Andrew Chadwick

Online news and serendipitous discovery - significant findings from Pew

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:44:27 +0000

Significant findings on accidental exposure to online news from the latest Pew report:

“To get a sense of the different approaches employed by online news users, and how active or passive online news consumption is, we asked how often online news users:

Go online specifically to get news?
Come across news while they are online doing other things?
Get news forwarded to them through email, automatic alerts and updates, or posts on social networking sites

The answers to these questions reveal that it is most common for online news users to chance upon news while they are online doing other things—what could be called “serendipitous” news consumption. Eight in ten online news users (80%) say this happens at least a few times a week, including 59% who say this happens everyday or almost everyday. Only slightly less common, however, is the hunting and gathering approach to online news consumption. About seven in ten online news users (71%) say they go online specifically to get news at least a few times a week, including almost half (48%) who say they do this everyday or almost everyday.

Meanwhile, a smaller segment of online news users say that news finds them—44% get news forwarded to them through email, automatic updates and alerts, or posts on social networking sites at least a few times a week, which includes 28% who receive news everyday or almost everyday. One quarter of online news users (25%) say they never have news forwarded to them.”

Though the numbers are likely to be a great deal smaller when it comes to specifically political information (something which Pew didn’t examine), it’s good to see some basic data coming through about this aspect of the contemporary web.

I argued in a journal article published last year that increased accidental exposure was potentially one of the most significant—and under-explored—changes associated with web 2.0 and online social networking sites.

This hypothesis also forms the core of the grant application that my colleague, Oliver Heath and I submitted last year to the Leverhulme Trust to study Twitter and the UK election.

We should hear any day now whether we’ve been successful. The wheels turn slowly—and often not at all—in the world of grant funding. Fingers crossed.

Twitter and the emerging viewertariat

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:06:21 +0000

The Emerging Viewertariat: Explaining Twitter Responses to Nick Griffin’s Appearance on BBC Question Time

Today, Nick Anstead of the University of East Anglia (a former PHD student of mine and affiliated researcher of the New Political Communication Unit), and Ben O’Loughlin (my colleague and Co-Director of the NPCU) publish a working paper dealing with the use of Twitter during the now-notorious episode of BBC Question Time broadcast on 22nd October 2009, which featured BNP leader Nick Griffin.

From the NPCU blog:

“In this preliminary piece they start to analyse a dataset of more than 40,000 tweets related to the broadcast. We theorise that the interaction of a major broadcast events and new media technologies is creating a proportion of the audience who amount to a Viewertariat – commenting, analysing, and discussing what they are watching in real time.

The full paper can be downloaded here, while the press release is below:

In their study Nick Anstead from the University of East Anglia and Ben O’Loughlin of Royal Holloway, University of London, argue that the boundaries between traditional broadcasting and new media are becoming blurred as more and more viewers use Twitter and other social media to comment in public on what they are watching. This is resulting in what the authors term the new ‘Viewertariat’ – a group that responds and gives meaning to events on screen, offering real-time feedback.

The researchers examined viewers’ reactions on Twitter to British National Party leader Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on Question Time, the flagship BBC debate show. They found that as the episode was being broadcast, viewers were searching the internet for incriminating photos of Mr Griffin and feeding them into the real-time debate about how he was faring. They also found that fellow panellist Bonnie Greer, the playwright and critic, was the audiences’ favourite. A surge of ‘tweets’ – messages of up to 140 characters – occurred when she criticised the historical grounding for BNP policies and when an audience member addressed Griffin as “Dick Griffin”.

Dr Anstead and Dr O’Loughlin’s study, ‘The Emerging Viewertariat: Explaining Twitter Responses to Nick Griffin’s Appearance on BBC Question Time’ , takes the first steps to understanding how viewers of political programmes such as Question Time use technology to comment on broadcasts in real time. With televised debates between the main party leaders to take place in the run-up to the General Election, they believe the emerging Viewertariat raises important questions about how democracy works and public opinion is formed. For example, will public opinion become more divided because people see views they do not agree with, or will it converge as new authorities and viral content come to represent the new received wisdom?

