Tag: Politics & Government

15 June 2017

Authors: Helen Margetts

After its initial appearance as a cynical but safe device by Teresa May to ratchet up the Conservative majority, the UK general election of 2017 turned out to be ...
Read More Stormzy 1: The Sun 0 — Three Reasons Why #GE2017 Was the Real Social Media Election

12 June 2017

Authors: webteam

To what extent do VAAs alter the way voters perceive the meaning of elections, and encourage them to hold politicians to account for election promises? Image: ep_jhu (Flickr CC ...
Read More Could Voting Advice Applications force politicians to keep their manifesto promises?

10 April 2017

Authors: Grant Blank

Twitter data have many qualities that appeal to researchers, but are probably not suitable for research where representativeness is important. Image: Bernard Goldbach (Flickr). Twitter data have many qualities ...
Read More Did you consider Twitter’s (lack of) representativeness before doing that predictive study?

27 January 2017

Authors: David Sutcliffe

  This is the second post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and ...
Read More Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: Fake News and Filter Bubbles

20 January 2017

Authors: David Sutcliffe

  This is the first post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and ...
Read More Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: The US Election

9 January 2017

Authors: Helen Margetts

After Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, 2016 will be remembered as the year of cataclysmic democratic events on both sides of the Atlantic. Social media has been ...
Read More Of course social media is transforming politics. But it’s not to blame for Brexit and Trump

6 December 2016

Authors: Taha Yasseri

2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump in a residential backyard near Jordan Creek Parkway and Cody Drive in West Des Moines, Iowa, with lights and security cameras. Image by Tony ...
Read More Can we predict electoral outcomes from Wikipedia traffic?

15 November 2016

Authors: Philip Howard

Donald Trump in Reno, Nevada, by Darron Birgenheier (Flickr). This is the big year for computational propaganda — using immense data sets to manipulate public opinion over social media. Both the ...
Read More Is Social Media Killing Democracy?

15 November 2016

Authors: Helen Margetts

Young activists gather at Lafayette Park in protest at the presidential campaign of presumptive Republican nominee Donald J. Trump. By Stephen Melkisethian (Flickr). Commentators have been quick to ‘blame ...
Read More Don’t Shoot the Messenger! What part did social media play in 2016 US e­lection?

23 August 2016

Authors: Ralf Schroeder

Did Twitter lead to Donald Trump’s rise and success to date in the American campaign for the presidency? Image: Gage Skidmore (Flickr) What are the dangers or new opportunities ...
Read More Rethinking Digital Media and Political Change

10 August 2016

Authors: Helen Margetts

Technology and the public sector have rarely been happy bedfellows in the UK, where every government technology project seems doomed to arrive late, unperform and come in over budget. ...
Read More Back to the bad old days, as civil service infighting threatens UK’s only hope for digital government

31 May 2016

Authors: Helen Margetts

The benefits of big data and data science for the private sector are well recognised. So far, considerably less attention has been paid to the power and potential of ...
Read More Alan Turing Institute and OII: Summit on Data Science for Government and Policy Making

23 March 2016

Authors: Bertram Vidgen

(Part 2 of 2) The Internet serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold great value to law enforcement. ...
Read More Exploring the Ethics of Monitoring Online Extremism

18 February 2016

Authors: Bertram Vidgen

The Internet serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold great value to law enforcement. The report by the ...
Read More Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material

7 December 2015

Authors: Gregory Asmolov

There is a great deal of interest in the use of crowdsourcing tools and practices in emergency situations. Gregory Asmolov‘s article Vertical Crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing Governance of Crowds ...
Read More Controlling the crowd? Government and citizen interaction on emergency-response platforms

22 November 2015

Authors: Henrik Serup Christensen

Crowdsourcing legislation is an example of a democratic innovation that gives citizens a say in the legislative process. In their Policy and Internet journal article ‘Does Crowdsourcing Legislation Increase Political ...
Read More Does crowdsourcing citizen initiatives affect attitudes towards democracy?

16 November 2015

Authors: Taneli Heikka

There is much discussion about a perceived “legitimacy crisis” in democracy. In his article The Rise of the Mediating Citizen: Time, Space, and Citizenship in the Crowdsourcing of Finnish ...
Read More Do Finland’s digitally crowdsourced laws show a way to resolve democracy’s “legitimacy crisis”?

9 November 2015

Authors: Simo Hosio

In spite of all their potential, public displays are all too often used merely to broadcast advertising. They can be used for so much more. Ubinion is a civic ...
Read More Assessing crowdsourcing technologies to collect public opinion around an urban renovation project

27 August 2015

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

Evening reception at the Ashmolean Museum for the IPP2014 conference: crowdsourcing for public policy. If elections were invented today, they would probably be referred to as “crowdsourcing the government.” ...
Read More Crowdsourcing for public policy and government

27 July 2015

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

Protest for fair taxi laws in Portland; organizers want city leaders to make ride-sharing companies play by the same rules as cabs and Town cars. Image: Aaron Parecki (Flickr). ...
Read More Why are citizens migrating to Uber and Airbnb, and what should governments do about it?