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Studying Social Science Using E Tools
1. Studying Social Science using e-Tools: Cases of South Korea & Taiwan Chien-leng Hsu WCU Webometrics Institute YeungNam University
2. About this presentation E-research Development in Social Science Research examples WCU Webometrics Institute Case 1: Network of politicians in Taiwan Case 2: Network of MPs in South Korea
3. What is E-Research? A minor but growing approach The use of new digital tools E-research in Social Science development of online tools to automate the research process Experimentation with new types of data visualisation
13. Development in Social science (2/2) Examples Opinions of activists Sample of a few thousand interviews ↪millions of political opinions every day in blogosphere Social contacts Asking respondents to recall names over past years ↪ emails, SMSs, social media connections, etc Progress in the new data-rich world Large-scale, interdisciplinary research Computer-assisted & quantitative New statistical methods & engineering required
14. New Types of data (examples) Unstructured text: emails, web pages Geographic location: mobiles Social media: facebook, twitter, virtual worlds Web surfing artifacts: clicks, searches Government data: electronic data Scholarly data
15. Research Areas (examples) Semantic context Modern text mining approaches to ancient texts E-linguistics Data management/digital archive Visualisation of dialectology Digital arts & humanities
16. WCU Webometrics institute Project Investigating Internet-based Politics with E-Research Tools Objects To identify, track & analyse the effectiveness of networked political campaigns across a range of web platforms in Korea To develop software tool Major areas Semantic Networks on Political Webosphere Cyworld Twitter Korean Internet Network Miner (tool) Website http://english-webometrics.yu.ac.kr/
18. Brief background information Progressive groups use more alternative media Political struggle between two political camps Conservative: pro-unification with China (Leader: KMT) Progressive: pro-independence (Leader: DPP) Approx 80% of mainstream media is biasd toward the conservatives Research targets: Politicians Plurk Microblogging sites: a mini form of traditional blogs. Microblogging allows users to send brief messages
19. What is Plurk A popular microblogging site in Taiwan No. of Taiwanese user - 249,441 (July 2009) 25K 10K 10K 5K 03/09
24. Exception: Hsieh & Su Su Hsieh Profile views Number of friends Number of fans
25. Discussions Hsieh & Su: Candidates for the presidential election 2008 Progressive politicians use Plurk Express their opinion Cultivate new constituencies Link to opinion leaders of Taiwanese grassroot groups The ‘rich get richer’ phenomenon Plurkers that are the target of many visitors are disproportionately likely to be targeted by any new visitors
27. Web 1.0, Web 2.0 &Twitter Research purpose: To investigate structural changes in hyperlink networks from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 in South Korean Politics Units of analysis: Congress members of South Korea Year of observations: Web 1.0: homepage, 2000 & 2001 Web 2.0: blogs, 2005 & 2006 Twitter: 2009
28. Blue: GNP: Conservative: Opposition Red: MDP: Liberal: Ruling Web 1.0: Homepage 2000 vs 2001 Star networks without any isolation
32. Web 1.0, Web 2.0 & Twitter Web 1.0: Hub, but sparse network Web 2.0: Hub disappearing, but becoming dense Twitter: similar to Web 2.0 structure, and denser More to work (example): To compare top 10 politicians ego-networks and investigate how they change
33. Conclusions Previous research: Results from web data are informative The Web reflects situations in the physical world The validity of the results need to be supported by various qualitative studies Further research: Previous study areas are still ongoing Cyber emotions: online image content analysis of web 2.0 politics
34. Thank you Acknowledgments WCU Webometrics Institute acknowledges that this research is supported from the WCU project - investigating internet-based politics using e-research tools granted from South Korean Government