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Editor Login
Convener in chief:
David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)
Editors:
Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)
Guy Stuart
(Economic Sociology, Finance)
David Gibson
(Social Networks, Interaction, Theory)
Allan Friedman
(Simulations)
Jukka-Pekka Onnela
(Methodology, Social Networks, Technology)
Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)
Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing) Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Government 20)
Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)
Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Government 20, Citizen Relationship Management)
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Recent Entries
- Papers on online deliberative field experiments
- Online Townhall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century.
- Report on online townhalls...
- Responsive Buildings and Social Networks
- You Lie 2.0
- Delete - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age
- The Harvard/UCSD guys are at it again
Recent Comments
- Re: Wall Street Journal article: Science as a Team Sport
By: Jerry Mechling
Date: Nov 21, 2009 9:39 AM - Re: David is a Hero
By: Nicholas Christakis
Date: Nov 15, 2009 1:21 AM - Re: You Lie 2.0
By: Gabrielle
Date: Nov 11, 2009 8:56 AM
Notification
« September 2009 | Main | November 2009 »
26 October 2009
Papers on online deliberative field experiments
There might be some interest in the scholarly papers undergirding some of the research in the aforementioned report. Below we list some of the papers from the online deliberative field experiments that we posted on SSRN.
Who Wants to Deliberate - and Why?
Michael A. Neblo
Ohio State University - Department of Political Science
Kevin M. Esterling
University of California, Riverside - Department of Political Science
Ryan Kennedy
University of Houston - Department of Political Science
David Lazer
Northeastern University - Department of Political Science; Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government
Anand E. Sokhey
University of Colorado at Boulder - Department of Political Science
Interest in deliberative theories of democracy has grown tremendously among political theorists over the last twenty years. Many scholars in political behavior, however, are skeptical that it is a practically viable theory, even on its own terms. They argue (inter alia) that most people dislike politics, and that deliberative initiatives would amount to a paternalistic imposition. Using two large, representative samples investigating people's hypothetical willingness to deliberate and their actual behavior in response to a real invitation to deliberate with their member of Congress, we find: 1) that willingness to deliberate in the U.S. is much more widespread than expected; and 2) that it is precisely people who are less likely to participate in traditional partisan politics who are most interested in deliberative participation. They are attracted to such participation as a partial alternative to "politics as usual."
Kevin M. Esterling
University of California, Riverside - Department of Political Science
Michael A. Neblo
Ohio State University - Department of Political Science
David Lazer
Northeastern University - Department of Political Science; Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government
Survey research on political knowledge typically measures citizens' ability to recall political information on the spot, and in these surveys most citizens appear appallingly ignorant. Deliberative theorists emphasize, however, that citizens' capacity to become informed when given a motive and opportunity to participate in politics is equally important for democratic accountability. We assess this capacity among citizens using two deliberative field experiments. In the summer of 2006 we conducted a field experiment in which we recruited twelve current members of the U.S. Congress to discuss immigration policy with randomly drawn small groups of their constituents. In the summer of 2008, we conducted a similar experiment using a large group of constituents interacting with Senator Carl Levin of Michigan on detainee policy. Using an innovative statistical method to identify average treatment effects from field experiments, we find that constituents demonstrate a strong capacity to become informed in response to this opportunity. The primary mechanism for knowledge gains is subjects' increased attention to policy outside the context of the experiment. This capacity to become informed seems to be spread widely throughout the population, in that it is unrelated to prior political knowledge.
Kevin M. Esterling
University of California, Riverside - Department of Political Science
Michael A. Neblo
Ohio State University - Department of Political Science
David Lazer
Northeastern University - Department of Political Science; Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government
If ignored, non-compliance with a treatment and nonresponse on outcome measures can bias estimates of treatment effects in a randomized experiment. To identify treatment effects in the case where compliance and response are conditioned on subjects' unobserved compliance type, we propose the parametric generalized endogenous treatment (GET) model. GET incorporates behavioral responses within an experiment to measure each subjects' latent compliance type, and identifies causal effects via principal stratification. We use Monte Carlo methods to show GET has a lower MSE for treatment effect estimates than existing approaches to principal stratification that impute, rather than measure, compliance type for subjects assigned to the control. In an application, we use data from a recent field experiment to assess whether exposure to a deliberative session with their member of Congress changes constituents' levels of internal and external efficacy. Since it conditions on subjects' latent compliance type, GET is able to test whether exposure to the treatment is ignorable after balancing on observed covariates via matching methods. We show that internally efficacious subjects disproportionately select into the deliberative sessions, and that matching does not break the latent dependence between treatment compliance and outcome. The results suggest that exposure to the deliberative sessions improves external, but not internal, efficacy.
