Diplomatic digital streams - all to the public
In the Middle Ages, this diplomacy was a complete mystery of the “Madrid Court”. In the modern world, hidden battles dispatch of secret mail have been supplemented with loud information attacks: who bombed Syria, which side does not observe the truce in Ukraine, will the format of NATO-Russia consultations return, etc. The new epoch is also pushing out new folk heroes, such as the psaki adored by many (for numerous pearls of oral diplomacy).
It is logical that the new formats of communication of diplomatic sources with the public become the subject of analysis. Here is a translation of a good article on analytics of specialized Twitter-channels.
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gSMI (Geneva Social Media Index) - Twitter analytics in the digital age diplomacy
The Social Media Index (gSMI) is based on an analysis of the use of Twitter, which is most often used as a social voice in diplomacy, politics and social development. gSMI reflects the activities of diplomatic sources on Twitter and the consequences it causes. The role of the index is to encourage the efficient and effective use of social media. The index was developed by Dr. Goran S. Milovanovic, a data analyst from DiploFoundation.
1. Introduction: Social Media in Digital Diplomacy
Social media continuously generates data flows, affecting the field of digital diplomacy. Mankind's gigantic involvement: 3.3 billion Internet users (November 2015, almost half of the world's population), 320 million active Twitter users per month, and over 1 billion active Facebook accounts per day - digital diplomacy is obliged to move to the closest possible to real-time monitoring and information analysis.
Changes in the world are not limited to the number of users of social media or how often they write new messages. With such volumes, the size of the information space in which a person is located grows many times over. One of the main tasks of digital diplomacy is to adapt to this rapidly changing environment by developing appropriate strategies for reaching target groups, delivering necessary information to them (but not overloading them with excessive amounts), and, as in traditional diplomacy, to achieve the maximum presence of the main participants - representatives of states, international or non-governmental organizations.
Despite the fact that today there are a large number of different social media, Twitter continues to occupy a special place in the world of diplomacy and politics. Of all social media, Twitter is the most quoted when it comes to immediate events, especially in times of multiple crises. Twitter, in fact, has already achieved the title of the main online channel used to instantly inform and analyze information on the most important social and political events of the day. Due to its brevity, Twitter forces its users to be short on transmitting their thoughts in a limited text and is probably the most frequently used source for analyzing the online presence of various actors (in the context of Big Data and studying unstructured data). Maintaining a successful presence in this social network is a challenge for any social communications professional.
gISM is based on a simple numerical analysis of Twitter activity. The index is an attempt to balance:
(a) measuring social media presence efforts;
(b) measuring the effectiveness of such efforts.
The index in no way gives preference to those Twitter accounts on which a large number of messages are simply published, and also does not rate them by the number of subscribers or reprints. When applying a multidimensional approach to analyzing activities on Twitter, the Index seeks to achieve the most concise presentation of activity — a place in the overall ranking, while the entire gISM methodology also presents a number of auxiliary indicators obtained by analyzing a specific Twitter account.
Many of these indicators were put to use, guided by the simple idea of evaluating what was done online in relation to what could be done. As a result, the main task of the Index is to encourage the intelligent and non-standard use of social media, rather than just a quantitative description and distribution of social media activities across the ranking lines. In January 2016, with the help of gISM, the winners of the "Geneva Engage Award" were determined in three nominations:
- permanent diplomatic missions in the EU in Geneva,
- non-governmental organizations
- international organizations.
The gISM analysis for the Geneva Engage Award included 48 permanent missions to the European Union, 43 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and 43 International Organizations (IOs) - all institutions are located in Geneva.
Figure 1. Permanent missions in the EU in Twitter accounts, their activity on Twitter and public perception (percentage rating), total size, and gISM performance indicator. Efficiency reflects the ratio of the original tweets to the total number of all Twitter posts from a particular page.
2. Methodology
2.1. Data collection
Twitter accounts of 48 permanent missions to the EU in Geneva were obtained from two lists of public Twitter accounts:
(1) Diplomatic missions in Geneva (from International Geneva),
(2) Diplomatic missions in Geneva (from Twiplomacy).
Twitter accounts 43 NGOs and 43 IOs were obtained from the following Twitter account lists: Peace and Security, Economic Issues, Human Rights, Global Health, Environment and CP (from International Geneva), and International Development (from NonprofitOrgs). Other methods were also used to identify relevant accounts (such as Twitter search, personal recommendations, and expert knowledge). In cases where the state mission and the permanent mission had separate Twitter accounts, the data were combined from all sources. In cases when the MO has several multilingual accounts, then the English language is selected for analysis. For EU structures, various departmental accounts were also added. In the categories of NGOs and IOs personal accounts were not included (for example, accounts of directors, program managers, managers of public relations).
