The article is here (in Norwegian), but I’ll also add it below with some additional links.

Hva: Forskning på hvorfor folk hopper av Facebook i politisk protest og hvor liten effekt det har. Hvem: Laura Portwood-Stacer, New York University. Betydning: Ved å studere avhopperne kan vi lære om hvilken rolle verdens største sosiale nettverk har for brukerne og om kompromissene vi gjør.

«Bruce» hadde fått nok. Da Facebook lot Wikileaks fortsette å ha en profil på det sosiale nettverket, var det dråpen som fikk begeret til å renne over for «Bruce». Før han stengte kontoen sin på Facebook, la han ut en ilter melding både om Wikileaks og Facebook, og avsluttet med et «Goodbye everybody».

Venner var fornærmet over at han kunne ofre nettrelasjonen deres på grunn av en politisk sak. Noen mente han drev med egenreklame ved å slutte og at han trodde han var bedre enn andre.

«Bruce» er et pseudonym for en av 20 Facebook-avhoppere Laura Portwood-Stacer har intervjuet. I tillegg har forskeren fra New York University studert hundrevis av medie-artikler om temaet fra 2006 frem til 2012. For tiden er hennes artikkel «Media refusal and conspicuous non-consumption: The performative and political dimensions of Facebook abstention» den mest leste i tidsskriftet New Media and Society.

Hva er så poenget med å studere Facebook-avhopperne? Mer enn 1 milliard mennesker verden over har profil på Facebook, og mange forskere har i flere år snakket om Facebook som sosial infrastruktur, blant dem Danah Boyd, seniorforsker hos Microsoft Research – altså noe folk trenger mer enn de nødvendigvis ønsker. Når Facebook blir så integrert i våre liv, desto mer interessant blir det da å studere dem som aktivt velger å holde seg borte fra dette nettverket, og de personlige kostnadene det innebærer.

Telefon-, tv- eller mobil-nekting har gjennom flere tiår vært en måte å drive private protester mot en kulturutvikling enkelte misliker. Å avstå fra en populær kommunikasjons- eller underholdningsteknologi kan forstås som forbrukeraktivisme, og kan fortelle noe om ens identitet eller ideologiske ståsted. Bortkastet tid, meningsløst skvalder og «fast food-vennskap» er noen av begrunnelsene som blir gitt for å stenge Facebook-kontoen.

Facebooks uklare personverninnstillinger og aggressive forretningsmodell er blitt kraftig kritisert i flere år, og Facebook-«selvmord» er uttrykk vi finner på t-skjorter, i blogger og på Twittermeldinger. Det å kommunisere at man dropper Facebook er blitt et viktig poeng for mange av avhopperne. Slike historier ender ofte opp i mediene, også her i Morgenbladet, noe som er med på å sette disse historiene i bestemte tolkningsrammer.

Men å slette Facebook-profilen kan være en nokså fånyttes protest, særlig dersom man ønsker å skape politisk endring hos teknologiplattformen. Det mener Portwood-Stacer, som hevder avhoppingen ofte blir kommunisert på lite effektive måter. Det avhopperen mener er uttrykk for personlig integritet, oppfattes ofte av andre som selvrettferdig elitisme. Rar, annerledes, frustrerende og antisosial er ord som ofte blir brukt av Facebook-brukere for å beskrive dem som velger å stå utenfor. De personlige kostnadene ved å stå utenfor kan bli merkbare. Og selv om anti-Facebookerne kan ha tydelige politiske grunner for å droppe ut, drukner ofte den retorikken i elitekritikk.

«Makten til å slå av» er nemlig ikke jevnt fordelt. Portwood-Stacer hevder at profil-sletting primært er en taktikk for personer med høy sosial kapital, slike som står trygt sosialt også uten Facebook og som ikke trenger å være konstant påkoblet. Mindre privilegerte Facebook-brukere kan miste mer ved å koble seg av.

Så hvordan kan man da få Facebook-utmelding til å fremstå som politisk eller prinsipiell, fremfor at man dropper vennene sine? Portwood-Stacer fremhever særlig to aspekter: Vær bevisst språkbruken når profilen slettes, for å gi handlingen legitimitet. For det andre: Vær klar over at ideen om at «en person kan utgjøre en forskjell» i denne sammenhengen kan virke mot sin hensikt, og tvert imot gjøre Facebook-avhopping ineffektiv. Det må kollektive handlinger til dersom Facebook-kritikken skal få tyngde, ikke bare enkeltstående «Adjø, Facebook».

