01/28: Brooke Foucault Welles

[smiklin]

Comment below with questions or thoughts about the reading for this week's workshop.

Please make your comments by Wednesday 11:59 PM, and upvote at least five of your peers' comments on Thursday prior to the workshop. You need to use 'thumbs-up' for your reactions to count towards 'top comments,' but you can use other emojis on top of the thumbs up.

[bakerwho]

Thank you for presenting your fascinating research at our workshop!

Your discussion of the hijacking of #myNYPD was both comprehensive and stimulating. It was striking that most mainstream news channels didn't touch the story, and that MSNBC was the only one to analyze it in some depth. I was curious about your view of the counter to this decentralized counterpower offered by Twitter. How do we see groups with large, hegemonic control on narratives in other realms (like news channels) attempting to consolidate their narratives on Twitter in the face of these counterpowers? Do they see these nimble activists as threats to their own spheres of influence?

My second question is about the mixed-ness of your methods. In your work on #metoo, you describe the process of coding (and having undergrad RAs deductively code tweets). When you then used these 2500 human-coded tweets, what was your test set? What was the 'manual and iterative' process of deriving features for the logistic regression? What best-practices have you gathered over the course of your experience with mixed methods research?

[mikepackard415]

Thank you for sharing your research with us! It definitely sheds light on the new and changing ways in which people consume and produce information in online networks.

I'm interested in the idea of "counterpublics" that you refer to in these two papers, and how that concept might interact with the kinds of phenomena being studied. More specifically, recent events in the US have me wondering about online networks of conspiracy theorists. Do you imagine that the pairwise disclosures that enable the formation of a networked community in the #metoo context map onto other issues that are not based in truth (e.g., QAnon, anti-vax, climate change denial, etc.)? If so, what differences (if any) would you expect to see in the network structure of these emergent online communities depending on whether they are conspiracies or not?

[rkcatipon]

Hi Dr. Foucault-Welles, thank you for sharing your work with us!

I am fascinated by the absence of hashtag hijacking in the #metoo study. It seems that an implication of the study is that some network discussions can withstand/are resilient to the information pollution that proliferate social media platforns. The paper speculates that the lack of hijacking may be the reason why #metoo discussions became a safe space. In addition to the results indicating network-level reciprical disclosures, were there any examples of content moderation or policing that you found within the #metoo dataset?

Also thinking about misinformation and disinformation like @mikepackard415, I wonder if there were ways to replicate this safe space environment in online discussions. I also wondered if the community that formed around #metoo created any new relationships (e.g. mutual followers) and if these relationships remain to this day.

[JadeBenson]

Thank you so much for this fascinating research! I was so intrigued by the mixed-methods approach to study resistance movements.

I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on: how can hashtagactivism and online movements in general better translate their work into realized effects? I was surprised that the hijacking of the #myNYPD was not widely reported by major news outlets (and when it was it was mainly belittled) and that such a small minority of #MeToo posters were explicitly calling for social changes. I think awareness and solidarity are very meaningful goals and tools, but I hope that counterpublics can also function to structurally shift power dynamics.

[romanticmonkey]

Thank you so much for presenting your research!

I was especially intrigued by the #Metoo study. However, while I was reading I wondered if the "spread" of disclosures has group specificity, such as geographic regions, age groups, social media familiarity (activity level). For example, do female users in some specific regions presents greater interaction, higher reciprocity, and therefore more disclosures inspired by the former cases? I was wondering if regional cultures can also play a part in the disclosure decisions, even though the action is online.

[yierrr]

Thanks for the fascinating research! I really like the #MeToo paper and it got me thinking about such reciprocal disclosures in other contexts. I have two questions: 1) whether seeing others disclosing may suppress rather than facilitate disclosure, considering the gradual fading of the heat of #MeToo: for example, from an identity perspective, because there are papers showing that people tend to identify themselves with more exclusive social group identities, if there are more and more survivors disclosing their stories and hence making the social group of survivors more and more inclusive, it seems possible that viewing others' sharing may actually refrain other survivors from identifying themselves as survivors and sharing their stories; 2) whether there can be reverse causality, so instead of seeing others share making survivors want to share, it might be feeling inclined to share exposes the survivors to more disclosures. Because I think for someone to click into the hashtag, it would require the person to have interest in the topic or desire to share prior to seeing all the posts under the hashtag. Thank you!