Then the Twitter search API was used to
(a) collecting data on permanent mission accounts
(b) to collect samples of tweets from the respective time periods.
Since this was the first time that gISM was calculated for three categories of accounts (permanent missions in the EU, NGOs, and MOs), all tweets obtained from the Twitter search API were taken into account. This was done to obtain a solid initial result for further comparisons. Data collection was carried out from 19 to 21 December 2015.
To assess the width and depth of presence in social media, two quantitative indicators were introduced, reflecting activity in social media and its perception by the public. For each account, activity and perception were calculated to determine the degree of its success in working with social media.
The following data types were collected for each Twitter account:
• the total number of status updates since the registration of the account;
• number of followers;
• number of other pages to which the account being analyzed is subscribed;
• the number of public lists in which the account is listed;
• account lifetime (in weeks).
In addition to the above data, the following information was also collected:
• number of author tweets (excludes retweets from other pages);
• the total number of retweets of the messages of the author of this page;
• the number of “I like” marks on the page owner’s author’s tweets;
• the number of replies to tweets posted on behalf of the page owner.
Based on the collected data, activity and perception indicators were developed and calculated.
Figure 2. The 50 most popular hashtags used by NGOs and IOs, and correlations between accounts.
2.2. GISM performance
2.2.1. Activity indicators
Productivity : the number of tweets published since the creation of the account, including all retweets and answers divided by the lifetime of the page in weeks. Productivity - the most straightforward indicator used in these measurements - reflects the user's weekly activity.
Originality : the ratio of your own tweets (productivity minus retweets) relative to the total number of tweets in your account. This criterion reflects the amount of new content published by a specific account.
Sociability : the ratio of responses to messages from other Twitter users to the total number of own tweets. How often does the account owner dialogue?
Interest : the number of account subscribers divided by the time the account has been in weeks. In essence, the weekly indicator of Twitter public interest in the materials published on this page.
2.2.2. Perception indicators
Total Retweets : The total number of retweets divided by the number of your own tweets. How much of the original content published by this account is transmitted to other users through the subscribers of the page?
Popularity : The number of “I like” marks on tweets page divided by the number of your own tweets.
Subscriber growth : the total number of followers on Twitter divided by the account's existence in weeks. Reflects the weekly growth rate of the audience.
Publicity : the number of public lists in which the account is listed, divided by the time of the account’s existence in weeks. Another type of audience growth assessment, this time based on public listings that include this page.
3. Justification of gISM
In the figure, activity scales are opposed to perception scales. The size of each circle is proportional to the overall gISM rating of a specific Twitter account, while the color reflects the degree to which additional indicators are present, such as originality: the ratio of the number of original tweets to the total amount of posts per page. The rating involved accounts 86-NGOs and MO.
Figure 3. GISM subindicators. Opposed scales of activity and perception. Data set: Twitter accounts 86 NGOs and IOs.
If successful work with social media was determined solely by perception indicators, then many (potentially unaccounted) factors would become very important. Of course, there are players in the digital arena who receive a certain share of their popularity simply because they are very influential outside its borders or because their ideas or statements are of interest to a wide range of people. Using the popularity achieved by offline is also a possible and effective strategy.
We want to take into account not only those who were popular in advance, but also those who have achieved a significant part of their popularity through competent work in social media. In the upper right corner we see several NGOs and MOs that have a low rate of activity, but nevertheless achieve success in terms of perception. In the lower right corner of the situation is exactly the opposite - you can see a group of Twitter accounts with high activity rates, but low levels of perception.
Indicators of activity and perception correlate only slightly. The overall gISM indicator is calculated as a combination of both types of indicators in order to balance the possibility when some accounts will occupy high ranks of the rating simply by inheriting the level of perception they will receive regardless of their activity in working with their social media accounts. In the upper right corner, you can see accounts with high rates of both activity and perception, and it is this type of accounts that occupies the highest ranks of the rating.
Once again, the main idea of gISM is to encourage smart work with social media and to push key actors in digital diplomacy to achieve the goal of effective online presence.
=================================
The article is undoubtedly useful in terms of methodological constructions, but for serious industrial work in such studies it is required:
- to expand the number of sources - at least Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, VKontakte;
- expand the list of sources with key-person accounts (for example, A. Pushkov and D. Rogozin on Twitter, M. Zakharova on Facebook, R. Kadyrov on Instagram are important for Russian diplomacy);
- the transition to daily data accounting - the dynamics of world events is changing rapidly and the right tool is needed not only to fix old trends, but also to identify emerging activities.