Bente Kalsnes  er stipendiat ved institutt for medier og kommunikasjon ved Universitet i Oslo 

My social network via NameGenWeb

As part of the research project I’m part of (Social media and agenda setting project in election campaigns), I’m looking into different ways to analyze and compare likes, shares, number of comments, etc. on open Facebook pages. I’m also considering tools to analyze comments. So far, I’ve looked at these tool (some in more details than others):

I’m very excitied about my chance to take part in the University of Amsterdam’s Winter School for the first time. The theme is  “Data Sprint: The New Logistics of Short-form Method” and in addition to a mini-conference (schedule), we are doing a 3-day workshop on emerging alternatives to big data, such as Barcamp, Hackathon, Hack Day, Edit-a-thon, Data Sprint, Code Fest, Open Data Day, Hack the Government:

“The 2013 Digital Methods Winter School is dedicated to the outcomes and critiques of short-form method, and is also reflexive in that it includes a data sprint, where we focus on one aspect of the debate about short- vs. long-form method: data capture.”

One of the cases we will hear about is a data sprint related to counter-Jihadists, the other case is a method for issue mapping, specifically about how to visualize right wing extremism in Europe.

Amsterdam next!

For someone outside academia, it is hard to keep track of the research that exist, both because it is time-consuming to keep updated as well as most people have limited access  to academic publications.

You can of course do regular searches at the University library’s website, but then you have to be very specific about what you are looking for, in addition to social media – otherwise you will end up with 236.846 articles…

Ida Aalen has recently written a terrific little book (in Norwegian) called (my translation): A short book about social media. It gives us an excellent overview of tons of social media research, and it is really helpful to get a good grasp of what we KNOW about social media, based on international (and Norwegian) academic publications.

However, when it comes to Norwegian research on social media-related topics, I think it can be handy to list up some of the people who are working in the field, instead of listing up all their publications. Then you can check them up yourselves. And please let me know in the comments if I’ve forgotten someone (I’m sure I have), I will correct this list is as it is mainly from the top of my head. And sorry for not linking to everyone, it takes too much time. Google will find them for you.

My colleagues at IMK, University of Oslo:

• Gunn Enli
• Eli Skogerbø
• Anders Larsson
• Taina Bucher
• Karoline Andrea Ihlebæk
• Elisabeth Staksrud
• Anders Fagerjord
• Arnt Maasø
• Terje Rasmussen
• Anders Løvlie
• Bente Kalsnes

Other from UiO:

• Ingrid D. Rogstad 
• Rune Karlsen
• And some more

Institute for Social Research:

• Bernard Enjolras
• Dag Wollebæk
• Kari Steen-Johansen
• Signe Bock Segaard

Sintef/BI

• Lene Pettersen
• Marika Lüders
• Petter Bae Brandtzæg
• Asbjørn Følstad
• Cecilie Staude

University of Bergen

• Jill Walker Rettberg
• Hallvard Moe
• Lars Nyre
• Brita Ytre-Arne
• Linda Elen Olsen

Rokkansenteret

• Ivar Eimhjellen

NTNU

• Arne Krokan
• Berit Skog
• Halvdan Haugsbakken

University of Tromsø

• Anders Hauge Wien

I’m sure there are more, so help me update the list!

UPDATE: I’ve added names to the list based on your suggestions.

UPDATE 2: Here is the list on a Google Doc, feel free to update it. I haven’t included Master students in this list, so these are PhD candidates and beyond.

• Lawrence Lessig: Prosecutor as bully
• danah boyd: Processing the loss of Aaron Swartz
• Wired: Aaron Swartz, coder and activist, Dead at 26
• A very personal account from one of his friends (my favorite): Matt Stoller: Aaron Swartz’s politics 
• Remember Aaron Swartz

Photo: ragesoss, Flick, CC

You should also check out:

• Aaron Swartz’s 2011 review of books (as well as his blog in general)
• Swartz’s learning method: Learn (1), Try (2), Gab (3), Build (4) or “How to get a job like mine” 

I never met Swartz and so many have already written smart and touching about his life and internet activism. However, I would like to pick up on the topic of open access to academic info.  Swartz faced federal hacking prosecution for allegedly downloading millions of academic documents from the JSTORE database via MIT’s guest network, using a laptop hidden in a networking closet.