[Anqi-Zhou]

Thanks for your sharing! So now we have a better understanding about hashtag hijack and networked disclosure, what's the potential application of our understanding? Maybe we can use the knowledge to design intervention, or to reproduce such broadcast? Could you talk this point more in detail?

[Yutong0828]

Thanks for the very inspiring research! I think your studies are really meaningful in terms of helping marginalized people to gain more power and rights. I have a question about the potential following research of your #MeToo paper. You have already proved that there will be more people who are willing to share their experiences after being exposed to more similar tweets shared by others, and I quite agree with the significance of the results. Nevertheless, I was wondering what does speaking out their experience actually brings to these girls, that is to say, to what extent can this community benefit from this action? I think this question can also be studied with computational methods through collecting information about the comments and retweets under their original tweets, or keeping tracking their following behaviors on Twitter. Thanks a lot!

[lulululugagaga]

Thank you for sharing! This hashtag#metoo study reminds me of Prof Clindaniel's class. I recommend those of you who find this topic interesting to take MACS 40400 Computation and the Identification of Cultural Patterns, which will be supplement of the content analysis aside from the network analysis of this paper. My question is that, as we have observed many feminism hashtag (#Metoo, #YesAllWomen, etc.) being widely spread, do you think Twitter has formed certain mode of hashtag feminism activism? What might be some common features that can drive wide sharing?

[MengChenC]

Thank you for sharing your great work. They are fascinating combinations of content and network analysis. I am curious about if the approach you concluded in the research paper has the potential to spot a counterpublic-to-be activity? And what kinds of features of activism are more likely to ferment a collective reverberation? Thank you.

[sabinahartnett]

Thank you for sharing your work! I'm excited for the talk and to read more.

Similar to @MengChenC I'm wondering if you see potential in this work to inform / track progress of various social movements? Additionally I'm wondering if there is a common life cycle to movements that coalesce online (i.e. #MeToo was an issue (and a movement, although under a different name) before it was a hashtag) but are born out of offline events/social trends/norms and continue to have an offline impact?

[XinSu6]

Thank you so much for sharing this research! The content is indeed fascinating especially combined with the recent events happened in US.

Like some of my classmates mentioned above, I am also wondering how do you think your work can play a role in the recent social movements or other real life applications?

Thank you

[YileC928]

Thank you so much for sharing! The two papers are very relevant and helpful given the current state of the world. I’m interested in learning more about the qualitative discourse analysis method you used in the #myNYPD paper, could you explain the method a bit more and why it is important and fit the study. Also, as the top voted questions, I wonder if misinformation/disinformation would be a problem in pairwise disclosure.

[luckycindyyx]

Thank you so much for your interesting work! I have a very general question for #Metoo-study research. In this field of research, is there any potential academic ethnical concern that you came across (e.g. concern about privacy, inequality and justice)? And have you and your collaborators faced any social-media voice in doing this research? Thank you!

[YuxinNg]

Thank you so much for sharing! You mainly focused on Twitter. I am wondering if things will be different when it comes to other social media platform? How different it will be? Does the same method you used to research Twitter also apply to other social media platform. Thanks!

[boyafu]

Thank you for sharing this fascinating research! I am curious about the power of computational methods and the use of social media data in this specific topic, compared with qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews or online ethnography research. Thanks!

[xzmerry]

Thanks for sharing! It is interesting to explore those networks on social platforms during a hashtag campaign. As I am not familiar with the network theory, so I have a quite general question:

I am wondering that how the analysis of an online network different from the offline one? And how analyzing the online network could add some unique insights about the offline one? Especially considering there is a revelation bias that not everyone would have equal access to the internet. And maybe those who see more hashtags and disclose their own stories to others are also more likely to be connected in the same offline community? How to disentangle the offline and online effects when conducting research regarding online networks?