Dr Anstead, lecturer in politics in the School of Political, Social and International Studies at UEA, said: “Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time was a significant event because it pointed towards a new way of watching major broadcast events. These forms of real-time participation in political events present an extraordinary opportunity to explore individuals’ political relations, understandings and motivations.

“There is the potential for viewers who aren’t part of the studio audience to participate in these televised political events, though broadcasters must be wary of the usual token gestures where they say “email us your opinion” just to fill time. This will force broadcasters to think about what meaningful participation would look like.”

The authors analysed 43,730 tweets posted before, during, and after the episode of Question Time, which was broadcast from 10.35pm to 11.40pm on October 22 last year. It was the first time a representative of the far right, in the form of MEP Griffin, had been invited to sit on the panel and his appearance drew some eight million viewers, more than three times its normal share.

The study points to a more profound shift in how media organisations and political parties understand their audiences. Instead of surveys and vox pops after a programme or speech is over, the researchers suggest real-time feedback could allow editors or politicians to adapt their messages as they are going out.

They also point to ways in which viewers can influence each other. Instead of sitting at home talking about what they’re watching with friends or family, they can see how the population as a whole is reacting.

Dr O’Loughlin, co-director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, added: “Obviously only a small cross-section of the population use Twitter or blog themselves, but the numbers are still significant and growing. There were over 50,000 live comments on Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. We expect more for the upcoming election debates.”

The most prolific individual tweeted 84 times during the Question Time episode studied. The most vocal 20pc of commentators produced more than half the tweets related to the programme, with seven tweets each. The average number of tweets per minute for the scheduled duration of the broadcast was 673.

The highest number of tweets, 1257, occurred at 23.20, just after Bonnie Greer made comments about BNP policies and Griffin’s academic qualifications. There was also a rise in the number of very positive terms used, in relation to both Greer’s comments and Griffin’s discomfort at them, as well as what is claimed to be his lacklustre performance. The quietest minute happened at 22.36, when only 201 tweets were posted. After the end of the programme the tweets declined, dropping down to under a hundred per minute less than an hour after the broadcast.”

PhD Studentships available at Royal Holloway

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:13:06 +0000

My Department at Royal Holloway is offering PhD studentships for 2010-11 entry. These also cover doctoral research in the New Political Communication Unit. Please redistribute widely.

Buzz Settings Page Goes Live in Gmail, Allows Total Disabling [Updates]

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:12:14 +0000

Buzz Settings Page Goes Live in Gmail, Allows Total Disabling [Updates]:

A resounding victory—the latest in a long history of online mobilizations by privacy activists that I document in one of the chapters in my book “Internet Politics.”

Newspapers Call For Ban On BBC iPhone Apps

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:56:55 +0000

Newspapers Call For Ban On BBC iPhone Apps

This Day In Tech: Feb. 16, 1978: Bulletin Board Goes Electronic

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:40:42 +0000

This Day In Tech: Feb. 16, 1978: Bulletin Board Goes Electronic

Google Buzz 'breaks privacy laws' says watchdog

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:34:49 +0000

Google Buzz 'breaks privacy laws' says watchdog:

EPIC complains to the FTC.

LastHistory - 1.0

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:14:35 +0000

LastHistory - 1.0:

“Visualizing Last.fm Listening Histories and Personal Streams.”

Google buzz and post-privacy

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:14:49 +0000

Google’s new “Buzz” application has a strange—and deeply suspect—privacy logic.

Once you enable Buzz, the default setting reveals your Buzz “follower” list on your public Google profile. It does this before it presents you with a setting to switch it off.

This wouldn’t be such a problem if Google didn’t automatically populate your profile with the people who you email and chat with using Gmail and Google chat, but that’s exactly what it does.

This means that your Gmail and chat contacts are displayed to the world on your public profile until you go back into the settings and disable this “feature.”

Email differs fundamentally from online social networking. Nobody seriously believes (unencrypted) email to be fully private, and we often send emails in the knowledge that somebody could easily send them along to another party without our knowledge. Indeed, legally, many countries have adopted the view that there is no expectation of privacy in internal corporate email correspondence.

