Dr. Iina HellstenAssociate Professor
VU University Amsterdam/ The Network InstituteDepartment of Organization Sciences
E-mail: [email protected]
Activist networks online: Methodological experiments
KNAW eHumanities group, 4 October 2012
Online activism
http://makeitfair.org/en/take-action
Activist groups, campaigns, documents: Methodological challenges
Very rich data on activist groups online
-- but how to study online activism?
Activist Networks Online2 PARTS:
1) Virtual presence (2010-2011) (de Bakker & Hellsten)* virtual activism? WHO is present?
* semantic content? WHAT is communicated?
2) Mapping online activist networks (MONA) (2012-)(De Bakker, Hellsten, Aroyo & Ploeger, Armenta)
* tactics and events? HOW are activist networks connected? WHY specific tactics?
Part 1: Virtual presence
internet image by Attila Toro from Fotolia.com
Online visibility: website, links to other websites, use of social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs)
Activist networks and campaigns high visibility on the Web
Virtual campaigns?Virtual activism?Virtual presence?
Internet and activist networksThink locally, act globally (Castells, 2001)
* circulation of material
* open forums for activism
* linking to other networks and campaigns
* raising awareness of the activists’ issues
* mobilization
Research questionsHow are activist groups organized online?
How are activist networks connected to each other?
What do activist networks communicate online?
What kind of shared tactics activist networks use online?
Methdological challenge:How to map online activist networks?
SOMO network
* Complex network, “spider in the web”* Coordinates several (changing campaigns)
SOMO network
“SOMO is an independent, non-profit research and network organisation working on social, ecological and economic
issues related to sustainable development. Since 1973, the organisation investigates multinational corporations and the
consequences of their activities for people and the environment around the world.” (www.somo.nl)
* High Web visibility
* Coordinating other organizations, networks and campaigns, incl. 8 activist networks
Mixed methodsHyperlink analysis
* how do organizations, networks and campaigns link to each other?* IssueCrawler (www.issuecrawler.net)
Semantic co-word maps * how do organizations, networks and campaigns frame issues?
*automated co-word mapping (www.leydesdorff.net)
Combination of methods allows us to track campaign events and link these to specific activist groups and firms
over time and across the networks
Simple event model (SEM)* how do organizations, networks share events?
Three steps, three questions
1. How are organizations, networks and campaigns linked to each other on the Web?
2. How is the structure of organization networks and semantics within the Web site linked to each other?
3. How do the semantics of a network (e.g. SOMO) and a campaign (e.g. makeITfair) differ from each other?
Hyperlinks
Hyperlink structure of linking organizations, networks and campaigns
Issue Crawler www.issuecrawler.net
Focus on SOMO as a coordinating network of activist groups and makeITfair as one campaign December 2010, May 2011 and December 2011
Hyperlinks December 2010
Figure 1: Hyperlink network of 52 organiztions around the website of SOMO, 20 December, 2010, [Issue Crawler results, SOMO highlighted, crawl depth 3]
makeITfair
SOMO
taxjustice
goodElectronics
Hyperlinks May 2011
SOMO hyperlink network of 52 organizations, 26 May, 2011, [Issue Crawler results, SOMO highlighted, crawl depth 3]
SOMO
FacebookOECDwatch
makeITfair
goodElectronics
Hyperlinks and semantics
Structure and content of the networks
SOMO website news compared to hyperlinks
Focus on January-May 2011
Semantic networksTools to map co-occurring words in text documents (e.g. news on the web sites of the activist networks)
Steps:1.Download text documents2.Create a word frequency list and a stop word list3.Run TI.exe to create asymmetrical word-document matrices4.Visualise results with Pajek
(source: Loet Leydesdorff, see www.leydesdorff.net)
SOMO news, January-May 2011
SOMO website news in January to May 2011 (22 documents,123 unique title words occurring twice or more often, cosine>0>0.882)
sustainable labour
electronics
Chinese, factories, pressing,
improvement
Apple, report
African, uranium miningOECD,
Watch ethical
Civil society advocacy
countries
market
Semantics of SOMO vs. makeITfair
Semantics between network and campaign (different tactics, different styles?)
