Protests in Spain and Twitter's influence. Workshop of Oxford Internet Institute researcher in LINIS

Can social networks encourage people to come out to the streets? Today, many researchers are trying to find the answer this question, including Sandra Gonzales-Beylon, who has came with a workshop to The Internet Studies Lab (LINIS).

Can social networks encourage people to come out to the streets? Today, many researchers are trying to find the answer this question, including Sandra Gonzales-Beylon, who has came with a workshop to The Internet Studies Lab (LINIS).

Sandra Gonzales-Beylon

Sandra Gonzalez-Beylon, a researcher at Oxford Internet Institute, has presented her research ‘Broadcasters and Hidden Influentials in Online Protest Diffusion’, which showed how we can observe the development of dissent on the basis of Twitter. In particular, they discussed the protests in Spain in May 2012.

The result showed that the number of tweets about the protests grew after the disgruntled citizens came out to the streets, not before the protest. Researchers also identified several types of users, analyzing 10 million twitter accounts: users are often divided into those who tweet at the begining of the conflict, but then they stops soon, and those who join the debate in the midle of the conflict. This suggests that the second type became involved under the influence of their environment, more likely.

Sandra Gonzalez-Beylon was helped by physics from the University of Zaragoza to carry out this study. Dynamic map circulating tweets about the protests between the cities of Spain, modeled this University, can be found here.

LINIS also presented its own research at the seminar: the study of public opinion in the Live Journal and themed modeling posts LJ. The lab also agreed to cooperate with Sandra Gonzalez.