Social media platforms have revolutionized how people interact with each other and how people gain information. However, social media platforms such as Twitter quickly became a platform for public manipulation and spreading or amplifying political or ideological misinformation. Although malicious content can be shared by individuals, today millions of coordinated automated clients disguised as individuals exist, also called social bots which have become a significant contributor of the malicious content spread on social media platforms. Therefore, this study aims to investigate in closer look what the requirements are to create a basic social bot from resources available from the internet. A proof-ofconcept prototype is implemented in the form of a social bot on Twitter. The experiences from the work indicate thatthe skills required to create a basic social botare well within reach ofa third-year Bachelor student in the field of computer science. / Sociala medier har revolutionerat människors sätt att integrera med varandra samt hur de delar och hämtar information. Däremot har sociala medier såsom Twitter snabbt blivit en plattform för offentlig manipulation och spridning eller förstärkning av politisk eller ideologisk desinformation. Även om skadligt innehåll kan delas av individer finns det idag miljontals koordinerade automatiserade klienter förklädda som individer, även kallade sociala bottar som har blivit en betydande bidragsgivare till det skadliga innehållet som sprids på sociala medieplattformar. Därför syftar detta arbete på att närmare undersöka vad som krävs för att skapa en grundläggande social bot på en social mediaplattform från resurser tillgängliga från internet. En bevis-på-koncept-prototyp implementeras i form av en social bot på Twitter. Erfarenheterna från arbetet tyder på att de färdigheter som krävs för att skapa en grundläggande social bot ligger väl inom räckhåll för en tredjeårs kandidatstudent inom området datavetenskap.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communication / Curtis Matthews / The objective of this study is to shed light on the interaction between the theory of selective exposure and social identity theory. Both of these theories describe aspects regarding how individuals expose themselves to information. However, the driving question of the study was to investigate the behavior of individuals whom experience cognitive dissonance from an inconsistent political message, but are receiving that message from a member of their perceived in-group. The expectation was that moderating variables, such as strength of identification with an ideology as well as the level of knowledge would impact who would engage in selective exposure and choose to disregard in-group cues, or choose inconsistent messages to stay true to in-group pressures. In a Qualtrics experiment, participants (n=189) were divided into different groups, attitude consistent and attitude inconsistent and were exposed to a series of tweets. Each tweet was politically charged, with the attitude-consistent group presenting consistent messages paired with in-group cues, and in the attitude-inconsistent group presenting a dissonant message was paired with the in-group cue, and visa versa. Two factors revealed themselves to impact results and message choice — knowledge and strength of identification. Results revealed that individuals who had a high level of knowledge chose the consistent message more often than those with low knowledge. The strength of ideology variable influenced differences in both the speed in which they made decisions on which tweet to select, as well as how quickly they identified with an ideology level. This result revealed that those who are strongly identified with an ideology make decisions regarding political messages and ideology faster than those who are weakly identified. The current study contributes to the plethora of literature regarding these two theories and the political science area of study by supporting knowledge as a moderating variable between cognitive dissonance and social identity pressures. It also provides insight into the trends and patterns that can arise when time/speed are utilized as a variable to shed light on group identification differences. The insights with the variables of time, strength of ideology, level of knowledge, could lead to numerous future studies.

De plus en plus, des gens utilisent les sites de réseaux sociaux pour partager du contenu politique ou émettre leurs opinions à ce sujet principalement lors des campagnes électorales. L’objectif principal du mémoire est d’identifier les facteurs qui ont influencé les individus à émettre des commentaires politiques ou à partager du contenu politique par l’intermédiaire du réseau social Twitter lors de la campagne de 2012 au Québec.

Denna studie fokuserar på att klassificera hat-meddelanden riktade mot mobiloperatörerna Verizon,  AT&amp;T and Sprint. Huvudsyftet är att med hjälp av maskininlärningsalgoritmen Support Vector Machines (SVM) klassificera meddelanden i fyra kategorier - Hat, Orsak, Explicit och Övrigt - för att kunna identifiera ett hat-meddelande och dess orsak. Studien resulterade i två metoder: en "naiv" metod (the Naive Method, NM) och en mer "avancerad" metod (the Partial Timeline Method, PTM). NM är en binär metod i den bemärkelsen att den ställer frågan: "Tillhör denna tweet klassen Hat?". PTM ställer samma fråga men till en begränsad mängd av tweets, dvs bara de som ligger inom ± 30 min från publiceringen av hat-tweeten. Sammanfattningsvis indikerade studiens resultat att PTM är noggrannare än NM. Dock tar den inte hänsyn till samtliga tweets på användarens tidslinje. Därför medför valet av metod en avvägning: PTM erbjuder en noggrannare klassificering och NM erbjuder en mer utförlig klassificering. / This study focused on finding the hate tweets posted by the customers of three mobileoperators Verizon, AT&amp;T and Sprint and identifying the reasons for their dissatisfaction. The timelines with a hate tweet were collected and studied for the presence of an explanation. A machine learning approach was employed using four categories: Hate, Reason, Explanatory and Other. The classication was conducted with one-versus-all approach using Support Vector Machines algorithm implemented in a LIBSVM tool. The study resulted in two methodologies: the Naive method (NM) and the Partial Time-line Method (PTM). The Naive Method relied only on the feature space consisting of the most representative words chosen with Akaike Information Criterion. PTM utilized the fact that the majority of the explanations were posted within a one-hour time window of the posting of a hate tweet. We found that the accuracy of PTM is higher than for NM. In addition, PTM saves time and memory by analysing fewer tweets. At the same time this implies a trade-off between relevance and completeness. / <p>Opponent: Kristina Wettainen</p>

