A critique of the Economist's "#AfricaTweets" story

The latest edition of the Economist contains an article titled “#AfricaTweets.” The piece contains a striking map that visualizes the “number of tweets” per country in the “top 20 African countries.”

The only problem is that the article doesn’t do what it promises. 

My problem with the Economist’s article isn’t their whimsical (and quite funny) commentary on the use of Twitter in Africa (e.g. they quote @MorganTsvangirai “******* **** ******* ****** ******** ****** ** ******* #ZimPolitics” and @Bono” Africans tweeting each other, not me, about news, not me #sadface”).

The issue is that the Economist makes no attempt whatsoever at qualifying the limitations of these data. 

For instance, the article begins with the statement that “Twenty countries sent over 11m tweets in the last quarter of 2011.” I believe this to be a vast underestimation of the amount of information pushed through the platform in Africa. 

Looking at the source document for the Economist’s data (something they neglect to link to), we see that the data naturally contain only geo-located Tweets (something they neglect to mention). This is important because only a very small proportion of tweets tend to contain any geodata. In June 2011, my team and I collected 19.6 billion tweets using the statuses/sample stream with spritzer access (this was a 19 day sample collecting both geocoded and non-geocoded tweets globally), and we found that only 0.7% of tweets contained geographic coordinates.

Original map created by Portland Communications above

This matters because it is conceivable that people in some countries are more likely to geolocate their tweets than others due to either social norms or access to the requisite devices (such as smartphones). In other words, by looking at geocoded tweets we're only seeing a tiny fraction of the content that passes through the platform.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t other ways to geolocate information on Twitter. In a recent paper, Scott Hale, Devin Gaffney and I recently analysed whether locations in user profiles (descriptions such as “Oxford, UK” or “Barad-dûr, Mordor, Middle Earth” that can be grabbed from the vast majority of tweets) can be used as a proxy for (much rarer) geocoded content. It turns out that profile information isn’t a great substitute for actual latitude and longitude coordinates.

Time zone settings are another approach to figuring out where information comes from, but our research shows that many users (especially within Africa) don’t seem to set their time zone.

Furthermore, there is no attempt to account for prolific users in these samples. Looking at the Economist’s map (and even the source document) doesn’t tell us if Gabon is in the top-20 list because a lot of people use the service in that country, or a small number of Twitter addicts all have their smartphone GPS buttons turned on. Knowing the answer to this question fundamentally changes how we should interpret the map. 

None of this means that the original maps produced by Portland Communications are fundamentally flawed. Geocoded tweets are both insightful and useful. It just shows that there are crucially important details to be aware of whenever analysing Twitter data (I won’t even get started on the different types of sampling methods in this post).  

Hundreds of millions of short messages are passed through Twitter every day, and this content has been used by researchers from fields as diverse as epidemiology, politics, marketing and geography to better understand, map and measure large-scale social, economic, and political trends and patterns. However, much of this analysis is carried out with only limited understandings of how best to work with the spatial and linguistic contexts in which that information was produced. 

Maps are powerful tools: they influence how we understand, enact, produce, and re-produce our world. This means that cartographers bear a significant amount of public responsibility. 

And any geographer will tell you that no map is true representation of anything. With the advent of easy-to-access Internet-based data, we therefore need to more than ever constantly ask critical questions about how online data are collected, analysed, and presented.

دعوة للمشاركة في ورشة عمل بخصوص ويكيبيديا



تسرنا دعوتكم لورشة عمل بخصوص ويكيبيديا لمدة يومين و تضم ثلة من الباحثين و ممثلي مؤسسة وكيميديا، نتبادل خلالها الأفكار و الخبرات حول ويكيبيديا بمشاركة خبراء و منتجين و مهتمين بشأن ويكيبيديا.
الغاية من هذه الورشة هي تبادل الآراء و فهم أهم العقبات و الحواجز التي تحول دون المشاركة في تطوير ويكيبيديا العربية.

