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|title=Making Sense of Microposts (#Microposts2015) Social Sciences Track
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1395/microposts2015_socsci-report.pdf
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|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/msm/RadovanovicWD15
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==Making Sense of Microposts (#Microposts2015) Social Sciences Track==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1395/microposts2015_socsci-report.pdf
Making Sense of Microposts (#Microposts2015)
Social Sciences Track
Danica Radovanović⇤ Katrin Weller⇤ Aba-Sah Dadzie⇤
Faculty of Technical Sciences, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Knowledge Media Institute,
University of Novi Sad, Serbia Social Sciences, Germany The Open University, UK
danica@danicar.org katrin.weller@gesis.org aba-sah.dadzie@open.ac.uk
ABSTRACT those structures present Microposts – each a small, brief
For the first time in its five year history the #Microposts message, theme or a single thought, quick and easy to pub-
workshop features a designated Social Science track. This lish, and that, posted from a variety of platforms and by very
paper introduces this new track by situating it within the large numbers of individuals with as many viewpoints and
overall workshop objectives. It highlights the importance interests, collectively provide a rich source of information
of interdisciplinary studies in the attempt to make sense of and opinion about a range of topics. Microposts present
Web user activities in general, and in the generation and a dominant forum in social networks, micro-blogging ser-
consumption of Microposts in particular. This paper pro- vices and virtual communities, and have become of socio-
vides examples of related work in the field, such as Com- technological value. In recognition of this, the #Microp-
putational Social Science, reviews previous contributions to osts workshop was born, to provide an avenue for di↵erent
the #Microposts by the Social Science research community, disciplines to come together to make sense of Microposts,
and introduces the two papers presented in the track. to identify why they have become and remain a significant
means of communication, how the phenomenon impacts its
users and the wider society, and how end users today, both
Keywords the technology-rich and those digitally disadvantaged, make
Microposts, Social Science, Web Science, Computational So-
use of the platform and consume the rich content generated
cial Science, Internet science, social media, user-generated
in their social and working lives.
content, online communication, Internet research
2. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN THE ANAL-
YSIS OF MICROPOSTS
1. INTRODUCTION Recent years have brought about an increasing number of
The Internet is not just a static set of tools or a↵ordances for interdisciplinary approaches, between computer science and
a specific set of user-defined purposes. Rather, it also repre- social sciences, often also referred to as Computational So-
sents a rapidly evolving set of ways to configure one’s social cial Science [8]. Computational Social Science uses com-
life. That is to say, the Internet today enables di↵erent rela- putational methods to study social behaviour, e.g., by de-
tionships within the basic dimensions of social and cultural veloping computational approaches that consider empirical
dynamics and organisation [4]. New media and technology methods and theories from social sciences, and by exploring
denote embodiments of socio-cultural relationships that in new kinds of data to learn about social phenomena [19]. Dif-
turn shape and structure our possibilities for social action, ferent workshops and events are currently being organised
education and cultural expression [1, 6] across all generations in order to discuss new approaches in the field of compu-
and walks of life. The myriad ways that social lives can be tational social science and exchange useful approaches as
(re-)arranged through various types of media and commu- well as experience with new datasets. These include the In-
nication forms however present a challenge for researchers ternational Conference on Computational Social Science in
from multiple disciplines. Helsinki1 , to be held in June 2015. The importance of these
connections across the disciplines are now recognised widely;
It can be postulated that social dynamics facilitate new interestingly, while the NEEL (Named Entity rEcognition
forms of communication structures in social lives. One of and Linking) Challenge2 , which forms part of the #Micro-
⇤ posts workshop, typically attracts a select group, due to its
All authors made equal contributions
specific focus, a social sciences researcher in 2015 tweeted
from the WWW’2015 conference: “An e↵ective named en-
tity recognition for Twitter would be invaluable for social
scientists too. Go NEEL #Microposts2015 guys!”3 .
Copyright c 2015 held by author(s)/owner(s); copying permitted
only for private and academic purposes. In trying to make sense of Microposts, researchers may ex-
Published as part of the #Microposts2015 Workshop proceedings, 1
available online as CEUR Vol-1395 (http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1395) http://www.iccss2015.eu
2
http://www.scc.lancs.ac.uk/microposts2015/challenge
#Microposts2015, May 18th, 2015, Florence, Italy. 3
Fabio Giglietto [fabiogiglietto] (1:42 PM – 18 May 2015
Tweet) Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1FqJTA0
· #Microposts2015 · 5th Workshop on Making Sense of Microposts · @WWW2015
plore and apply a variety of approaches. The proceedings 3. THE #MICROPOSTS2015 SOCIAL SCI-
of the previous #Microposts workshops prove this, as they ENCES TRACK
already include contributions from various academic back- For the first dedicated Social Science track in the #Micro-
grounds, such as computer science, social sciences, sociology, posts series, three submissions were received, with an addi-
digital ethnography, psychology and linguistics. In 2013, for tional two from the main track crossing the boundary be-
instance, Vanin et al., [21] in Some Clues on Irony Detec- tween this and the main track. Of these, two papers out of
tion in Tweets, presented a mixed methods study to counter the first three were accepted for presentation for the track.