For a brand new PhD candidate to me, it is almost shocking to see all the research I haven’t had access to for the past 10 years (since I finished my Master’s at Georgetown). Now as I’m back at the University, I can access all the goodies, but for the past few year, I haven’t been able to keep track of or get access to academic research on social media, online politics and activism, online media, etc, except if an academic friend has been so kind to share some articles with me. It is ridiculous how locked up and unavailable research is today, something Jill Walker Rettberg also has written about and I totally agree with her on this statement:

Open access to research publications is one of the most important research policy questions internationally today. We need to push nationally and internationally for governments and professional organisations to require open access publication, and perhaps national copyright law needs to be changed to ensure that publicly funded research is available to the public.

Jill is making all her publications available online, which is also the case for another academic friend of mine, Marika Lüders.

Photo: scribbletaylor, Flickr, CC

As a new PhD, I’m not that familiar with Open Access. But I’ve been interested in open data for years, especially from a journalistic viewpoint, so open academic access is logic in my ears. And I already know that it will become crucial for me in the years to come to push and fight for much more openness in academic publishing. As we can read on the Norwegian site for Open Access (my translation):

The purpose behind openaccess.no is to contribute to an effective system for open, academic communication in line with science’s basic foundation: To share scientific results as widely as possible. 

A commentator in the Guardian goes even further today:

Publishing behind paywalls is immoral.More than that, it’s oxymoronic: if it’s behind a paywall, it hasn’t been published.

and

As a scientist your job is to bring new knowledge into the world. Hiding it behind a journal’s paywall is unacceptable

What about you, do you have any opinions about Open Access?

UPDATE: If you have suggestions and advice for how to be an open access scholar, please do! Thanks Jill for your helpful blogpost, How to be an open access scholar! 

Why does it matter which cars Republican voters drive or which beer Democratic voters drink? The candidate who microtarget the voters best, might end up winning the election, which is why it is useful for Obama to know that Budweisser and Heineken are preferred beers among his potential Democrats with low voter turnout.

The book “Taking our country back: The crafting of networked politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama” by Daniel Kreiss takes us behind the digital scenes of the Democratic Party and explains how this trend has developed and what it means. For everyone interested in political campaigns as well as political use of technology and social media, you should definitively read this book.

Microtargeting is the big trend within the American presidential campaigns this year. The more information election campaigns have about potential voters, the more likely they are to approach them with relevant information, thinking goes. And the information or data comes from regular voting data, in addition to lifestyle data and user data from social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Targeting has been a part of presidential campaigns for years, however, microtargeting has a fairly recent history, enhanced by technology.

The 2012 election campaigns are much “data heavier” than we have ever seen before. But at the same time, we know that the campaigns are spending a hugh amount on direct mail, and good ‘ol email is crucial to reach out to voters and run successful fundraising campaigns.

Politico journalist Lois Romano has a quote that gives you a pretty good pictures of the changes going on in the backbones or infrastructure of the campaigns:

”The depth and breadth of the Obama campaign’s 2012 digital operation — from data mining to online organizing — reaches so far beyond anything politics has ever seen, experts maintain, that it could impact the outcome of a close presidential election. It makes the president’s much-heralded 2008 social media juggernaut — which raised half billion dollars and revolutionized politics — look like cavemen with stone tablets.”

Daniel Kreiss has written an extensive and detailed book about how innovation, infrastructure and organization have structured and changed Democratic presidential campaigns since 2004, which allows for the data mining we now see. Kreiss, who is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has through fieldwork and interviews gotten access to key digital campaign people within the Democratic Party, and he demonstrates how changes within organizational culture and technology have developed improvements that culminated in Obamas’ victory in November 2008 (November 6 will show us if the winning streak will continue).

One of the main points in Kreiss’ examination is that the Obama campaign new media strategy didn’t bring about a qualitatively new form of politics. But by researching the structured interactivity and the computational management of the Obama campaign, we can learn some interesting lessons about contemporary election campaigning. I’m interested in how these lessons relates to other countries outside the US, for example in Norway and Sweden.

Here are some other points I find interesting:

Mobilization

After the victory in 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign was celebrated for running an amazing social media campaign that energized grassroots. However, the engagement that seemed to develop from below, out of nowhere, through social media tools such as MeetUp and Facebook, didn’t just happen out of nowhere. Kreiss documents how this was part of the strategy. If the Obama campaign was to have any chance against Hillary Clinton in the primaries, the campaign needed to expand the electorate, to engage non-registered voters and groups who traditionally had lower voter turnout (youth and African Americans). This is just one of the reasons why social media became crucial communication and mobilization tools. It is also worth noticing that both in 2008 and in 2012, the Obama campaign has hired programmers, statisticians, marketers, designers, etc to develop and execute the digital strategy (from companies such as Facebook, Google, startups, Blue State Digital, etc).