[ttsujikawa]

Thank you so much for your fascinating research! I got really interested in how you interpret some movements in social media especially Twitter where it is exceptionally easy that people become active in a certain movement. From your research, I was curious about how specific features of Twitter differentiate from movements on other platforms. Thanks!

[SoyBison]

Hello Dr. Welles, Thanks for coming to our workshop!

I'm willing to admit that generally, I'm not too interested in this kind of research, but I was particularly interested in this phenomenon you observed with hashtag hijacking. One thing I wonder about is the fact that Twitter is often dominated by the most passionate voices rather than the most common voices. This can mutate views of society to make it look like opinions that are popular on Twitter are the most common opinions. After all, we currently live in a world where mainstream news organizations will embed Twitter posts in articles in place of the classical "voice on the street" segments, presenting a set of cherry-picked Twitter posts as if they represent the majority opinion of the Populus. So my question is: How do you think this phenomenon interacts with the phenomena you observe?

[chrismaurice0]

HI Dr. Welles,

This is less of a question and more me looking for your comment on the use of the Twitter API. What worked well with gathering data directly from the Twitter API, what was difficult? Did you come up with additional research questions when you saw the type, amount, or quality of data you could obtain? Did you change your approach to using Twitter for how you gathered data for the #metoo paper from the #myNYPD paper ?

[alevi98]

Thank you for this fascinating and highly relevant research! I'm particularly interested in the #myNYPD paper, especially within the context of a post-George Floyd world. How do you think notions of the online "counterpublic" have evolved in the past few years since the paper was published, and especially within the past several months? What has recent mainstream discourse about police abolition vs. reform done to the "counterpublic," and how does content mediation differ in the circumstances of COVID-19, where we are much more reliant on social media for our daily lives.

Also, how indicative do you think the "counterpublic" is of genuine, real-life support for an issue? Something that people often cite is "performative social media activism," where people post infographics on Instagram without doing the substantive work internally or in their daily lives to adopt more equitable practices. Do you think the data you gathered is susceptible to this phenomenon?

Super thrilled for the talk!

[a-bosko]

Hi Dr. Foucault Welles,

Thank you for your wonderful insight! Reading "Reclaiming Stigmatized Narratives: The Networked Disclosure Landscape of #MeToo" has really opened my eyes to the stigmatism that comes with speaking up about sexual assault and violence. I believe that it is important to allow women to share their experiences in a safe place without feeling scared to do so.

In the paper, it is mentioned that sharing experiences within one's social network can reduce the stigma, which can in turn allow other to share their stories as well. This shows how strong our personal connections and social networks are, and how we can indirectly impact others through our own connections.

Also, it is mentioned that in the U.S. alone, nearly 1 in 3 women has experienced an act of sexual violence. Taking this into account, what do you think is the best way to counteract the stigmatism that comes with speaking up about past experiences? Is it possible to create a platform for women that can feel completely safe, or will there always be that underlying judgment and stigmatism from others?

[fyzh-git]

Thank you for presenting this fascinating work. I'm also interested in the possibility of applying the concluded approach in the paper to detect any potential counterpublic activity as well as any manipulation to prevent that potential from happening. Thank you!

[bjcliang-uchi]

Very interesting research and I have been a fan of Northeastern Network Science Institute! I am curious about whether the network structure of the #MeToo movement on Twitter is stable across time because the movement has been triggered by a series of scandals in different fields and industries. Thus I hypothesize that the movement might be mobilized through different organizational frameworks as its scope expanded from, say, the circle of entertainment to the circle of academia.

[nwrim]

Thank you so much for coming to present such wonderful work. Maybe slightly orthogonal to your findings, I have been thinking a lot about how social media platforms influence people's behavior in social media in general (or in a more general frame, how environments affect behavior). What you found about the network of the metoo hashtag is fantastic, but I wonder how the whole "hashtag" system of Twitter affected the findings you discuss. Would this formation be entirely possible without such a system (which is largely spread on many platforms nowadays)? Or would people find out how to form this network even without such connecting tool?

