Studying images in social media poses specific methodological challenges, which in turn have directed scholarly attention toward the computational interpretation of visual data. When analyzing large numbers of images, both traditional content analysis as well as cultural analytics have proven valuable. However, these techniques do not take into account the contextualization of images within a socio-technical environment. As the meaning of social media images is co-created by online publics, bound through networked practices, these visuals should be analyzed on the level of their networked contextualization. Although machine vision is increasingly adept at recognizing faces and features, its performance in grasping the meaning of social media images remains limited. Combining automated analyses of images with platform data opens up the possibility to study images in the context of their resonance within and across online discursive spaces. This article explores the capacities of hashtags and retweet counts to complement the automated assessment of social media images, doing justice to both the visual elements of an image and the contextual elements encoded through the hashtag practices of networked publics.
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This chapter explores the use of “responsive” or “interactive” urban media technologies as a tool or “building block” in the (re)design of urban public spaces. This is especially relevant as in the last two decades, urban development and digital technologies have brought out new types of urban typologies and practices often referred to as “networked urbanism.” These typologies and practices bring out specific challenges with regard to their functioning as public space. We argue that responsive technologies could reinforce qualities of public space in this condition of “networked urbanism”; however, their implementation demands new strategies and above all new forms of cooperation between disciplines such as architecture, urban design, and urban interaction design. To aid such an approach, this chapter introduces a heuristic of five mechanisms of responsive media. These are meant to function as a shared vocabulary aiding designers of various backgrounds to collaborate in an interdisciplinary design process for public spaces in a broader development of networked urbanism.
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Social media is a transformative digital technology, collapsing the “six degrees ofseparation” which have previously characterized many social networks, and breaking down many of the barriers to individuals communicating with each other. Some commentators suggest that this is having profound effects across society, that social media have opened up new channels for public debates and have revolutionized the communication of prominent public issues such as climate change. In this article we provide the first systematic and critical review of the literature on social media and climate change. We highlight three key findings from the literature: a substantial bias toward Twitter studies, the prevalent approaches to researching climate change on social media (publics, themes, and professional communication), and important empirical findings (the use of mainstream information sources, discussions of “settled science,” polarization, and responses to temperature anomalies).Following this, we identify gaps in the existing literature that should beaddressed by future research: namely, researchers should consider qualitativestudies, visual communication and alternative social media platforms to Twitter.We conclude by arguing for further research that goes beyond a focus on sciencecommunication to a deeper examination of how publics imagine climate changeand its future role in social life.
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Climate change is one of the key societal challenges of our times, and its debate takes place across scientific disciplines and into the public realm, traversing platforms, sources, and fields of study. The analysis of such mediated debates has a strong tradition, which started in communication science and has since then been applied across a wide range of academic disciplines.So-called ‘content analysis’ provides a means to study (mass) media content in many media shapes and formats to retrieve signs of the zeitgeist, such as cultural phenomena, representation of certain groups, and the resonance of political viewpoints. In the era of big data and digital culture, in which websites and social media platforms produce massive amounts of content and network this through hyperlinks and social media buttons, content analysis needs to become adaptive to the many ways in which digital platforms and engines handle content.This book introduces Networked Content Analysis as a digital research approach, which offers ways forward for students and researchers who want to work with digital methods and tools to study online content. Besides providing a thorough theoretical framework, the book demonstrates new tools and methods for research through case studies that study the climate change debate with search engines, Twitter, and the encyclopedia project of Wikipedia.
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A major challenge for disaster scholars and policymakers is to understand the power dimension in response networks, particularly relating to collaboration and coordination. We propose a conceptual framework to study interests and negotiations in and between various civic and professional, response networks drawing on the concepts of “programming” and “switching” proposed by Manuel Castells in his work on the network society. Programming in disaster response refers to the ability to constitute response networks and to program/reprogram them in terms of the goals assigned to the network. Switching is the ability to connect different net-works by sharing common goals and combining resources. We employ these concepts to understand how the US Federal Emergency Management Agency organized its response in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Our conceptual framework can be used both by disaster scholars and policymakers to understand how networked power is constructed and utilized.