It is logical that the new formats of communication of diplomatic sources with the public become the subject of analysis. Here is a translation of a good article on analytics of specialized Twitter-channels.
')
gSMI (Geneva Social Media Index) - Twitter analytics in the digital age diplomacy
The Social Media Index (gSMI) is based on an analysis of the use of Twitter, which is most often used as a social voice in diplomacy, politics and social development. gSMI reflects the activities of diplomatic sources on Twitter and the consequences it causes. The role of the index is to encourage the efficient and effective use of social media. The index was developed by Dr. Goran S. Milovanovic, a data analyst from DiploFoundation.
1. Introduction: Social Media in Digital Diplomacy
Social media continuously generates data flows, affecting the field of digital diplomacy. Mankind's gigantic involvement: 3.3 billion Internet users (November 2015, almost half of the world's population), 320 million active Twitter users per month, and over 1 billion active Facebook accounts per day - digital diplomacy is obliged to move to the closest possible to real-time monitoring and information analysis.
Changes in the world are not limited to the number of users of social media or how often they write new messages. With such volumes, the size of the information space in which a person is located grows many times over. One of the main tasks of digital diplomacy is to adapt to this rapidly changing environment by developing appropriate strategies for reaching target groups, delivering necessary information to them (but not overloading them with excessive amounts), and, as in traditional diplomacy, to achieve the maximum presence of the main participants - representatives of states, international or non-governmental organizations.
Despite the fact that today there are a large number of different social media, Twitter continues to occupy a special place in the world of diplomacy and politics. Of all social media, Twitter is the most quoted when it comes to immediate events, especially in times of multiple crises. Twitter, in fact, has already achieved the title of the main online channel used to instantly inform and analyze information on the most important social and political events of the day. Due to its brevity, Twitter forces its users to be short on transmitting their thoughts in a limited text and is probably the most frequently used source for analyzing the online presence of various actors (in the context of Big Data and studying unstructured data). Maintaining a successful presence in this social network is a challenge for any social communications professional.
gISM is based on a simple numerical analysis of Twitter activity. The index is an attempt to balance:
(a) measuring social media presence efforts;
(b) measuring the effectiveness of such efforts.
The index in no way gives preference to those Twitter accounts on which a large number of messages are simply published, and also does not rate them by the number of subscribers or reprints. When applying a multidimensional approach to analyzing activities on Twitter, the Index seeks to achieve the most concise presentation of activity — a place in the overall ranking, while the entire gISM methodology also presents a number of auxiliary indicators obtained by analyzing a specific Twitter account.
Many of these indicators were put to use, guided by the simple idea of evaluating what was done online in relation to what could be done. As a result, the main task of the Index is to encourage the intelligent and non-standard use of social media, rather than just a quantitative description and distribution of social media activities across the ranking lines. In January 2016, with the help of gISM, the winners of the "Geneva Engage Award" were determined in three nominations:
- permanent diplomatic missions in the EU in Geneva,
- non-governmental organizations
- international organizations.
The gISM analysis for the Geneva Engage Award included 48 permanent missions to the European Union, 43 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and 43 International Organizations (IOs) - all institutions are located in Geneva.
Figure 1. Permanent missions in the EU in Twitter accounts, their activity on Twitter and public perception (percentage rating), total size, and gISM performance indicator. Efficiency reflects the ratio of the original tweets to the total number of all Twitter posts from a particular page.
2. Methodology
2.1. Data collection
Twitter accounts of 48 permanent missions to the EU in Geneva were obtained from two lists of public Twitter accounts:
(1) Diplomatic missions in Geneva (from International Geneva),
(2) Diplomatic missions in Geneva (from Twiplomacy).
Twitter accounts 43 NGOs and 43 IOs were obtained from the following Twitter account lists: Peace and Security, Economic Issues, Human Rights, Global Health, Environment and CP (from International Geneva), and International Development (from NonprofitOrgs). Other methods were also used to identify relevant accounts (such as Twitter search, personal recommendations, and expert knowledge). In cases where the state mission and the permanent mission had separate Twitter accounts, the data were combined from all sources. In cases when the MO has several multilingual accounts, then the English language is selected for analysis. For EU structures, various departmental accounts were also added. In the categories of NGOs and IOs personal accounts were not included (for example, accounts of directors, program managers, managers of public relations).