SOMO (network)
makeITfair (campaign)
Focus on website news 2008-2010
SOMO news 2009
SOMO website news in 2009 (47 documents, 39 unique title words used twice or more often, cosine >0>0.481, separate components)
EU trade, developing countries
Call fair mobile phones
WTO financial crisis
Computer industry labour
rights
European
makeITfair
electronic
new
SOMO news 2010
SOMO website news in 2010 (48 documents, 39 unique title words occurring twice or more often, cosine>0> 0,430, separate components)
Global business
rules
EU financial reform,
developing countries
Foxconn suicides
ITfair
OECD guidelines
sustainable
SOMOnew
sector
makeITfair 2009
makeITfair website news, 2009 (19 news documents, 79 unique title words, cosine >0>0.729
IT
Shenzhen, mobile phone
free
industry
South African prior informed
consent
Nokia
electronic
makeITfair 2010
makeITfair website news, 2010, 10 news documents, 53 unique title words, separate components, cosine >0>0.845.
fair
IT campaig
n
Mobile phone
Foxconn suicide
Local voices must heard
Electronic sector global China appalling
Results (1)
Inter-organizational network (hyperlinks)* relatively stable (OECDWatch new comer)* the role of social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) increasing
Hyperlinks vs semantics* SOMO news actual topics behind the
hyperlinks (campaigns, organizations, other networks)
Results (2)Semantics of SOMO vs. makeITfair
*different styles (implicit frames)
SOMO: neutral, global informative style (reports, standards, particular campaigns)
makeITfair: call for action (negative words, threats, risks, alerts)
But how to get an idea of the tactics used by activists in online networks?
http://techland.time.com/2012/02/09/foxconn-hacked-as-apple-customers-prepare-to-deliver-petitions-calling-for-
ethical-iphone-5/
Example of activist events & tactics
Example
How to automate the analysis of such text documents?
Part 2: MONA project
MONA (Mapping Online Networks of Activists)
KNAW Academy assistant project
Goal: event database (incl. tactics)
Computer ScienceLora Aroyo – SupervisorThomas Ploeger - Student
Social SciencesBibiana Armenta – Student
Frank de Bakker - SupervisorIina Hellsten - Supervisor
Computer & social sciences collaboration
Social Science:– How activist networks try to target
organizations on issues of (corporate) social responsibility on the Web
Computer Science:– How existing data mining, information
retrieval, and visualization techniques can be applied to studying activist networks
ACTEVE (ACTivist EVEnts) model
Determining activist networks
Selecting campaigns (that attracted media & web attention)
Identifying different events and related tactics (tactics list)
Tracing framing of issues
GOAL: semi-automated tracking of online activist network events and tactics
Fig. 1. (A): Initial model: Campaign-centered. (B): Revised model: Event-centered
Source: Ploeger, T. & Armenta, B, & Aroyo, L. & de Bakker, F. & Hellsten, I. (2012) Making sense of the Arab revolution and Occupy: Visual analytics to understand events, CEUR Workshop Proceedings 902: pp. 61-70.
Campaign and event models
Case study 1: makeITfair campaign
Crawling makeITfair site (RapidMiner) http://rapid-i.com/content/view/181/190/
Focussing on single events within the text documents (bottom-up approach) Identifying events and networks of events
Visualizing events and tactics with timelines and location maps
Example of activist event
Company: Foxconn
Issue: unethical iPhone
Actor 1: Apple
customers
Event: petitions
Tactics:Hacking, petitions
Example: “Foxconn Hacked as Apple Customers Prepare to Deliver Petitions Calling for ‘ethical ‘iPhone 5”
Hacked?
deliver
call for
State:Hacked
?
Date?
Campaign:Ethical iPhone
Is part of
ACTEVE Model Procedure 1(2)Statistics on co-occurring words in full text documentsProcedure: 1)Starting from e.g. company names (within 1 event)
2) mapping the verbs that co-occur in the sentence with a company name
3)filtering the most frequent co-occurrences
4)Proceeding to events, issues, tactics etc.
Event Model Procedure 2(2)
Current state-of-affairsExperimenting with different aggregation levels and stopword lists
Time stamp sometimes problematic (several past and future oriented dates in full text)
Passive tense in verbs sometimes problematic (Foxconn hacked… does not include who hacked Foxconn)
Case study 2 Arab spring and Occupy movement
Methodological experiment:Outcomes for Social Sciences
Mapping and visualizing single events of activist networks
Enabling several perspectives on one event
Mixed methods approach: How to combine hyperlink & semantic maps mehtods to Event Model results?
Future avenues
Case studies1)Arab Spring
2)Occupy protest movement3)Climate change activism networks
Integrating the three steps, three methods (into one straight staircase)?
Acknowledgements:VU/ The Network Institute: KNAW Academy Assistant Project
Thank you!
More information:Ploeger, T., Armenta, B., Aroyo, L. de Bakker, F. and Hellsten, I. (2012): “Making Sense of the Arab Revolution and Occupy: Visual Analytics to Understand Events”, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 902, pp. 61-70 (ISSN 1613-0073) http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-902/
de Bakker, Frank & Hellsten Iina & Kok Anne (2011) “Examining Activism: Tracing networks and tactics on CSR” notizie di POLITEIA, XXVII, 103, pp. 66-77.
Bakker, de, Frank & Hellsten, I: “Virtual Presence: On Mapping How Activist Group Networks (try to) Impact Firms”, under review
