Diploma in Information and Communication Systems Engineering of the University of the Aegean
MSc in Technologies and Management of Information and Communication Systems Engineering of the University of the Aegean
Topic Modeling, Sentiment Analysis, Stance Classification, Policy Making
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to develop and evaluate, in “real-life” pilot applications, a framework for
advanced social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy-making processes to
promote public participation and conduct crowdsourcing.
Design/methodology/approach – This framework has been developed through cooperation with
public sector employees experienced in public policy-making, using both qualitative and
quantitative techniques: semi-structured focus group discussions, scenarios development and
questionnaire surveys. The evaluation of the framework has been conducted through
semi-structured focus group discussions with public sector employees involved in the pilot
applications.
Findings – A framework has been developed for advanced social media exploitation by
government agencies, which is based on the automated posting of policy-related content to multiple
social media, and then retrieval and processing of citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes,
comments and retweets), using the application programming interfaces (API) of these social media.
Furthermore, a supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure and
an application process model for it were developed. Its evaluation, based on “real-life” pilot
applications, leads to useful insights concerning its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.
Research limitations/implications – The proposed framework has been evaluated in a small
number of pilot applications, so further evaluation of it is required, in various types of government
agencies and for different kinds of policy consultations.
Practical/Implications – The above framework enables government agencies to communicate
with wider and more heterogeneous audiences in a short time and at a low cost, increase public
participation in their policy-making processes, collect useful knowledge, ideas and opinions from
citizens and, finally, design better, more socially rooted, balanced and realistic policies.
Originality/value – This research contributes to the development of knowledge concerning
advanced practices for effective social media exploitation in government (which is currently
limited, despite the considerable relevant knowledge developed in this area for the private sector),
by developing and evaluating a framework for advanced and highly automated exploitation of
multiple social media by government agencies. Furthermore, an evaluation methodology for such
practices has been developed, which is based on sound theoretical foundations.
Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
Abstract
Since 2009, the European Union (EU) is phasing a multi–year financial crisis affecting the stability of its involved countries. Our goal is to gain useful insights on the societal impact of such a strong political issue through the exploitation of topic modeling and stance classification techniques. \ \ To perform this, we unravel public’s stance towards this event and empower citizens’ participation in the decision making process, taking policy’s life cycle as a baseline. The paper introduces and evaluates a bilingual stance classification architecture, enabling a deeper understanding of how citizens’ sentiment polarity changes based on the critical political decisions taken among European countries. \ \ Through three novel empirical studies, we aim to explore and answer whether stance classification can be used to: i) determine citizens’ sentiment polarity for a series of political events by observing the diversity of opinion among European citizens, ii) predict political decisions outcome made by citizens such as a referendum call, ii) examine whether citizens’ sentiments agree with governmental decisions during each stage of a policy life cycle.
Abstract
The Web 2.0 social media have been initially exploited by private sector firms, in order to support mainly their marketing and customer relations functions, and there has been considerable research for developing frameworks and practices for the effective utilization of these new communication media in the private sector. Government started exploiting the high capabilities and popularity of the social media much later, so there has been much less research concerning their effective utilization by government agencies. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, presenting a novel framework for the effective utilization of the Web 2.0 social media by government agencies for promoting participative governance and applying crowdsourcing ideas. It is based on the centralised automated publishing of content and micro-applications to multiple Web 2.0 social media, and then collection of citizens’ interactions (e.g. comments, ratings) with them, based on central platform that uses efficiently the application programming interfaces (APIs) of these social media. Finally, citizens’ interactions are processed in this central platform using a variety of techniques (web analytics, opinion mining, simulation modelling) in order to provide finally useful analytics that offer substantial support to government decision and policy makers. Furthermore, an application and an evaluation model for the proposed framework are described, as well as an extension of it that combines active/moderated and passive/non-moderated crowdsourcing.
Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.