[egemenpamukcu]

Thank you for the interesting paper. Do you think hashtag activism can be considered less successful than traditional activism in breaking through the echo chambers and reaching the intended audience? It can rapidly disseminate among proponents for sure but it seems easier to be ignored by the most.

[jsoll1]

Hello! Thank you for sharing your research with us, and I'm looking forwards to the presentation. One of the problems with heavily quantitative studies drawing from social media sites is that the data is pretty dirty, and it's hard to make sure that what you're looking at is what you intended to be looking at. Was your methodology of selecting 'elites' intended to combat this, and minimize risk of overvaluing bots?

[Lynx-jr]

Thank you for sharing your research with us! My question would be similar to one of those above, how does COVID altered people's behavior on hashtags in general?

[ddlee19]

My question is about the anonymity of the hijackers of the #myNYPD hashtag. In your study, did you find that a large number of those who hijacked the #myNYPD hashtag used Twitter accounts that were hard to link to an actual person using the name, profile picture, etc?

[afchao]

Thank you for presenting to our group! This may be a lingering influence of the recent capitol riots, but I'm curious about other applications of the logic behind network-level reciprocal disclosure. Speculatively, could a positive-feedback loop of disclosure be engineered with fake "seed" disclosures in cases where the otherwise stigmatized behavior is actually antisocial? For example, do you imagine criminals would feel safe publicly confessing to their crimes if they believed that enough other criminals were doing so?

[chuqingzhao]

Thank you for sharing! I really enjoy reading how network analysis could capture the hashtag activism. My questions might be: I am wondering whether the network should take some latent nodes in to account? In the hashtag context, I suppose there are some people also participant into the activism but do not actively post tweets with hashtags. How to estimate the relevant but latent interaction online? Thanks

[WMhYang]

Thank you very much for sharing your research. In the Metoo paper, I notice that the tweets in the first two weeks after the #Metoo tag was created were collected in the research, which reflect the tweeting behaviors around the peak. Hence, I was wondering if similar patterns could be sustained after the peek of the campaign, so that sexual violences could gather continuous focus? Or equivalently, is there any way that we could establish a dynamic network to support the reciprocal disclosures across time?

[MkramerPsych]

Dr. Focault Welles,

Thank you for sharing your research with us. Us MACSS 1st year students just took a class that delved deeply into the ethics surrounding computational social science research. I am curious with regards to your #myNYPD paper whether or not you think the potential benefit of understanding counterpublic social network structures would outweigh the potential for police forces/other groups to use similar methodologies to "out" members of certain social networks and uncover their methodologies?

[linghui-wu]

I love such research that provides us with more insights into gender politics. I think @WMhYang has raised a good point on the internal and external validity of such studies. What do you think of the robustness of the findings in view of the potential impact from other contemporaneous phenomenal social events?

[hhx2207061197]

Dr. Focault Welles, Thanks for the sharing. Just want to know how can you combine your research with economics research? Thanks

[cytwill]

Thank you so much for this meaningful work. I am curious about the reciprocal disclosure mentioned in your paper. As a social network phenomenon, do you find out any sociological or psychological theories that could support the finding so it could help to explain why this phenomenon happens online and build up more theoretical values for this research. Besides, considering the generality of the research. Have you done any replicative analysis on other feminism hashtags or more broadly, hashtags revealing other social topics like school or workplace bullying and domestic violence. If so, what do the results suggest compared to #Me Too?

[ChivLiu]

Thank you for sharing the presentation! Many schools have announced to cancel funding for school police after George Floyd's accident. I wonder how you think about this issue? Would dismissing school police make schools safer or would the 'public opinion' mislead on this case？

[mintaow]

Hi Dr. Focault Welles, Thank you for sharing your work. I personally found the research questions discussed in the #MyNYPD paper surrounding how #myNYPD was hijacked, by who, and the implications for both counterpublic and mainstream public spheres very inspiring.

My question is about the inverse influence on people who post the tweets. Do you imagine the launch of #MyNYPD has converted a significant amount of people who have never generated or promoted counterpublic narratives about racial profiling and police misconduct? Or the most people tagging #MyNYPD are still the people who have posted similar content before. I am curious about the potential impact of social events on the online platform on shaping people's behavior and willingness to speak out. Thanks for answring.

