The “Climategate” controversy lead to higher criticism and awareness about climate change scepticism and climate change denial. The project looks at what the local twitter contexts of climate change could tell us about the cultural contexts and understanding of climate change. The mass or major news media seem to dominate the discussion on Germany. There are also more ironic and local statements in Germany. In Japan we find a strong anti-nuclear sentiment and climate change acknowledgement. A sentiment analysis of the term “Klimawandel” showed that Japanese tweets are richer in content.
Maurice Vergeer: The real and the virtual. How societal, political and media events leave traces in Twitter streams during an election campaigning.
Based on the theory of agenda setting (salience, attention and prominence), the project looks at the TV, newspaper and Twitter agendas (intermedia agendas). The political landscape in the Netherlands consisted of 20 parties for the investigated campaign. 10 parties are already in parliament, where there is always a coalition. Looking at visibility of parties in different media, it is shown that the closer election date is coming, the more parties are on TV. Also small parties get attention on TV. In newspaper, we find less equalisation but more mobilisation. Agenda setting seems to apply to political party visibility on diferent media platforms. It is suggested that traditional mass media is still a major source of information for people. However, content would have to include more political issues and go beyond party visibility.
Egypt is ranked 80 in 2014 in the e-government ranking. The presentation went over the reasons for e-voting and addressed success factors for the implementation in egypt. Two main factors are IT literacy and technical quality. A survey analysing those factors found that e-voting implementation is correlated to leadership and trust in government, but not significantly related to factors like trust in government. The study found that trusted leadership is one of the most important factors that will positively influence e-voting system implementation. Corresponding strategies for governments were recommended.
Like everywhere else, we can observe the rise of the smartphone in Korea, and smartphones have been studied in relation to civic engagement and movements, and their role has been seen controversial. A survey research was conducted in December 2014 in the context oft he Terminal Act, which was opposed by civic organisations. Those demanded the revision of the Act, because the original plan was discarded due to Samsung’s lobby. (#Dantongbup – The Terminal Act – trended on Twitter from September 2014). as of January 20, 12.8% have Twitter accounts, and those users mostly live in the Seoul and Busan metro area. The civic engagement surrounding the Act suggests that consumers as citizens posess potential power, but citizens do not always use their power.
As a country-singled solution is not appropriate for climate issues, analyzing the international environmental regime is important. The network and retweet network of NGO’s who participated in COP21 was analyzed. There were 71 accounts in Germany, 16 in Japan, and 9 in Korea. After COP21 there is a bigger network, also in terms of centralization and nodes there were differences.
The purpose of the study was to explore the online perception of government image. Public perception will shape image and reputation on public organizations. The typology model offers alternative ways to assess government image. There are 4 types of local government images that have been identified as an alternative framework. Further research is needed to determine the role of YouTub in shaping local government image.
Does social enterprise reach its final development? The project analyzed the social economy network based on Facebook group network. Famous activists in the social enterprise are were identiefied. People participated in the network to get information, especially how to establish social organisations.