Donations and email

Howard Dean proved how small online donations can become huge amounts, and the Obama campaign advanced that art in 2007 and 2008, when the campaign raised half a billion online. Her are the numbers:

”3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.”

Through building up a huge email list (13 millions), the Obama campaign could reach out to potential voters as well as dedicated enthusiasts (check also out the excellent article by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen: Mundane Internet Tools, Mobilizing Practices, and the Coproduction of Citizenship in Political Campaigns). By rebuilding and fine-tuning the Democratic Party’s voter database VoteBuilder (starting in 2005), the foundation for microtargeting was established. Through computational management, the campaign could test out which messages worked best on email, social media, TV ads, online ads, etc, and then improve the message further.

In 2012, user data from social data is also added to the campaign’s data mix (in addition to regular voter and consumer data). The mixture of high-tech and mundane tools to reach out to potential voters, especially in swing states, is apparent also in this election:

“[S]ome people are going to get all of their stuff through Facebook, some people now do Twitter, some people are going to go directly to our website, some people like it on email, some people like it on text,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said.“

High tech and mundane tools

We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the backbone of the campaign, the voter database. “Shiny things” such as millions of likes or fancy YouTube-videos are impressive, but the VoteBuilder filled with voter data is at the heart of the campaign (the Republican’s voter file is called VoterVault). It is also worth noticing how the campaign is trying to engage people and gradually involve them in the campaign (similar to the Groundwire’s Engagement Pyramide):

1. Get people to sign up for e-mail
2. Get people to donate
3. Get people to register to vote
4. Get people to volunteer
5. Get people to vote

The main goal is always clear: Win the election.

Kreiss argues that campaign innovations in infrastructure, organization and technology needs to be studied seriously, just as we need to understand why a political candidate communicates as he or she does in social media. He says “ this book argues that much of the scholarly literature in the electoral domain has the wrong object in view in focusing on the outcomes of this work, rather than the process that create information environment”.

Only 6 days away from the American election, we will soon know which campaign strategy worked best:  Barack Obama or Mitt Romney’s style of computation management.

I’ve written a chapter about engagement and mobilization online, using examples from Norwegian politics (mainly the Labour Party), Origo, online media, individual bloggers and of course Girl Geeks Dinners! You will also find chapters about Enterprise 2.0, internal knowledge sharing at Statnett, how the Municipality of Trondheim is using Yammer internally, etc. The book is published by Kommuneforlaget. For Norwegian readers, here is a blog post about the book by the IT director in Trondheim kommune.

We are having a seminar and book launch this coming Friday at BI 09:00-11:00, come if you are in town! More info about the event and how to order the book.

As some of you know, I started my PhD at the Department of media and communication, University of Oslo, in September. For me, this is a fantastic opportunity, as I have dreamt about doing a PhD since I finished my Master thesis at Georgetown University in 2002 (for more background, check my About page).

I will use this blog to test out ideas, write about stuff I read and ask for your reactions on issues related to tech politics, media technology, networks within social media and agenda setting.

Previously, I’ve written both in Norwegian and English. From now on, I plan to mainly write in English.

As part of the SAC project, I’m paying particular attention to innovation in tech/social media usage and funding within the presidential election campaign in the US.  I will soon return with a new post about that topic. In the meantime, here is a reading tip for others who are interested in this topic:

Politics Transformed (ebook by Mashable journalists)

22.juli-kommisjonens rapport, via Wordle

Jeg håper faktisk 22.juli-rapporten blir folkflest-lesning, ikke bare for en liten krets av kommentatorer, journalister, politikere, byråkrater, politi, etc. Jeg tror vi er mange som har mye å lære av kulturendringene som må til i det norske samfunnet

Jeg har bare rukket å lese 70 sider i rapporten fra 22.juli-kommisjonen, så jeg skal ikke uttale noe særlig om den ennå. Men mitt førsteinntrykk er at dette er en svært god rapport, den påpeker forhold som ikke bare rammer politiet, byråkratiet og det politiske systemet, men som også kan være relevant for bedrifter, organisasjoner, etc. Noe så konkret som å ikke gjennomføre det man har bestemt seg for (man har planer, men gjennomfører dem ikke),  ikke klarer å samhandle eller utnytte hjelpen man kan få fra teknologien. Se hovedkonklusjonene i rapporten som Alexandra Bech Gjørv presenterte i går:

OPPDATERING:

I etterkant av den amerikanske  “9/11 Commission Report” kom det ut en tegneserievariant av rapporten.