The innovation ecosystem’s online presence continues to grow with the emergence and maturation of ICT-based platforms. With these new channels, a diversity of actors, including firms, scientists, universities, media entities, and individuals, interact to satisfy their information needs and to access and mobilize network-based resources. This research is among a growing number of social science studies examining the advent of social media and its influence on the innovation process, asking, “How do different types of actors use social media to form network linkages, and what kinds of innovative outcomes will result?” To study this complex network activity, I turn to Twitter, the popular microblogging service, and focus on the case of graphene, a novel nanotechnology material consisting of a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms. Twitter is one of the world’s most often-used social networks, boasting over 500 million users (200+ million active). Graphene, on the other hand, is a relatively well-bounded area of scientific inquiry with ongoing, concurrent scientific and commercialization activity. The primary sample dataset derives from 34 graphene firms’ friend and followers relationships captured in early 2014. Nine interview transcripts supply qualitative data. The results show that network formation on Twitter is not random and that certain actor relationships predict following linkages. A series of network visualizations show that users agglomerate in communities; these communities exhibit greater density than the larger ecosystem network and a propensity to congeal in topically focused ways. That is, each community indicates a coherent topical focus, suggesting that graphene firms follow specific sets of users in ways that support their information and resource needs. At the micro-level, an unstructured text mining approach to operationalizing and computing information distance shows that increasing amounts of topical distance between any two users decreases the likelihood of a tie existing. Are innovation outcomes more likely to occur in strategically-developed and information-rich social media networks? Drawing on different sources of “behavioral additionality” – or changes in behaviors as a result of social media participation – I identify ex-ante several such plausible outcomes, which could include increased awareness, improved problem solving ability, community development, and greater sales. The qualitative results show that social media participation results in increased awareness of graphene and related ecosystem topics, but engagement is a key tactical maneuver that actors pursue, often in varying ways, to access and mobilize other resources. Policy implications are targeted at intermediary institutions and scientists, while management implications focus on high-technology SMEs. Limitations include alternative theories to explaining social media participation and engagement, methodological issues, and the continuing evolution of social media platforms and usage patterns. Future work is considered to address the temporal nature of network construction and topical growth (or constriction), as well as the ability to map areas of science and technology through social media data.

Social media, even though a new phenomenon, has gained much interest in the last decade and has been a frequent topic of researchers. Sport marketing has also been a popular topic in academia, especially in North America. This thesis will address the use of social media in Nordic ice hockey clubs, including the exploration of their social media strategies and effectiveness. Previous research has not concentrated on ice hockey in Europe, nor has it examined their social media strategies. The study is seen to be necessary, especially given the large differences in the European and North American sport cultures and business models. The research was conducted through a qualitative multiple-case study by gathering data from both secondary sources as well as through semi-structured face-to-face interviews carried out with ten ice hockey clubs from both Sweden and Finland. The questions of the interviews were formed by the concepts derived from previous literature and the authors’ own experience. The results indicate that Nordic ice hockey clubs are still partly struggling with their social media strategies and that with the implementation of a clear strategy, including segmentation, the clubs would be able to take advantage of the relationship marketing and branding possibilities offered by social media. In line with this, the authors argue that the social media strategies of ice hockey clubs are not as effective as they could be and suggest further actions for managers to achieve higher social media effectiveness.

Abstract This master thesis examines the development of the Islamic discourse on Internet, by a research of the two Islamic expressions ummah and Islamic state. As a platform for the research is a discussion about 9/11 used, in which Giovanna Borradori interviews Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida about terrorism in the modern time. The research has been made in two steps, the first research is made in December 2005 and the second in February 2015. In the first research is the examined words study in BBS’s and blogs, and in the second case is same expressions examined in Twitter. As analyse method is Hans- - George Gadamers displacement of perspective used, to understand the movements in the discourse and the development of Islamic use of Internet. Manuel Castells thoughts about the network society and his work about the power of communication are used as a theorem to understand the Internet and its development in the last decades. The conclusion of this work is pointing at a progression in the use of Internet as a tool for communication in the Islamic community, and a displacement of perspective from western society as the primary enemy, through an internal religious movement to a more diversified conflict among different Islamic groups. Keywords: Internet, E-jihadism,, network society, Islamic, ummah, Islamic state, Twitter, blogs, BBS’s, mediated history, modern history

People have organized around gender equality in modern America for the last century. However, with the advent of new technology, people largely organize in around social movements in online spaces. This thesis explores the ways in which new media expands a popular understanding of the Feminist movement.

This paper seeks to understand how the micro-blogging tool, Twitter, can be used effectively by marketers and advertisers by incorporating the attributes of information quality, information usefulness and source credibility into their tweets. Case analyses of five of the most popular Twitter accounts were conducted with regards to the appearance of each account and the content of their tweets. Recommendations for improving the quality of each Twitter account were also provided. / text

This paper provides insights on how five different frames of the Edward Snowden issue (Hero, Patriot, Traitor, Whistleblower, Dissident) have been diffused on the Twitter platform. This study uses NodeXL to collect, analyze and visualize all the tweets including the keyword “Edward Snowden” from February 17 to April 10, 2014 to examine the flow of information and the interaction between opinion leaders along with the characteristics of opinion leaders in this specific issue. Findings provide insight about future strategic communication for general branding and public image maintenance. / text