Asian Journal of Communication just published a manuscript written by Yon Soo Lim, Han Woo Park and me, titled Mediated relations: new methods to study online social capital. This article is part of the AJC special issue Online Social Capital and Participation in Asia-Pacific, guest edited by Marko Skoric (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore).

This is the abstract:
The Web has expanded the research agenda for communication scholars to study social capital. In this field of Internet studies, new indicators of social behavior and social relations have surfaced to describe and understand how social capital develops online and what the consequences are for social capital in general. Specifically, Web 2.0 as characterized by User Generated Content on weblogs and the enormously popular social network sites significantly increased the impor-tance of studying online social capital. To study online social capital, traditional
and new means of data collection and analysis can be used. This study focuses on the origins of the concept of social capital, how it is used in communication studies, and the means to measure social capital. Furthermore, two examples of studying online behavior and online social relations are provided to represent webometric tools for data collection and analysis: (1) the analysis of hyperlinks between political actors’ websites in South Korea, and (2) semantic network analysis of writings produced by professional journalists online and bloggers in South Korea. These examples use advanced analytical methods (hyperlink network analysis and semantic network analysis) to understand the online practices.

For the full article follow this link

What you see here is the network of tweets between candidates in the 2010 campaign of general elections 2010. The visualization is a directed graph of tweets from candidates, aggregated at the party level. The animated image shows the outgoing and incoming relations (i.e.the tweets to and from, out- and in-degree of sorts) by party, starting with CDA (at 3 o’clock), then proceeding clockwise. The separate graphs were produced by NodeXL, then merged into a single animated gif. I decided to layout the nodes in a circle and not use any algorithm. All attempts to create more insight using these algorithms failed, so I opted for a simple layout.

All this is produced for a paper the be presented at the WAPOR conference in September. The next step will be to do the analysis at candidate level and extend the sample to the followers of the candidates. However, I am not confident NodeXL will be able to handle this. So, I’ll move to Pajek to do the analysis.

Tweet interactions of candidates in the 2010 general elections in the Netherlands

This summer I published two articles about the use of Twitter during the European Parliament Elections. Below are the abstracts of both articles

Online social networks and micro-blogging in political campaigning: The exploration of a new campaign tool and a new campaign style
Maurice Vergeer, Liesbeth Hermans and Steven Sams, published in Party Politics.
This study explores how candidates running for the European Parliament (EP) in 2009 used micro-blogging and online social networks – in this case Twitter (www.twitter.com) in the early stage of its adoption – to communicate and connect with citizens. Micro-blogging in general, and Twitter in particular, is one of the new and popular Web 2.0 applications, yet there has been little research focusing on the use of Twitter by politicians. After reviewing different types of campaigning strategies and introducing a new and distinct strategy, this descriptive and exploratory study focuses on political candidates’ use of micro-blogging and online social networking (i.e. Twitter) from a longitudinal, social network, and ideological perspective. The results clearly show that most candidates in 2009 still used Twitter reluctantly. Those who used Twitter did so predominantly for electoral campaigning and only sparingly for continuous campaigning. Candidates from progressive parties are the most active users of Twitter as a campaigning tool, whereas conservatives are virtually absent online. Although candidates’ first degree networks are still relatively small and unconnected, their second degree networks are quite extensive. Candidates from parties in opposition have more extensive first degree networks than those from ruling parties. Candidates from fringe parties show small online networks.
(for full article, follow this link)

Is the voter only a tweet away? Micro-blogging during the 2009 European Parliament campaign in the Netherlands
Maurice Vergeer. Liesbeth Hermans and Steven Sams, published in First Monday
This study explores the use of Twitter by candidates, in particular their networking and micro–blogging activities in the election campaign for the European Parliament elections of 2009 in the Netherlands. The main focus is on identifying what political aspects (e.g., party characteristics and candidate characteristics) influences their use of Twitter as a campaign tool. Furthermore, we explore the effectiveness of candidates’ activities on Twitter in gaining votes.
(for full article, follow this link)