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Category Archives: Blogs

NOAA’s Marine Debris Blog

“Marine debris is everyone’s problem. It is a global problem affecting everything from the environment to the economy; from fishing and navigation to human health and safety; from the tiniest coral polyps to giant blue whales. Marine debris also comes in many forms, from a cigarette butt to a 4,000-pound derelict fishing net. Marine debris is a… Continue Reading

Russia, Ukraine, and the West: Social Media Sentiment in the Euromaidan Protests

“Internet Monitor is delighted to announce the publication of  “Russia, Ukraine, and the West: Social Media Sentiment in the Euromaidan Protests,” the fourth in a series of special reports that focus on key events and new developments in Internet controls and online activity. The report, authored by Bruce Etling, analyzes content from a range of online Russian- and English-language sources,… Continue Reading

New on LLRX – Tech goals for solo and small-firm lawyers

Via LLRX.com – Tech goals for solo and small-firm lawyers – Nicole Black review the highlights of results of two legal technology surveys about lawyers’ plans to use legal technology in their law practices. They offer a glimpse into the businesses of solo and small firm lawyers and provide indications of their assessments of the value that different types… Continue Reading

Follow the money: A study of cashtags on Twitter

Follow the money: A study of cashtags on Twitter, Martin Hentschel, Omar Alonso, First Monday, August 14, 2014. “The popularity of Twitter goes beyond trending topics, world events, memes, and popular hashtags. Recently a new way of sharing financial information is taking place in social media under the name of cashtags, stock ticker symbols that are prefixed… Continue Reading

Social Media and the ‘Spiral of Silence’

“A major insight into human behavior from pre-internet era studies of communication is the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared. This tendency is called the “spiral of silence.” Some social media creators… Continue Reading

A Path to Understanding the Effects of Algorithm Awareness

Hamilton, K., Karahalios, K., Sandvig, C. & Eslami, M. (2014). “A Path to Understanding the Effects of Algorithm Awareness.” In CHI Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (alt.CHI). ACM, New York: “The rise in prevalence of algorithmically curated feeds in online news and social media sites raises a new question for designers, critics, and… Continue Reading

Biannual Twitter Transparency Report

“First published on July 2, 2012, our biannual Twitter Transparency Report highlights trends in government requests we’ve received for account information, government requests we’ve received for content removal, and copyright notices (both takedown notices and counter notices) we’ve received. The report also provides insight into whether or not we take action on these requests…We’ve received… Continue Reading

Can Twitter survive in a Facebook world? The key is being different

“News organizations have been reporting in recent weeks that Twitter’s growth rate has been slowing, which has spurred speculation about its future. The Pew Research Center has watched social networking in the U.S. grow faster and change more than most other internet activities, and that landscape continues to evolve quickly. Our studies have shown that Twitter occupies an important segment of… Continue Reading

Files provided by Snowden show extent to which ordinary Web users are caught in the net – WaPo

In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are, by Barton Gellman, Julie Tate and Ashkan Soltani “Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. Nine of 10 account holders found… Continue Reading

The effect of wording on message propagation

The effect of wording on message propagation: Topic- and author-controlled natural experiments on Twitter. In Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL’14). “How does one make a message “successful”? Thisquestion is of interest to many entities, including political parties trying to frame an issue (Chong and Druckman, 2007), and individuals attempting to make a… Continue Reading

Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment – Study

William Hughes: “Scientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. The paper, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” was published in The Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. It shows how Facebook data scientists… Continue Reading