1. Georgia Bullen
Field Operations
Technologist
georgia@opentechinstitute.or
g
Participatory Social Impact
Research

2. Creating digital networks is mostly a social
process.

6. Video, Audio, Graphics, Web, IT/Networking

9. Documentation: Collection Methods
• If This Then That (IFTTT) http://ifttt.com
– Whenever “#detroitfuture” is tweeted  Update
Wordpress Blog w/tweet info
• Open Source Twitter Archive Tool
– Immortal nTwitter, nTwitter, CouchDB, NodeJS
– Javascript Library for listening on the Twitter API*
• https://github.com/horixon/immortal-ntwitter
• https://github.com/horixon/ntwitter
• http://couchdb.apache.org/
• http://nodejs.org/
*In Glossary

10. Research Question
Who is the “#detroitfuture” community?
How has it evolved over the course of the
program?
– When and how often were people tweeting?
• How does this relate to the media trainings and program
events?
– Who’s tweeting?
– What are they tweeting about?
– Who’s tweeting to whom?

11. What does the data look like?
• Username
• Tweet
• Retweets
• Date & Time
• Users Mentioned
• Lots and lots of metadata…

12. Looking at Tweets Over Time
• When and how often were people
tweeting?
• How does this relate to the media trainings
and program events?
• Counts of Tweets by Date -> Chart
• Information about events & trainings

14. #detroitfuture social network
• Who’s tweeting to whom?
• ParticipantA ParticipantB, Count of Tweets
• Gephi – http://gephi.org
– Network Visualization Software, Open Source,
Easy to use
– Calculate edge (links) and node (participant)
scores
– Run an analysis for communities within the
community

15. #detroitfuture oct 2012

16. #detroitfuture june 2013

18. Key Findings
• Online & Offline organization
• Allows us to ask Innovative questions
• Agency and authority for participants
• Evolution from training  issues

19. Future Research
• Natural Language Sentiment Analysis
• Add interactive time control into the
network visualization
• Demographics based on Twitter Bios

20. Challenges
• Have to teach how to use twitter first
• APIs/Webformats/etc – need assistance
with more technical skill sets
• Twitter API doesn’t get everything
• Keeping the community engaged in using
the hashtag
• Hashtag is public and can be usurped

21. Philadelphia – KEYSPOTS Program

22. Research Question
Did the partnership function well? What
was the impact of the BTOP funding on
the partnership organizations?
– Did the organizations involved collaborate with
each other?
– Did the organizations involved collaborate with
outside organizations?

23. Collaboration Weighting Model
Within Grant: 1
External to Grants: 2
Between Grants: 3

24. Analysis Methodology
• Data cleaning & Coding
– Clean for text matching
– Grant assignments and weighting
– OrganizationA OrganizationB, Weight of
Collaboration

26. Thank you!
Contact info:
Georgia Bullen
Email: georgia@opentechinstitute.org
Twitter: @georgiamoon

27. Glossary
• API – Application Programming Interface;
Basically a query tool for interacting with
web systems

28. Resources
• OTI: http://oti.newamerica.net
• Detroit Future Program: http://detroitfuture.org
• #detroitfuture on twitter:
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23detroitfuture&src=
hash
• Gephi: http://gephi.org
• VLOOKUP & Excel Functions:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-
help/vlookup-HP005209335.aspx
• Pivot Tables: http://office.microsoft.com/en-
us/excel-help/pivottable-reports-101-
HA001034632.aspx