are embedded below.

http://storify.com/digiphile/social-media-and-election-2012-at-dc-week-2012.js[View the story “Social media and Election 2012 at DC Week 2012” on Storify]

http://storify.com/digiphile/election-2012-the-socialelection.js[View the story “Election 2012: The #SocialElection?” on Storify]

The big tech story of this campaign, however, was not social media. As Micah Sifry presciently observed last year, it wasn’t (just) about Facebook: “it’s the data, stupid.” And when it came to building for this re-election campaign like an Internet company, the digital infrastructure that the Obama campaign’s team of engineers built helped to deliver the 2012 election.

To use social media in a time of need, start building networks before disasters

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As is the case in every major event in the U.S., social media was part of the fabric of communications during Hurricane Sandy. Twitter was a window into what was happening in real-time. Facebook gave families and friends a way to stay in touch about safety or power. And government officials and employees, from first responders mayors to governors to the President of the United States, put critical information into the hands of citizens that needed it.

While Hurricane Sandy cemented the utility of these networks, neither they nor their role are new. With all due respect to Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio, his notion that people aren’t conveying “useful information” every day there — that it’s just ” chatting about sport results, or favorite actors, or how to bake” — is like some weird flashback to a 2007 blog post or ignorant cable news anchor.

Public sector, first responders and emergency management officials have recognized the utility of social media reports as a means for situational awareness before, during and after natural or man-made disasters for years now and have integrated tools into crisis response.

Officials at local, state and federal levels have confirmed to me again and again that it’s critical to build trusted networks *before* disaster strikes so that when crises occur, the quality of intelligence is improved and existing relationships with influence can amplify their messages.

Media and civil society serve as infomediaries and critical filters (aka, B.S. detectors) for vetting information, something that has proved crucial with fake reports and pictures popping up. Official government accounts play a critical role for putting trusted information into the networks to share, something we saw in real-time up and down the East Coast this week.

To be frank, Di Maio’s advice that authorities shouldn’t incorporate social media into their normal course of business is precisely the opposite of the experience on the ground of organizations like the Los Angeles Fire Department, Red Cross or FEMA. Here’s Brian Humphrey, public information officer of the LAFD, on best practices for social media:

If public safety officials come across Di Maio’s advice, I hope they’ll choose instead to listen to citizens every day and look to scale the best practices of their peers for using technology for emergency response, not start during a crisis.

A Twitter chat with @VotingInfo on voting, elections and tech

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Today, I hosted a Twitter chat with the Voting Information Project. They partner with states to provide official election data that developers can use to create free, open source tools for voters.

I’ve embedded a storify of our conversation below, along with a video explaining more about what they do. Of special note: VIP is partnering with Mobile Commons to let registered voters know where to vote. Just txt “where” or “donde” to 877-877.

http://storify.com/digiphile/a-chat-with-votinginfo-on-voting-elections-and-tec.js[View the story “A chat with @VotingInfo on voting, elections and tech” on Storify]

Do newspapers need to adopt data science to cover campaigns?

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Last October, New York Times elections developer Derek Willis was worried about what we don’t know about elections:

While campaigns have a public presence that is mostly recorded and observed, the stuff that goes on behind the scenes is so much more sophisticated than it has been. In 2008 we were fascinated by the Obama campaign’s use of iPhones for data collection; now we’re entering an age where campaigns don’t just collect information by hand, but harvest it and learn from it. An “information arms race,” as GOP consultant Alex Gage puts it.

For most news organizations, the standard approach to campaign coverage is tantamount to bringing a knife to a gun fight. How many data scientists work for news organizations? We are falling behind, and we risk not being able to explain to our readers and users how their representatives get elected or defeated.

Writing for the New York Times today, Slate columnist Sasha Issenberg revisited that theme, arguing that campaign reporters are behind the curve in understanding, analyzing or being able to capably replicate what political campaigns are now doing with data. Whether you’re new to the reality of the role of big data in this campaign or fascinated by it, a recent online conference on the data-driven politics of 2012 will be of interest. I’ve embedded it below:

Issenberg’s post has stirred online debate amongst journalists, academics and at least one open government technologist. I’ve embedded a storify of them below.

http://storify.com/digiphile/should-newspapers-adopt-data-science-to-cover-poli.js[View the story “Should newspapers adopt data science to cover political campaigns?” on Storify]

Can government innovation rise above partisan politics?