[NikkiTing]

Thank you for sharing your work! I was very surprised by your findings on how the mainstream media framed the #myNYPD hijacking story. Coming from Southeast Asia, I had this notion that US media was more independent of public institutions and may be more vocal in their criticisms. But I suppose this isn’t the case—in my country, prominent news sources have actually been making use of satire in their posts on social media to criticize the government. But since the #myNYPD was way back in 2014, I wonder if there has been a change in how the media now covers similar stories of hijacking and hashtag activism. Would you have some insights on this?

[Qiuyu-Li]

Thank you for sharing your research with us! My initial interest is the power of “counterpublics” you described in your two papers. Specifically, I think Hijacking does not just empower online campaigns like #MeToo, but also negative, false or even dangerous concepts and opinions. Personally, I think the rise of Trump’s military also has something to do with the connection stimulated by Twitter and other social media. What do you think about the two edges of the sword?

[mingtao-gao]

Thank you for sharing your work! Your papers are very insightful as I'm also studying social media. My question is related to the choice of platform. Because both of your papers are based on Twitter hashtags, what is so special with Twitter? Can other social media platforms product similar results or the design of Twitter and its functionality makes the patterns of information flow valuable in both cases of #MeToo and #myNYPD?

[hesongrun]

Thank you so much for this wonderful presentation! It is very interesting to probe into hashtags and link it with activism in race and gender justice. What do you think are the key driving forces behind the shift in people's ideology and perception of these movements? Thanks!

[chiayunc]

Thank you for your presentation. Hashtags as a kind of tool, expression, or words, what do you think is so special about them that it could give rise to the phenomenon you observed? is it the way they are designed by the intention of the engineers, the way they are used? or a complex interaction between how its designed, used and how it evolved from 2014 until now?

[yutianlai]

Thanks for sharing! I'm wondering how the research result could apply to other social media platforms

[jinfei1125]

Thanks for sharing your work with us! I believe the effect of network-level reciprocal disclosure exists among all of us (the seed of an idea can grow between a group of people) but it's hard to measure it, so I am really impressed by your method to define the probability of exposure. As you mentioned in the #Metoo paper:

We estimate the number of disclosures an individual was exposed to by counting the number of disclosures posted or shared by those the individual was following, also known as their “friends.” These are potential exposures because we do not know what any given individual may have seen on their Twitter timeline prior to disclosing; they may not have seen disclosures from or shared by their “friends” simply because they were not on Twitter at the time, or because the Twitter timeline algorithm prioritized some disclosures over others.5 For brevity and consistency with prior work on information exposure on Twitter [39], we define “exposures” to disclosures as potential exposures to disclosures.

I think this idea is really brilliant, can you talk more about how you conceptualize it? Thank you so much!

P.S. Really love the topics of your article!

[luxin-tian]

Thank you for sharing. I wonder how the mechanism would be different with strict censorship and regulations over the social media?

[MegicLF]

Thank you for presenting such an interesting topic. I wonder if Twitter will exaggerate the polarity of posts which may be revealed by the pattern of spread of different hashtags like #Metoo and #myNYPD.

[kthomas14]

Dr. Welles, thank you for sharing such compelling research. I was wondering if you see any potential to expand the research pertaining to the #myNYPD hashtag and twitter networking to any of the current events that have happened in 2020? Thanks!

[Yilun0221]

Thank you for the presentation! I also did research about social media data and networks, and I am inspired by the papers. My concern may seem kind of strange. I wonder why do you only use one hashtag in the Hijacking project? From my perspective, there should be several hashtags that can be very similar and talk about the same event.

[ydeng117]

Thank you for your presentation. I think this is a very interesting topic. By moving social activisms online, social media platforms reduce the cost of participating in social movements and, hence, invites more people to join. Compared to other forms of activism, social media activism may receive more exposure. However, does such exposure creates the same effect? In other words, would typing, clicking, and sharing on the internet platforms draw the same amount of attention and change people's epistemology at the same level as participating in a march protest?