a challenge in automated analysis – interpretation of the
particular context, including tweeter style or personality, The award for best submission went to the paper To Be
and even subtleties unique to specific languages. In 2012, or Not to Be Charlie: Twitter Hashtags as a Discourse
Radovanović & Ragnedda [12] presented a study on Small and Counter-discourse in the Aftermath of the 2015 Charlie
Talk in the Digital Age: Making Sense of Phatic Posts, in Hebdo Shooting in France by Giglietto & Lee [5]. Written
which they discussed the role of Microposts in social, dy- in the wake of the shooting in Paris, this paper provides one
namic communication on the Web, and the value in this of the first studies of Twitter users’ reactions to the event,
medium for end users, in terms of content and for driv- and examines the human reaction on Twitter, expressing
ing the conversation itself. In 2011, the first year in which solidarity with the victims in di↵erent ways. The analysis
the workshop was held, S̆ķilters et al., [16] in The Pragmat- examined the viewpoint of tweeters who appeared to oppose
ics of Political Messages in Twitter Communication, carry what was considered the norm as an expression of solidar-
out detailed content analysis of the participants in the 2010 ity, in how they chose to express their grief and sympathy,
Latvian parliamentary elections, to identify pragmatic pat- and also resistance, using an expression that reinforced their
terns in political communication, based on the identities of identity with #JeNeSuisPasCharlie, in contrast to the spon-
individuals and (virtual) communities. In this first work- taneously derived #JeSuisCharlie hashtag.
shop, also, Weller et al., [22] in Citation Analysis in Twit-
ter: Approaches for Defining and Measuring Information Coelho, Lapa, Ramos & Malini [3] in A Research Design
Flows within Tweets during Scientific Conferences, examine for the Analysis of Contemporary Social Movements, looked
a number of features in information exchanged on Twitter at political, social empowerment in today’s digital culture,
during scientific conferences, to provide, within webomet- through discursive analysis of Microposts. An important
rics, an alternative source of citations. contribution of their qualitative study is to help to develop
guidelines for teachers, to enable e↵ective, critical appro-
It has always been an aim of the workshop series to bring priation of the data generated on social networks by net
together computer scientists and researchers from other dis- activist groups. The aim is to support education of young
ciplines, including social scientists. For this reason, we have people, to encourage participation in the social freedom and
also sought to include guest speakers with work spanning the socio-political agenda.
Computer Science and Social Sciences, including that by
Greg Ver Steeg [17] on Information Theoretic Tools for So- Other papers addressing civil and political activism, and
cial Media in 2012, Daniele Quercia [11] on Urban*: Crowd- the analysis of data generated as a result, due to citizen
sourcing for the good of London] in 2013, and Markus Stroh- empowerment and social cohesion, or, in contrast, diversive
maier [18] on Computational Social Science and Microblogs political activity, were submitted to both the social sciences
– The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 2014. To highlight and the main track. The call for papers highlighted other
even further this objective, the #Microposts2015 workshop key topics, some of which also overlapped with the call for
[23] features an explicit social sciences track in addition to the main track. These included data journalism, collective
the main track. By including this track and publishing a awareness, citizen empowerment and education, and psycho-
specific call for papers for social scientists, we were able to logical aspects of Micropost-based interactions. Additional
recognise the di↵erent publication practices that are one of topics of particular importance to social science research in-
the current challenges for successfully bringing together re- clude inequality in access to and the use of digital media, and
searchers from di↵erent disciplines. how Micropost-based services have resulted in the emergence
of alternative social and communication dynamics. The per-
2.1 Track Sponsor: GESIS spectives taken and the approach to data analysis clearly
User-generated content and social media data are one major di↵ered from the main track, with the social sciences track
source in computational social science. For example, Micro- focusing not just on data content, but also on the human el-
posts from social media platforms can provide new insights ement that influences the publishing of Microposts, and how
into political communication around elections [10, 7], politi- its content may be subsequently appropriated in the mod-
cal activism [9, 20] or disaster response [2]. GESIS, the Leib- ern, digital world. We believe the overlap and divergence in
niz Institute for the Social Sciences [24], is a research infras- approaches reinforces the need for the two fields, along with
tructure and service provider for the social sciences. GESIS other relevant disciplines, to work in tandem in the analy-
hosts one of the first departments in Computational Social sis of Micropost data, allowing the di↵erent lenses through
Science in Germany, where interdisciplinary researchers de- which each field works to result in increasingly richer anal-
velop algorithms and theories for studying social phenomena ysis of this very diverse and constantly growing data set.
based on Web data and also organise workshops and train-
ing opportunities. As part of the engagement in supporting
social scientists in this new field, GESIS is also sponsoring Acknowledgments
the prize for the best social science paper at the 2015 #Mi- Danica Radovanović is an Internet researcher, who gradu-
croposts workshop. ated from the University of Novi Sad, after research during
30
· #Microposts2015 · 5th Workshop on Making Sense of Microposts · @WWW2015
her PhD as a Chevening Scholar at the Oxford Internet In- [14] M. Rowe, M. Stankovic, and A.-S. Dadzie, editors.
stitute. Katrin Weller works at the GESIS Leibniz Institute Proceedings, 5th Workshop on Making Sense of
for the Social Sciences and is currently funded by the John Microposts (#Microposts2015): Big things come in
W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress through a fel- small packages, Florence, Italy, 18th of May 2015,
lowship in Digital Studies. Aba-Sah Dadzie is a visiting May 2015.
researcher at KMi, the Open University, and is working on [15] M. Rowe, M. Stankovic, A.-S. Dadzie, and M. Hardey,
the EU project EDSA (no. 643937). editors. Proceedings, 1st Workshop on Making Sense
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· #Microposts2015 · 5th Workshop on Making Sense of Microposts · @WWW2015