Forfatterne og grafikerne Sid Jacobsen og Ernie Colón sa dette om prosjektet:

This illustrated account uses the text from the 9/11 Commission’s report to turn the complicated and confusing mass of information contained therein into an accessible, straightforward and clear story for the first time.

Kanskje en idé for den nesten 500 siders norske rapporten også?

Slik ser de to bøkene ut:

Det som går igjen, er at den nye straffeloven ikke kan innføres før politiets nye datasystem er på plass. Straffeloven ble vedtatt i 2005, med en del justeringer i 2009. I 2012 har den ennå ikke trådt i kraft:

”Den nye straffeloven må utsettes i flere år på grunn av dårlige datasystemer. Politidirektoratet sier at et den nye straffeloven ikke kan tre i kraft før et nytt straffesakssystem er på plass. Dette vil koste opptil to milliarder kroner.”

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article210855.ece

”Denne (straffeloven 2005) er medi­e­nøy­tral, og det er ingen tvil om at den også omfat­ter ytrin­ger på net­tet. Men syv år etter at den nye straffe­lo­ven ble ved­tatt, er den fort­satt ikke satt i kraft. Man kan ikke dømme noen etter en bestem­melse som er ved­tatt, så lenge den ikke er satt i kraft. Hvor­for loven fort­satt ikke er satt i kraft, vet jeg ikke.”

http://blogg.torvund.net/2012/07/27/offentlig-eller-ikke-offentlig/

”DDoS-angrep er nærmere klargjort i juridisk forstand gjennom en bestemmelse om såkalt driftshindring i ny straffelov. Denne ble vedtatt allerede i 2005, men selv om loven også ble ytterligere endret i 2009, er situasjonen den at loven ennå ikke har trådt i kraft. Den nye loven kunne ytterligere styrket påtalemyndighetens verktøykasse, men må vente inntil videre. Årsaken er at politiets datasystemer er utrangert.”
Politidirektoratet har tidligere uttalt at dette skyldes at regjeringen ikke har prioritert oppgradering av IT-løsningene deres, og at dette er nødvendig for at politiets skal kunne følge opp en rekke nye paragrafer i loven.”

http://www.digi.no/898563/soker-tilflukt-i-nettskyen

”lite tilfredsstillende at straffeloven av 2005 og politiregisterloven av 2011 ikke har trådt i kraft fordi det først må gjennomføres omfattende tilpassing av politiets saksbehandlingssystem”

http://www.digi.no/896562/for-daarlig-ikt-innen-justis-og-politi

“For flere år siden vedtok Stortinget en ny straffelov. I fjor uttalte justisminister Knut Storberget til NRK at den nye loven ville tre i kraft 2012. Men politiets datasystemer har satt en stopper for implementeringen – fagsystemene har rett og slett gått ut på dato. Prislappen blir minst 500 millioner kroner. Flere hundre millioner er allerede brukt på å oppruste it-infrastrukturen.

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article207735.ece

“Politidirektoratet startet derfor i fjor med betydelige investeringer for å modernisere it-infrastrukturen i politiet, noe som uansett må til for å bygge nye applikasjoner – som de nye straffesakssystemene.”

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article209350.ece

“Silseth sier til magasinet Politiforum, som utgis av Politiets Fellesforbund, at serverparken som finnes rundt i politidistriktene er moden for skraphaugen. Politiet bruker det over ti år gamle operativsystemet NT 4.0. Og de som jobber med ikt i politiet har problemer med å skaffe reservedeler og maskinvare som støtter det antikverte systemet. I tillegg er det selvfølgelig et svært begrenset tilbud på programvarefronten.”

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article104487.ece

“Ifølge Computerworld er politiets datasystemer avhengige av operativsystemet Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, et system som ikke lenger utvikles aktivt av Microsoft. Det skal også ha vært problemer med å få antivirus-systemene til å fungere korrekt på de gamle systemene. Windows NT 4.0 kom ut i 1996. Den siste sikkerhetsoppdateringen for systemet ble laget i 2004.”

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article104487.ece

Oktober 2010. VG. Datasystemer utsetter ny straffelov

https://www.politi.no/vedlegg/lokale_vedlegg/pdmt/Vedlegg_916.pdf

OPPDATERT:

“Norgeshistoriens verste terrorist kan ikke dømmes til maksstraff etter terrorparagrafen fordi politiets datasystemer er utdaterte og ikke i stand til å håndtere den nye straffeloven”

http://digital.vgb.no/2011/11/01/velkommen-til-molboland/