0000000000699915
AUTHOR
Pascal Jürgens
Communities of Communication: Making Sense of the “Social” in Social Media
As social media usage permeates people's lives, an increasing portion of their daily behavior leaves digital traces to be used by researchers. Social scientists can hope to gain new insight into the previously hidden but digitally recorded aspects of our digital social lives. Beyond aggregate and individual-level studies of user behavior, the digital traces also enable scientific examination of the structure of social interaction through networks. At the same time, the large scale and networked nature of social media data pose a new set of challenges to be overcome through the development of sound methodologies. We take stock of current methodological promises and challenges in social media…
Forecasting the pulse
Purpose – The steady increase of data on human behavior collected online holds significant research potential for social scientists. The purpose of this paper is to add a systematic discussion of different online services, their data generating processes, the offline phenomena connected to these data, and by demonstrating, in a proof of concept, a new approach for the detection of extraordinary offline phenomena by the analysis of online data. Design/methodology/approach – To detect traces of extraordinary offline phenomena in online data, the paper determines the normal state of the respective communication environment by measuring the regular dynamics of specific variables in data documen…
sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612211026595 - Supplemental material for Common Core in Danger? Personalized Information and the Fragmentation of the Public Agenda
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612211026595 for Common Core in Danger? Personalized Information and the Fragmentation of the Public Agenda by Melanie Magin, Stefan Geiß, Birgit Stark and Pascal Jürgens in The International Journal of Press/Politics
Loopholes in the Echo Chambers: How the Echo Chamber Metaphor Oversimplifies the Effects of Information Gateways on Opinion Expression
Social media (SM) are often regarded drivers of personalized echo chambers in which only ideas resonante that individuals already hold, leading to more extreme opinions and intensified opinion expression. However, recent theorizing and evidence has cast doubts on the universal applicability of the echo chamber metaphor, pointing out that communication effects on opinion expression are much more complex than the metaphor suggests. Using the refugee crisis in Germany as a background, the current study challenges four implicit premises of the echo chamber metaphor empirically. The findings show a more complex picture than the metaphor implies: (1) Ignoring other information sources beyond SM m…
sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612211026595 - Supplemental material for Common Core in Danger? Personalized Information and the Fragmentation of the Public Agenda
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-hij-10.1177_19401612211026595 for Common Core in Danger? Personalized Information and the Fragmentation of the Public Agenda by Melanie Magin, Stefan Geiß, Birgit Stark and Pascal Jürgens in The International Journal of Press/Politics
Common Core in Danger? Personalized Information and the Fragmentation of the Public Agenda
The diversification of information sources has reignited the controversy on media-induced fragmentation endangering social integration. The media's capability to set the public agenda and create issues as a common core is a pivotal part of the public sphere and contributes fundamentally to society's cohesion. Algorithm-driven sources like social media that personalize content to the preferences of individuals and their social networks are considered agents of fragmentation of the public sphere. Politically extreme individuals relying on them may be particularly vulnerable to losing touch with society's common core. We employ an innovative operationalization of fragmentation on the individu…
Through a Glass, Darkly
Political actors increasingly use the microblogging service, Twitter, for the organization, coordination, and documentation of collective action. These interactions with Twitter leave digital artifacts that can be analyzed. In this article, we look at Twitter messages commenting on one of the most contentious protests in Germany’s recent history, the protests against the infrastructure project Stuttgart 21. We analyze all messages containing the hashtag #s21 that were posted between May 25, 2010, and November 14, 2010, by the 80,000 most followed Twitter users in Germany. We do this to answer three questions: First, what distinguishes events that resulted in high activity on Twitter from ev…
Supplemental Material, Jurgens_online_supplement - Two Half-Truths Make a Whole? On Bias in Self-Reports and Tracking Data
Supplemental Material, Jurgens_online_supplement for Two Half-Truths Make a Whole? On Bias in Self-Reports and Tracking Data by Pascal Jürgens, Birgit Stark, and Melanie Magin in Social Science Computer Review
The Political Click: Political Participation through E-Petitions in Germany
Electronic petitions can serve as an influential mechanism for political participation. We present a study on the dynamics in the German e-petition system which was introduced in late 2008. Drawing on a data set of signatures, we analyze four aspects: (a) the types of petitions found, (b) the temporal dynamics of petitions, (c) the types of users found, and (d) the intersection of different petitions' supporter populations. We present evidence that (a) the system is dominated by a very small number of high-volume petitions and (b) these high-volume petitions have a delayed boosting effect on the base activity in the petition system. We furthermore (c) present a typology of users, showing th…
Why the Pirate Party Won the German Election of 2009 or The Trouble With Predictions: A Response to Tumasjan, A., Sprenger, T. O., Sander, P. G., & Welpe, I. M. “Predicting Elections With Twitter: What 140 Characters Reveal About Political Sentiment”
In their article “Predicting Elections with Twitter: What 140 Characters Reveal About Political Sentiment,” the authors Andranik Tumasjan, Timm O. Sprenger, Philipp G. Sandner, and Isabell M. Welpe (TSSW) the authors claim that it would be possible to predict election outcomes in Germany by examining the relative frequency of the mentions of political parties in Twitter messages posted during the election campaign. In this response we show that the results of TSSW are contingent on arbitrary choices of the authors. We demonstrate that as of yet the relative frequency of mentions of German political parties in Twitter message allows no prediction of election results.