Posted by David Lazer at 7:32 PM | Comments (0)
25 October 2009
Online Townhall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century.
I am pleased to announce the release of the report, Online Townhall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century. As noted below, this report summarizes the results of a series of randomized experiments, involving 13 Members of Congress meeting with constituents in small groups online. What were the quality of these sessions? What impact did these sessions have on participants? The results were quite heartening. Some of the key findings of the report:
• The meetings increased engagement in politics. Participants in the sessions were more likely to vote and were dramatically more likely to follow the election and to attempt to persuade other citizens how to vote.
• The discussions in the town hall meetings were of high quality. By standards of deliberative quality (use of accurate facts to support arguments, respect for alternative points of view, etc.) the discussions were of a very high quality.
• The town hall meetings attracted a diverse array of people. These sessions were more likely than traditional venues to attract people from demographics not traditionally engaged in politics and people frustrated with the political system.
• The sessions were extremely popular with constituents. A remarkable 96% of participants said they would like to be included in similar events in the future.
• The online town hall meetings increased constituents' approval of the Member of Congress. Members experienced an average net approval rating jump of 18 points. There were similar increases in trust and perceptions of personal qualities such as hardworking and accessible. The sessions also increased constituents' approval of the Member's position on the issue discussed.
• The online sessions increased the probability of voting for the Member. The probability of voting for the Member was 49% for control subjects and 56% for people who participated in a session, with a particularly dramatic impact on swing voters.
• The positive results were seen in small and large sessions. Most of the sessions were conducted by Representatives with small groups of 15-25 constituents. To test the scalability, the team conducted one session with a Senator and nearly 200 people. All of the major results were replicated with this larger group.
Posted by David Lazer at 10:45 PM | Comments (1)
21 October 2009
Report on online townhalls...
What is the potential of the Internet to facilitate a connection between Members of Congress and their constituents? To tackle this question, Mike Neblo, Kevin Esterling and I, in collaboration with a small, terrific nonprofit in Washington, the Congressional Management Foundation, conducted a series of online townhalls in the Summers of 2006 and 2008. Our question: what impact did these townhalls have on political engagement, policy knowledge, views of the Member, and so on? These were field experiments, with subjects randomly sorted into "treatment" (participate in session) and "control" conditions. We got some pretty striking results, although that is all I am going to say for now, because we are officially releasing the report on Monday. I will put it up at 11am on Monday, and if you are media and would like an embargoed copy, drop me an e-mail. Meanwhile, here's the cover:
Posted by David Lazer at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)
Responsive Buildings and Social Networks
In a blog entry about a year ago I talked about using sensor data to change architecture into a changeable force for altering social networks. I recently analyzed the office layout data from 4 of our sociometric badge studies, and found that the probability of interaction between two people degraded greatly as the distance between their desks (as well as the physical barriers such as walls) increased.
I got fairly intrigued by the idea of dynamically modifying office layout to help deal with this situation, and recently for the Media Lab fall sponsor week my UROP Alex Speltz and I built a prototype of an augmented cubicle wall that changes based on the social context. Here's a picture:
The wall is a little over 2 meters tall and made of two plexiglass sheets with a wood frame. Inside the plexiglass sheets are window blinds that can be raised and lowered by an actuator mounted on the bottom of the wall.
The idea is that by detecting the stage of work for a worker (exploring vs. exploiting) we can determine if they need more face-to-face interaction or less for a certain period of time (probably at least a week). If someone needs to talk more with people around them, at night the actuator will pull down the blinds to create a window, making serendipitous interaction easier. If, on the other hand, the person is more in an exploit mode and needs to sit at their desk and work, the blinds are pulled up at night, and when they come in the next day it will give them more privacy. People can also specify their interaction preferences through a web-based system that my other UROPs Tim Kaler, Ernie Park, and Margaret Ding made, which allows us to further tailor the system output.
It's important to imagine an entire office outfitted with these, so if you knew that two groups were starting to work on a project together the barriers between those groups would disappear, while if someone was monopolizing the time of another group the barriers between them would increase. In effect, the augmented cubicle would become a social signal for availability. While people can control the blinds manually, in practice people stick with the defaults (I pulled down the blinds in my office two months ago and haven't gotten around to pulling them back up).
We're planning on deploying this in a real organization in the next few months as the design gets finalized to see if we can have a positive effect on the work environment, as well as productivity and job satisfaction. We're also currently making a demonstration video of the wall, which I'll post here as soon as it's ready.