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Studying images in social media poses specific methodological challenges, which in turn have directed scholarly attention towards the computational interpretation of visual data. When analyzing large numbers of images, both traditional content analysis as well as cultural analytics have proven valuable. However, these techniques do not take into account the circulation and contextualization of images within a socio-technical environment. As the meaning of social media images is co-created by networked publics, bound through networked practices, these visuals should be analyzed on the level of their networked contextualization. Although machine vision is increasingly adept at recognizing faces and features, its performance in grasping the meaning of social media images is limited. However, combining automated analyses of images - broken down by their compositional elements - with repurposing platform data opens up the possibility to study images in the context of their resonance within and across online discursive spaces. This paper explores the capacities of platform data - hashtag modularity and retweet counts - to complement the automated assessment of social media images; doing justice to both the visual elements of an image and the contextual elements encoded by networked publics that co-create meaning.
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In this paper we present visual methodologies attuned to the networked nature of digital images. First, we describe approaches to image research in which images are not separated from their network, but rather studied 'en groupe'. Here, we contrast approaches that treat images as data, and those that regard images as content. Second, we focus on the production of images for digital research, presenting three of their functions: a) the creation of diagrams that facilitate collaboration in interdisciplinary research teams; b) the use of visualizations for cross-platform image analysis; and c) designing images for public participation. Most importantly, such visualizations are not used to form the esthetic culmination of analytical work, but are rather functional tools for digital research that serve parts of the entire research process, from its formulation and operationalization to the engagement of a broader public.
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Online social networks produce a visuality that reflects the attention economy governing this space. What is seen becomes elevated into prominence by networked publics that ‘perform’ affective expressions within platform affordances. We mapped Twitter images of refugees in two language spaces - English and Arabic. Using automated analysis and qualitative visual analysis, we found similar images circulating both spaces. However, photographs generating higher retweet counts were distinct. This highlights the impact of affective affordances of Twitter — in this case retweeting — on regimes of visibility in disparate spheres. Representations of refugees in the English language space were characterized by personalized, positive imagery, emphasizing solidarity for refugees contributing to their host country or stipulating innocence. Resonating images in the Arabic space were less personalized and depicted a more localized visuality of life in refugee camps, with an emphasis on living conditions in refugee camps and the efforts of aid organizations.
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The Internet is changing the way we organize work. It is shifting the requirements for what we call the “schedule push” and the hierarchical organization that it implies, and therefore it is removing the type of control that is conventionally used to match resources to tasks, and customer demand to supplies and services. Organizational hierarchies have become too expensive to sustain, and in many cases their style of coordination is simply no longer necessary. The cost complexity of the industrial complex starts to outweigh the benefits, and the Internet is making it redundant. The question I put forward in this Article, after a short description of how I envision “the change,” is what new requirements should be met by software in order to meet the requirements of the networked economy. Business will develop from Business-to-Consumer (B2C) to Consumer-to- Business (C2B) to People-to-People (P2P), customers more and more taking control over business activities, overhead being replaced by customer focus. This is also a new reality for the software world.
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The value and role of the ‘public’ in criminology and criminal justice have been constructed and reconstructed over the decades, experiencing a number of discursive shifts across different subdisciplines in criminology. Narratives about public voices change according to the context in which they are told. Depending on the researcher’s vantage point and inclination, it appears that the voice and role of the public in criminology tends to be narrated either as a ‘malevolent public’, which speaks for an unspecified entity of people who are most of the time misinformed, punitive and in need of expeditious education, or a ‘benevolent public’, representing a more inclusive, but also romanticised, vision of citizens in the public sphere. In this chapter, examples of various perspectives on the role and value of lay people in criminology are discussed to emonstrate how these narratives are interpreted and framed to align with the pre-conceived perception of either the ‘benevolent’ or the malevolent’ public agenda. This development, as well as the dominant application of quantitative methodologies to research public attitudes, has silenced the magnitude of different and sometimes elusive communities, whose access to the public sphere and media representation is limited. Thus, there is a need not only to shift away from the dichotomous division between liberal vs. punitive public views, but also to address the heterogeneity of people’s views and roles vertically (individual, collective), horizontally (in different networks/publics/target groups). Moreover, the publics as we knew them some decades ago, when the most frequently cited attitudinal research was conducted, are now different publics that function in both the online and offline public spheres simultaneously – the impact of which is yet to be captured in criminology.
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