Two Half-Truths Make a Whole? On Bias in Self-Reports and Tracking Data
The pervasive use of mobile information technologies brings new patterns of media usage, but also challenges to the measurement of media exposure. Researchers wishing to, for example, understand the nature of selective exposure on algorithmically driven platforms need to precisely attribute individuals’ exposure to specific content. Prior research has used tracking data to show that survey-based self-reports of media exposure are critically unreliable. So far, however, little effort has been invested into assessing the specific biases of tracking methods themselves. Using data from a multimethod study, we show that tracking data from mobile devices is linked to systematic distortions in sel…
Small worlds with a difference
Political discussions on social network platforms represent an increasingly relevant source of political information, an opportunity for the exchange of opinions and a popular source of quotes for media outlets. We analyzed political communication on Twitter during the run-up to the German general election of 2009 by extracting a directed network of user interactions based on the exchange of political information and opinions. In consonance with expectations from previous research, the resulting network exhibits small-world properties, lending itself to fast and efficient information diffusion. We go on to demonstrate that precisely the highly connected nodes, characteristic for small-world…
Maßlos überschätzt. Ein Überblick über theoretische Annahmen und empirische Befunde zu Filterblasen und Echokammern
Seit einigen Jahren sind zwei einpragsame Metaphern im offentlichen und wissenschaftlichen Diskurs allgegenwartig – Filterblasen und Echokammern. Beide beschreiben plakativ die Gefahr, dass Menschen sich in eine Welt zuruckziehen oder in sie befordert werden, in der sie nur noch Themen, die sie interessieren, und Meinungen, die sie selbst vertreten, zur Kenntnis nehmen (mussen). Bei der Entstehung solcher Enklaven wird algorithmisch gesteuerten Informationsquellen (insbesondere sozialen Medien und Suchmaschinen) eine Schlusselrolle zugewiesen. Der Beitrag gibt einen Uberblick uber theoretische Annahmen und empirischen Forschungsstand zu Filterblasen und Echokammern. Er macht deutlich, dass …
Digital Trace Data in the Study of Public Opinion
In this article, we examine the relationship between metrics documenting politics-related Twitter activity with election results and trends in opinion polls. Various studies have proposed the possibility of inferring public opinion based on digital trace data collected on Twitter and even the possibility to predict election results based on aggregates of mentions of political actors. Yet, a systematic attempt at a validation of Twitter as an indicator for political support is lacking. In this article, building on social science methodology, we test the validity of the relationship between various Twitter-based metrics of public attention toward politics with election results and opinion pol…
Grassroots-Demokratie via Twitter?
„Was lange gart, wird endlich Wut.“Mit diesem umformulierten Sprichwort lasst sich die Entwicklung der Proteste um Stuttgart 21 (S21) treffend charakterisieren. Das Projekt ist eines der umstrittensten Verkehrs- und Stadtebauprojekte in Deutschland und beschaftigt die Bevolkerung – insbesondere die Stuttgarter Burger – seit Jahrzehnten: Zum einen soll der bestehende Kopfbahnhof in einen Durchgangsbahnhof sowie die Neubaustrecke zwischen Wendlungen und Ulm ausgebaut und zum anderen sollen durch die Umwandlung des Hauptbahnhofs freiwerdende Gleisstrecken stadtebaulich verandert werden. Bereits in den 1980er Jahren gab es hierzu erste Beratungen und Plane auf Bundes- und Landesebene. In einem …
The Mediation of Politics through Twitter: An Analysis of Messages posted during the Campaign for the German Federal Election 2013
Patterns found in digital trace data are increasingly used as evidence of social phenomena. Still, the role of digital services not as mirrors but instead as mediators of social reality has been neglected. We identify characteristics of this mediation process by analyzing Twitter messages referring to politics during the campaign for the German federal election 2013 and comparing the thus emerging image of political reality with established measurements of political reality. We focus on the relationship between temporal dynamics in politically relevant Twitter messages and crucial campaign events, comparing dominant topics in politically relevant tweets with topics prominent in surveys and …