Then the Twitter search API was used to
(a) collecting data on permanent mission accounts
(b) to collect samples of tweets from the respective time periods.
Since this was the first time that gISM was calculated for three categories of accounts (permanent missions in the EU, NGOs, and MOs), all tweets obtained from the Twitter search API were taken into account. This was done to obtain a solid initial result for further comparisons. Data collection was carried out from 19 to 21 December 2015.
To assess the width and depth of presence in social media, two quantitative indicators were introduced, reflecting activity in social media and its perception by the public. For each account, activity and perception were calculated to determine the degree of its success in working with social media.
The following data types were collected for each Twitter account:
• the total number of status updates since the registration of the account;
• number of followers;
• number of other pages to which the account being analyzed is subscribed;
• the number of public lists in which the account is listed;
• account lifetime (in weeks).
In addition to the above data, the following information was also collected:
• number of author tweets (excludes retweets from other pages);
• the total number of retweets of the messages of the author of this page;
• the number of “I like” marks on the page owner’s author’s tweets;
• the number of replies to tweets posted on behalf of the page owner.
Based on the collected data, activity and perception indicators were developed and calculated.
Figure 2. The 50 most popular hashtags used by NGOs and IOs, and correlations between accounts.
2.2. GISM performance
2.2.1. Activity indicators
Productivity : the number of tweets published since the creation of the account, including all retweets and answers divided by the lifetime of the page in weeks. Productivity - the most straightforward indicator used in these measurements - reflects the user's weekly activity.
Originality : the ratio of your own tweets (productivity minus retweets) relative to the total number of tweets in your account. This criterion reflects the amount of new content published by a specific account.
Sociability : the ratio of responses to messages from other Twitter users to the total number of own tweets. How often does the account owner dialogue?
Interest : the number of account subscribers divided by the time the account has been in weeks. In essence, the weekly indicator of Twitter public interest in the materials published on this page.
2.2.2. Perception indicators
Total Retweets : The total number of retweets divided by the number of your own tweets. How much of the original content published by this account is transmitted to other users through the subscribers of the page?
Popularity : The number of “I like” marks on tweets page divided by the number of your own tweets.
Subscriber growth : the total number of followers on Twitter divided by the account's existence in weeks. Reflects the weekly growth rate of the audience.
Publicity : the number of public lists in which the account is listed, divided by the time of the account’s existence in weeks. Another type of audience growth assessment, this time based on public listings that include this page.
3. Justification of gISM
In the figure, activity scales are opposed to perception scales. The size of each circle is proportional to the overall gISM rating of a specific Twitter account, while the color reflects the degree to which additional indicators are present, such as originality: the ratio of the number of original tweets to the total amount of posts per page. The rating involved accounts 86-NGOs and MO.
Figure 3. GISM subindicators. Opposed scales of activity and perception. Data set: Twitter accounts 86 NGOs and IOs.
If successful work with social media was determined solely by perception indicators, then many (potentially unaccounted) factors would become very important. Of course, there are players in the digital arena who receive a certain share of their popularity simply because they are very influential outside its borders or because their ideas or statements are of interest to a wide range of people. Using the popularity achieved by offline is also a possible and effective strategy.
We want to take into account not only those who were popular in advance, but also those who have achieved a significant part of their popularity through competent work in social media. In the upper right corner we see several NGOs and MOs that have a low rate of activity, but nevertheless achieve success in terms of perception. In the lower right corner of the situation is exactly the opposite - you can see a group of Twitter accounts with high activity rates, but low levels of perception.
Indicators of activity and perception correlate only slightly. The overall gISM indicator is calculated as a combination of both types of indicators in order to balance the possibility when some accounts will occupy high ranks of the rating simply by inheriting the level of perception they will receive regardless of their activity in working with their social media accounts. In the upper right corner, you can see accounts with high rates of both activity and perception, and it is this type of accounts that occupies the highest ranks of the rating.
Once again, the main idea of gISM is to encourage smart work with social media and to push key actors in digital diplomacy to achieve the goal of effective online presence.
=================================
The article is undoubtedly useful in terms of methodological constructions, but for serious industrial work in such studies it is required:
- to expand the number of sources - at least Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, VKontakte;
- expand the list of sources with key-person accounts (for example, A. Pushkov and D. Rogozin on Twitter, M. Zakharova on Facebook, R. Kadyrov on Instagram are important for Russian diplomacy);
- the transition to daily data accounting - the dynamics of world events is changing rapidly and the right tool is needed not only to fix old trends, but also to identify emerging activities.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/298662/
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