There are many personal and professional contexts in which auto-generated Buzz profiles could be highly problematic for individuals. But if you are a political activist in an authoritarian state, the problem could be particularly severe. Who is to stop the authorities snooping around Buzz profiles that have been unwittingly activated and made public?

There are many reasons why Google have adopted this model, but one backdrop is the emergence over the last six months of what we might call a “post-privacy” discourse in Silicon Valley, spurred on Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and embodied in his company’s decision to make Facebook profiles public by default—albeit with many user-controllable constraints on what is disclosed.

But for most people, most of the time, privacy in the real world is a continuum: our expectations differ markedly according to the context. The expectation of privacy in email is much stronger than it is in online social network environments. By not properly empowering individuals to opt out of disclosing their contacts, Google has made a mistake.

The Handbook of Internet Politics: Paperback edition now available

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:05:00 +0000

Just a quick note to say that the new paperback edition of The Handbook of Internet Politics (Routledge) that I co-edited with Phil Howard is now available for purchase. Bookstore links and cover description below. More about the book, including author details, contents listing, a look-inside preview, and some sample chapters, at the Handbook of Internet Politics website.

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Routledge direct purchase

About the Book

The internet is now a mainstay of contemporary political life and captivates researchers from across the social sciences. From debates about its impact on parties and election campaigns following momentous presidential contests in the United States, to concerns over international security, privacy, and surveillance in the post-9/11, post-7/7 environment; from the rise of blogging as a threat to the traditional model of journalism, to controversies at the international level over how and if the internet should be governed by an entity such as the United Nations; from the new repertoires of collective action open to citizens, to the massive programs of public management reform taking place in the name of e-government, internet politics, and policy are continually in the headlines.

The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics is a collection of over 30 chapters dealing with the most significant scholarly debates in this rapidly growing field of study. Organized in four broad sections: Institutions, Behavior, Identities, and Law and policy, the Handbook summarizes and criticizes contemporary debates while pointing out new departures. A comprehensive set of resources, it provides linkages to established theories of media and politics, political communication, governance, deliberative democracy, and social movements, all within an interdisciplinary context. The contributors form a strong international cast of established and junior scholars.

This is the first publication of its kind in this field; a helpful companion to students and scholars of politics, international relations, communication studies, and sociology.

Andrew Chadwick, Royal Holloway, University of London, & Philip N. Howard, University of Washington

Now published in a new paperback edition.

Paperback: 536 pages.
Publisher: Routledge, December 2009 (UK), February 2010 (US)
ISBN: 978-0-415-78058-2

Hardcover: 528 pages
Publisher: Routledge, September 2008
ISBN: 978-0-415-42914-6

"Slightly annoying that the iPhone autocorrects iPad into upas – which is a kind of poison mulberry I..."

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:03:15 +0000

“Slightly annoying that the iPhone autocorrects iPad into upas – which is a kind of poison mulberry I believe… you can bet that omission in the iPhone’s glossary will change with the upcoming release of iPhone OS 4.0.”

- Wonderfully exuberant essay from Fry. My last mention of the iPad—for now. I sense the tectonic plates of information and communication technologies shifting a little though…

iPad questions from a social science researcher's perspective

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:36:00 +0000

As a researcher, writer, and teacher who spends many of his days interacting with a computing device—either a 24 inch iMac, a 9.1 inch Linux netbook, or an iPhone—obviously a product like the iPad is big news.

As an iPhone user, it all looks very familiar. But I’m left with four very basic questions that I think any academic who currently owns a laptop, desktop, or both, will ask:

1. Will it allow me to multitask and switch seamlessly between apps?

2. Will it allow me to load my own PDFs of journal articles?

3. Will it allow me to annotate my own PDFs and iBooks, and save and sync those annotations across to my desktop Mac? And will it allow me to do this in the other direction—from desktop to iPad?

4. Will it allow me to sync iWork documents seamlessly between iPad to desktop? No compromises over formatting, etc.?

I can see the app developers solving some of these knotty problems, but we’ll have to wait and see.