1. The document discusses political participation through various online and offline means. It examines differences between anonymous and named participation on discussion forums. 2. A study is described that found anonymous participants generated similar new topics as named participants, but named participants were more engaged in discussion. 3. The document outlines future work on computational analysis of online discussions and using social media data from political campaigns.

1. Political Scientist at HIIT
Matti Nelimarkka
matti.nelimarkka@hiit.fi
Twitter: @matnel ; IRCNet: matnel

3. Today I will talk about
Pervasive Social media and
participation tool politicians
• background • background
• current system • parliamentary elections (2011)
• preliminary results • municipal elections (2012)
• future work

4. Participation?!
Voting
E-mailing council members
Riots
Petitions
Consuming
Discussing
Liking in Facebook
Contacting administration
Anduiza, et al. (2009). Political participation and the internet. Information,
Communication & Society, 12: 6, 860 -878
van Deth (2001). Studying political participation: towards a theory of everything?.
Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research

5. Participation?!
Voting
Liberal-individualist digital
democracy
E-mailing council members
Riots
Petitions
Consuming
Discussing
Deliberative digital democracy
Liking in Facebook
Contacting administration
Graham (2012). Beyond ”Political” Communicative Spaces: Talking Politics on the Wife
Swap Discussion Forum. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 9(1), 31–45.
Dahlberg (2011). Re-constructing digital democracy: An outline of four “positions”.
New Media & Society, 13(6), 855–872.

6. Hitchhikers guide to Deliberation
a
b
A
B

7. Hitchhikers guide to Deliberation
a
?
A
α à a
…
B

8. Hitchhikers guide to Deliberation
a’
b > a?
a’
α = a’
A
b ≈ a’
B

9. Online world and participation
Dahlberg (2001): Extending the public sphere through
cyberspace: The case of Minnesota E-Democracy
Machintosh et al (2003): Electronic
Democracy and Young People
Jensen (2003):Virtual democratic dialogue?
Bringing together citizens and politicians
Albrecht (2006): Whose voice is heard in online deliberation? A study of
participation and representation in political debates on the Internet.
Strandberg (2008): Public deliberation goes on-line? An
analysis of citizens’ political discussions on the Internet
prior to the Finnish parliamentary elections in 2007
Baek et al (2011): Online versus face-to-face
deliberation: Who? Why? What? With what effects?

10. They have just been building
platforms… What
recommendations would I give
to someone building such
system?

11. They have just been building
platforms… What
recommendations would I give
to someone building such
system?
“… comparatively testing different forum interfaces to
see how they impact deliberation (and other values)
would enhance Saward’s democratic toolkit. …”
Wright (2012). Politics as usual? Revolution, normalization and a new agenda
for online deliberation. New Media & Society, 14(2), 244–261.

12. Presemo and work on that

13. Backchannels and stuff
IRC (McCarthy & boyd, 2005)
Twitter (Elmer, in press)
backchan.nl (Harry et al., 2009)
ClassCommons (Du et al., 2012)
McCarthy, & boyd (2005): Digital backchannels in shared physical spaces. CHI ’05
Elmer (in press). Live research: Twittering an election debate. New Media & Society
Du et al.. (2012):. Augmenting classroom participation through public digital backchannels. GROUP ’12
Harry et al. (2009): backchan.nl. CHI 09

14. Our Contribution:
Support for (study of)
control mechanics

15. My thinking
Affordances and Feedback
Social structure
limitations
mechanics

16. My thinking
Affordances and Feedback
Social structure
limitations
mechanics
Anonymity?
Message length?
Turn taking?

17. My thinking
Affordances and Feedback
Social structure
limitations
mechanics
Computational analysis?
Karma?
Social feedback?