Posted by Ben Waber at 3:35 PM | Comments (3)
12 October 2009
You Lie 2.0
You Lie 2.0: How disrespect can get you thousands of new friends and a million dollars
At first, Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's health-care address looked like a career killer. Members of both parties blasted him for his dramatic breech of decorum, and most Americans, regardless of ideology, reacted with disgust.
But the South Carolina Republican used the incident to build a massive audience that has helped him raise more than a million dollars in new campaign funds. He's arguably more influential than ever before.
Welcome to Twitter-era politics, where a moment of fame -- even one as inglorious as Wilson's -- can translate into political power.
The night Wilson shouted "you lie" at the President of the United States, he hired a new-media strategist, who went to work immediately.
Within 24 hours, the Congressman's Twitter account had sent out 50 new messages, and his followers had increased by an unprecedented 500 percent to over 10,000.
Without any sincere apology to the American people or to his fellow Members of Congress, Wilson managed to create friends or, in Web 2.0 lingo, "picked up people" wherever they were -- on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
He replicated the Campaign 2.0 success of his political foe, President Obama, and increased his fans on his congressional Facebook fanpage to more than 11,000.
At the same time, he also equipped his Facebook campaign page with a donation option and added the following pitch:
The result of the Congressman's breach of protocol and subsequent social-media broadcasts: Enormously enhanced name recognition and more than $1.5 million dollars in donations in the week following his outburst (and as of today $2.7 million).
What is most interesting here is how a whole new kind of message spin has emerged -- one that specifically focuses on targeting new media channels and is directed by a whole new kind of PR expert.
It's not just about talk radio and the Internet anymore. In the old days, Wilson's best course of action would have been to sincerely and thoughtfully apologize and then hope that his constituents would forgive him. Not any more: Today's messages are not about damage control but about turning a wrong into a right.
In other contexts, such misbehavior is not acceptable to anyone: Kanye West was shunned by his celebrity colleagues for jumping on stage at the VMA awards during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech; Serena Williams lost her match and received a fine of $10,500 dollars for insulting a line judge during the US Open finals on the same weekend.
Both found themselves in the dog house, both apologized profoundly, not only directly to the person they harmed, but also to the public. Their standings were arguably hurt by their behavior, while Wilson's appears to have been enhanced among those who share his views.
In a recent tweet, he says, "I will not back down from speaking the truth. Please stand with me.".
In Wilson's world, shouting at the president during an address to Congress is now called "speaking the truth." And by being able to communicate with thousands of followers directly on social networks, he can have his own version on the truth, unfiltered by journalists, academics, or pundits. He can directly spin the public, and doesn't need to worry nearly as much about spinning what we normally think of as the "opinion makers."
Democracy may well be better off as a result of the Internet's ability to build audience and supply that audience with direct, unfiltered communication. But as Wilson has shown, it is also a challenge for civil society, loosening norms of public behavior, and giving those who wish to cater to the extremes powerful new tools.
Posted by Ines Mergel at 8:00 AM | Comments (11)
7 October 2009
Delete - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age
I knew I was in for a treat when I sat down to listen to Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger at NYU's Law School yesterday afternoon. Viktor discussed his new book, Delete - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, and kicked off a book tour that will take him to several US locations (I've listed upcoming talks below). Although he had arrived from Singapore only hours prior to giving his talk, he engaged the audience with his clever presentation, leaving us wanting more even after 45 minutes of Q&A.
Mayer-Schoenberger beautifully illustrates our society's transition from "biological forgetting to digital remembering". While for generations our efforts have concentrated on trying to remember events, actions, etc. and preserve them for posterity, in today's world we are facing the opposite problem: The digital memory is here to stay. However, the book argues, forgetting has its virtues, and needs to be reintroduced. The solution is simple: Put an expiration date on information.
The book is a great read (as soon as I got it, my non-academic spouse snagged it and took it on a business trip, which usually doesn't happen with the books I order), and I am not even close to doing it justice with this description, so if you find yourselves near any of the locations of the book tour, make sure to stop by and join the discussion.
Future stops (from here):
• Harvard's Berkman Center on October 7 at 6 pm
• Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy on October 8 at 4.30 pm
• Town Hall Seattle on October 19 at 7.30 pm
• University of California Berkeley Law School on October 22 at 4 pm
Posted by Maria Binz-Scharf at 2:05 PM | Comments (4)
6 October 2009
The Harvard/UCSD guys are at it again
If you haven't seen it already, check out the Sunday NYT Magazine (cover story!) from September 13th.
Very, very cool. In advance of their new book. Networks are very, very cool..... as are Nicholas and James.
Posted by Stan Wasserman at 5:06 PM | Comments (0)