Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its millions of users to send and read each other's "tweets," or short, 140-character messages. The service has more than ...190 million registered users and processes about 55 million tweets per day. Useful information about news and geopolitical events lies embedded in the Twitter stream, which embodies, in the aggregate, Twitter users' perspectives and reactions to current events. By virtue of sheer volume, content embedded in the Twitter stream may be useful for tracking or even forecasting behavior if it can be extracted in an efficient manner. In this study, we examine the use of information embedded in the Twitter stream to (1) track rapidly-evolving public sentiment with respect to H1N1 or swine flu, and (2) track and measure actual disease activity. We also show that Twitter can be used as a measure of public interest or concern about health-related events. Our results show that estimates of influenza-like illness derived from Twitter chatter accurately track reported disease levels.
Prenons la Ville Henaway, Mostafa; Prince, Jason; Shragge, Eric
Social policy,
12/2021, Letnik:
51, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Regardless of who wins elections in Montreal, the underlying tensions (for example, between pro-growth developers, car-oriented culture, and the majority of people who need decent, affordable housing ...and solutions to the climate crisis) will remain and will continue to be contested.There was a lot at stake in the recent election, including the repositioning of Montreal post-pandemic. The municipal administration that was elected in November 2021 will be crucial not only for the future of the city but also for the planet.
We combine deed-level data on homeownership with administrative data on voter turnout in local and national elections for more than 18 million individuals in Ohio and North Carolina. Using a ...difference-in-differences design, we find that buying a home leads individuals to participate substantially more in local elections, on average. We also collect data on local ballot initiatives, and we find that the homeowner turnout boost is almost twice as large in times and places where zoning issues are on the ballot. In addition, the effect of homeownership increases with the price of the home purchase, suggesting that asset investment may be an important mechanism for the participatory effects. Overall, the results suggest that individual economic circumstances importantly influence political beliefs and behavior and suggest that homeowners have special influence in American politics in part because their ownership motivates them to pay attention and participate.
In unserer aktuellen Ausgabe der Politischen Studien dreht sich alles um die Kommunalwahl 2020: Am 15. März werden fast 40.000 kommunale Mandatsträger gewählt. In 2.056 bayerischen Gemeinden und 71 ...Landkreisen werden Gemeinde- und Stadtrat sowie der Kreistag mit ihrem jeweiligen Oberhaupt neu zusammengesetzt. Die Kommunen bilden die Basis aller politischen Ebenen, hier haben die vom Bürger direkt gewählten Mandatsträger den größten Einfluss auf Vorhaben direkt vor ihrer Haustüre.
La personalización de la política es vista frecuentemente como un peligro para las instituciones políticas democráticas. Este artículo plantea una visión alternativa, partiendo del análisis de un ...caso: la campaña electoral en Comonfort, uno de los municipios rurales en Guanajuato, México. Inicia con la revisión del marco conceptual sobre la personalización de la política, para presentar después el contexto histórico y actual de México, mismo que explica el temor a la personalización como estrategia propia de líderes autoritarios. Después, aplicando el enfoque fenomenológico, analiza el caso de la campaña de Alberto Méndez, un candidato independiente a la presidencia municipal, demostrando que la personalización puede tener impacto positivo en las instituciones democráticas, reconstruyendo la confianza en las instituciones y el compromiso ciudadano con la política.
Drug trade-related violence has escalated dramatically in Mexico since 2007, and recent years have also witnessed large-scale efforts to combat trafficking, spearheaded by Mexico's conservative PAN ...party. This study examines the direct and spillover effects of Mexican policy toward the drug trade. Regression discontinuity estimates show that drug-related violence increases substantially after close elections of PAN mayors. Empirical evidence suggests that the violence reflects rival traffickers' attempts to usurp territories after crackdowns have weakened incumbent criminals. Moreover, the study uses a network model of trafficking routes to show that PAN victories divert drug traffic, increasing violence along alternative drug routes.
I exploit a reform that required Italian municipalities to disclose their balance sheets before elections to study whether having more informed voters affects the political budget cycle. Municipal ...investment in the year before elections is 28.5% higher than in electoral years, and the reform reduced this pre-electoral spending increase by one third. I then study the role of local newspapers in disseminating municipal financial information to voters and find that the effect of the reform is twice as large in areas with relatively many newspaper readers, suggesting that mayors react to more informed voters by reducing spending manipulation.
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