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Earlier today, the White House announced the first class of Presidential Innovation Fellows. Following is the story you might have missed on the Twitter backchannel, followed by a NodeX graph of the tweets around #InnovateGov.

http://storify.com/digiphile/when-innovategov-gets-hot-will-policy-debates-foll.js

[View the story “When #innovategov gets hot, will policy debates follow?” on Storify]

In the network graph below, you’ll see there are 3 discreet groups around the White House, Tim O’Reilly and me, and Michelle Malkin. The lines between the nodes show replies.

Health 2.0 Code-a-thon Creates Mobile and Web Health Apps With Open Data

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http://storify.com/digiphile/health-2-0-code-a-thon-creates-prototype-health-ap.js[View the story “Health 2.0 Code-a-thon Creates Prototype Health Apps With Open Data” on Storify]

FTC releases final consumer privacy report, hosts Twitter chat to discuss recommendations

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http://storify.com/digiphile/the-federal-trade-commission-at-ftc-twitter-chat-o.js[View the story “The Federal Trade Commission (@FTC) Twitter Chat on the 2012 Privacy Report” on Storify]

Coding for community: the story of an ideahack in Chicago

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If you’re following the intersection of citizens, technology and cities in the United States in 2012, the story of Chicago is already on your radar, as are the efforts of Code for America. This month, Code for America rolled out its brigades to start coding across America, including the Windy City.

These “brigades” are an effort to empower civic hackers to make apps and services that help their own communities. In Chicago, they’re calling themselves “IdeaHack.”

Below, I’ve embedded a story of their second meeting.

http://storify.com/IdeaHackChi/ideahack-ii.js[View the story “IdeaHack II” on Storify]

STUDY: On Twitter, Congressional Republicans lead on engagement, links and laws cited

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Data from a new study on the use of Twitter by U.S. Senator and Representatives by public relations giant Edelman strongly suggests that the Grand Old Party has opened up a grand old lead in its use of the popular microblogging platform in just about every metric.

On Twitter’s 6th birthday, there’s more political speech flowing through tweets than ever. Twitter data from the study, as provided by Simply Measured, showed that on Twitter, Republican lawmakers are mentioned more, reply more often, are retweeted more, share more links to rich content and webpages, and reference specific bills much more often. Republicans tweet about legislation 3.5 times more than Democrats.

There are also more Republicans on Twitter: while the 89 U.S. Senators who tweet are evenly split, with one more Republican Senator tipping the balance, in the U.S. House there are 67 more Republican Representatives expressing themselves in 140 characters or less.

At this point, it’s worth noting that one of Twitter’s government leads in DC estimated earlier this year that only 15-20% of Congressional Twitter accounts are actually being updated by the Congressmen themselves, but the imbalance stands.

While Edelman DC was quite tactful about what its study on the yeas and nays of the Congressional Twitterverse revealed, the lead Congressional Republicans hold on Twitter has been well documented since 2010, when a study on Twitter in Congress asserted that Democrats use Twitter for transparency, while Republicans use it for outreach. A 2011 survey of social media use in Congress by the Associated Press found that the Republicans similarly “out tweeting” Democrats on Twitter.

While the ways that governments deal with social media cannot be measured by one platform alone nor the activity upon it, the data in the embedded study below be of interest to many, particularly as the window for Congress to pass meaningful legislation narrows as the full election season looms this summer.

In the context of social media and election 2012, how well a Representative or Senator is tweeting could be assessed by whether they can use Twitter to build awareness of political platforms, respond to opposing campaign or, perhaps importantly for the purposes of the election, reach potential voters, help get them registered, and bring them to the polls

Capitol Tweets: Yeas and Nays of the Congressional Twitterverse

Nathan Eung, one of the authors of the study cited above, wrote at Govfresh about how the reasons for using Twitter may be different across party lines

Outreach and transparency are both valuable to a healthy democracy, and to some extent, it is re-assuring that Twitter use is motivated by both reasons. An interesting counter-factual situation would be if the Republicans were the majority party. We may therefore ask in that situation: Is the desire to reach out to (opposing) voters strongest for “losing” parties? Our study certainly hints that Republicans are not only motivated to use Twitter as a means to reach out to their own followers, but also to Democrats, as they are more likely to use Twitter in cases where their district was overwhelmingly in favor President Barack Obama.

All-in-all, it would seem like Twitter is good for the whole Gov 2.0 idea. If Republicans are using Twitter as a means for outreach, then more bills may be passed (note: this has yet to be tested empirically, and still remains an open question for researchers). If Democrats are using Twitter as a means for transparency, then the public benefits from the stronger sense of accountability.

Capitol Tweets: New Edelman Study Looks at U.S. Congressional Performance on Twitter