18. Evaluation ‘framework’
Deliberation
Experience

19. Approaches to study
Maija
Matti
Minni
Mika

20. The Study
Anonymous Nicks
New threads 2.2 3.4
Responses 3.1 13.8
Σ 3.4 13.6
per contributor

21. Observation
In the context of boarding school students
presenting their progress on weekly bases:
1. Anonymous participants and named
participants generated circa same
amount of new topics
2. Named participants were much more
interested in the conversation

22. Example (with nicks)
Mui.
Hello.
mui
hello
rekursiivinen
mui
recursive
hello
mui
hello
rekursio
jatkuu
recursion
connues
tuska,
rekursio
ei
mene
oh
my,
the
recursion
doesn’t
go
tämän
syvemmälle
deeper
asia
on
korja5ava
potkitaan
ma7a
this
must
be
fixed
kayte5avyysongelmasta
let’s
nofy
ma7
about
an
usability
issue

23. Example (anonymous)
oo5e
kaikki
you’re
all
homoja
t.
gay
t.
anonymo
us
anonymous
väitän,
e5ä
naisille
oikea
i
claim
that
for
women
the
correct
termi
ois
lesbo
term
is
“lesbian”
väitän
e5ä
lesbo
on
I
claim
that
lesbian”
is
a
spoken
puhekielinen
ilmaus
ja
myös
naispuoliset
homot
ovat
language
term
and
all
female
gays
homoja
are
also
gays
väitän,
e5ä
''homo''
on
I
claim
that
“gay”
is
a
spoken
puhekielinen
ilmaus
ja
language
term
and
all
gays
and
homot
ja
lesbot
ovat
homoseksuaaleja'
lesbians
are
homosexual
to5a!
I
agree

24. Future work

25. Something totally different next!

26. “These are the social media
elections”

27. Previous work
Adamic Glance (2005): The political blogosphere
and the 2004 U.S. election: divided they blog.
Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on
Link discovery
Lassen Brown (2011): Twitter: The Electoral
Connection. Social Science Computer Review, 29(4)
Williams Gulati (in press): Social networks in political campaigns: Facebook and
the congressional elections of 2006 and 2008. New Media Society
Schweitzer (2011): Normalization 2.0: A longitudinal analysis of German
online campaigns in the national elections 2002-9. European Journal of
Communication, 26(4)
Golbeck et al (2010): Twitter use by the U.S. Congress. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(8)
Stromer-Galley, J. (2000). On-line interaction and why
candidates avoid it. Journal of Communication, 50(4)

28. Parliamentary elections 2011
Presence in social media
Number of followers in social networks

29. Parliamentary elections 2011
Presence in social media
Number of followers in social networks
Younger people are more likely to be
present in social media and they are also
more active

30. Parliamentary elections 2011
Presence in social media
Number of followers in social networks
The money spend on the campaing does not
increase the engagement in the media, even
while the presence is increased

31. Parliamentary elections 2011
Presence in social media
Number of followers in social networks
The importance of the party has no positive
impact in the presence nor in the engagement.

32. Parliamentary elections 2011
Presence in social media
Number of followers in social networks
Personal attributes have no significant impact.

33. Social media ~ (big) data
Status updates
Comments
Likes
Shares
Friendships
Followership

34. Social media ~ (big) data
Status updates
Comments
Likes
Fancy We have
Shares
method a clue
Friendships
Followership

35. Social media ~ (big) data
Status updates
Comments
Likes
Fancy We have
Shares
method a clue
Friendships
Followership
About
what?

36. Something interesting…
Normalization Homogeneity
Equality Impact

37. Data – we have it!
{347840141974498: [{timestamp: 1347827862, comments: [], likes: [], text: null, id:
347840141974498_347840168641162, user: 347840141974498}, {timestamp: 1347829790,
comments: [{id: 5464046, timestamp: 1347965163, likes: [347840141974498], user:
100000602647522, text: Kovin on aution nu00e4ku00f6istu00e4 alaosasta,mutta olisiko siin
u00e4 1 aika kirkas tu00e4hti !}, {id: 5480710, timestamp: 1348351602, likes: [], user:
100000309911166, text: Onko tu00e4mu00e4 jo suurseinu00e4joki?}, {id: 5482478,
timestamp: 1348396864, likes: [1098500432], user: 347840141974498, text: Tu00e4lt
u00e4 se Seinu00e4joki kokonaisuudessaan nu00e4yttu00e4u00e4. Pisteet kuvaavat
Keskustan kuntavaaliehdokkaita. Arvaatte varmasti minun sijaintini tu00e4ssu00e4 kartassa. :)},
~55 M of Facebook dumps
~25 M of Tweets

38. Future work

39. Political Scientist at HIIT
Matti Nelimarkka
matti.nelimarkka@hiit.fi
Twitter: @matnel ; IRCNet: matnel