• What's the prevailing opinion on social

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Wednesday, March 16, 2022 22:30:42
    What's the prevailing opinion on social media? Look at the flocks, says researcher

    Date:
    March 16, 2022
    Source:
    University at Buffalo
    Summary:
    A communication researcher has developed a framework for measuring
    the slippery concept of social media public opinion. Murmuration
    identifies meaningful groups of social media actors based on the
    'who-follows-whom' relationship. The actors attract like-minded
    followers to form 'flocks,' which serve as the units of analysis. As
    opinions form and shift in response to external events, the flocks'
    unfolding opinions move like the fluid murmuration of airborne
    starlings.



    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    A University at Buffalo communication researcher has developed a framework
    for measuring the slippery concept of social media public opinion.


    ========================================================================== These collective views on a topic or issue expressed on social
    media, distinct from the conclusions determined through survey-based
    public opinion polling, have never been easy to determine. But the "murmuration" framework developed and tested by Yini Zhang, PhD, an
    assistant professor of communication in the UB College of Arts and
    Sciences, and her collaborators addresses challenges, like identifying
    online demographics and factoring for opinion manipulation, that are characteristic on these digital battlegrounds of public discourse.

    Murmuration identifies meaningful groups of social media actors based
    on the "who-follows-whom" relationship. The actors attract like-minded followers to form "flocks," which serve as the units of analysis. As
    opinions form and shift in response to external events, the flocks'
    unfolding opinions move like the fluid murmuration of airborne starlings.

    The framework and the findings from an analysis of social network
    structure and opinion expression from over 193,000 Twitter accounts,
    which followed more than 1.3 million other accounts, suggest that flock membership can predict opinion and that the murmuration framework reveals distinct patterns of opinion intensity. The researchers studied Twitter
    because of the ability to see who is following whom, information that
    is not publicly accessible on other platforms.

    The results, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, further support the echo chamber tendencies prevalent on social media,
    while adding important nuance to existing knowledge.

    "By identifying different flocks and examining the intensity, temporal
    pattern and content of their expression, we can gain deeper insights far
    beyond where liberals and conservatives stand on a certain issue," says
    Zhang, an expert in social media and political communication. "These
    flocks are segments of the population, defined not by demographic
    variables of questionable salience, like white women aged 18-29, but by
    their online connections and response to events.

    "As such, we can observe opinion variations within an ideological camp
    and opinions of people that might not be typically assumed to have an
    opinion on certain issues. We see the flocks as naturally occurring,
    responding to things as they happen, in ways that take a conversational
    element into consideration." Zhang says it's important not to confuse
    public opinion, as measured by survey- based polling methods, and social
    media public opinion.

    "Arguably, social media public opinion is twice removed from the general
    public opinion measured by surveys," say Zhang. "First, not everyone
    uses social media. Second, among those who do, only a subset of them
    actually express opinions on social media. They tend to be strongly
    opinionated and thus more willing to express their views publicly."
    Murmuration offers insights that can complement information gathered
    through survey-based polling. It also moves away from mining social
    media for text from specific tweets. Murmuration takes full advantage of
    social media's dynamic aspect. When text is removed from its context,
    it becomes difficult to accurately determine questions about what led
    to the discussion, when it began, and how it evolved over time.

    "Murmuration can allow for research that makes better use of social media
    data to study public opinion as a form of social interaction and reveal underlying social dynamics," says Zhang.


    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_at_Buffalo. Original
    written by Bert Gambini.

    Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Yini Zhang, Fan Chen, Karl Rohe. Social Media Public Opinion as
    Flocks in
    a Murmuration: Conceptualizing and Measuring Opinion Expression
    on Social Media. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2022;
    27 (1) DOI: 10.1093/jcmc/zmab021 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220316132651.htm

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