للمشاركة يجب ان تتقن اللغة العربية أو الإنجليزية كما يجب أن تتوفر لديك أحد الشروط التالية:

أن تكون :

محررا لويكيبيديا العربية ،
محررا لويكيبيديا (أي لغة من اللغات) و تكتب مقالات حول الشرق الأوسط.
مترجما لمقالات بأي من اللغات التالية: العربية الفصحى، العربية باللهجة المصرية، الإنجليزية، الفرنسية، العبرية و الفارسية.
راغبا في المساهمة الفعالة بخصوص تطوير ويكيبيديا عربي.
عازما على تبادل أفكارك مع الحضور من خلال تقديم محاضرة بخصوص المواضيع التي من ضمنها

الصراع و التهميش على ويكيبيديا.

الحواجز التي تحول دون المشاركة في تطوير ويكيبيديا عربي.

استراتيجيات و أدوات التحايل على المشاركة في ويكيبيديا عربي.

منضمو الورشة:
الدكتور مارك قراهام، معهد الأنترنت بأكسفورد-المملكة المتحدة.
الدكتور برني هوقان، معهد الأنترنت بأكسفورد-المملكة المتحدة.
الدكتورة الهام العلاقي، الجامعة الأمريكية بالشارقة- الإمارات العربية المتحدة.

مكان الورشة: معهد الإعلام بالأردن - عمان.

تاريخ الورشة: 11 و 12 أبريل/ نيسان 2012.
يجدر العلم بتوفر منح المشاركة لدعم مصاريف السفر و الإقامة بمكان الورشة بعمان الأردن (حسب الحالات). كما يجدر التنويه بأن الأماكن محدودة، وعلى الراغبين في المشاركة أن يرسلوا طلب (صفحة واحدة) في أقرب وقت ممكن و قبل 10 مارس/ آذار 2012 يتضمن عرضا توضيحيا بخصوص مساهمتكم في اثراء ورشة العمل حسب ما تقدم ذكره.
للمزيد من المعلومات و التسجيل يرجى الاتصال بالدكتورة إلهام العلاقي عن طريق البريد الإلكتروني ilhemallagui@hotmail.com

Open invitation to a workshop in Amman: Middle Eastern Participation and Presence in Wikipedia

Your voice matters. Come and share your experience and opinions about Wikipedia with other Wikipedians, wiki producers, researchers, and representatives from the Wikimedia Foundation during a two-day workshop.

The goal of the workshop is to talk about and understand the most significant barriers to participation in Wikipedia in the Middle East and North Africa. As such, we would love to hear from you if you meet any of the following criteria:

• A Wikipedian who edits Arabic Wikipedia
• A Wikipedian who edits Wikipedia (in any languages) on articles about the Middle East
• Someone who translates articles between any of the following language versions in Wikipedia: Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Persian.
• Someone who is eager to get more involved with the project, and would like to meet people with similar ambitions.
• Someone that would like to give a short talk or presentation to other Wikipedians from the region (e.g. about conflict or marginalization, barriers to participation, and circumvention strategies and tools).

The workshop will have limited space available, so we ask everyone to submit a one page letter detailing why your participation will benefit Wikipedia, the goals of the workshop, and your personal development as a contributor to Wikipedia. 

Sessions and conversations will be held simultaneously in Arabic and English, and you will only need to be fluent in one of these languages to participate. 

In order to facilitate participation, we have a small number of scholarships available that will support travel to (and in some cases accommodation in) Amman.

Please email Dr. Ilhem Allagui at ilhemallagui@hotmail.com and express your interest in joining this workshop. Please discuss your experience and how involved are you with Arabic Wikipedia, you may be eligible to a travel grant to attend this workshop. 

Workshop location: Jordan Media Institute- Amman, Jordan

Workshop dates: April 11-12, 2012

More information about this project at: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=70

Workshop organisers:

Mark Graham (University of Oxford)

Bernie Hogan (University of Oxford)

Ilhem Allagui (American University of Sharjah)

A flyer that you disseminate to interested parties is available here. And a version in Arabic is here.

New paper published: "Perish or Globalize"

The latest issue of ACME: Journal of Critical Geographies contains a piece that I wrote about the Internet in the Thai silk industry.

The title, abstract, and a link to the piece are below:

“Perish or Globalize:” Network Integration and the Reproduction and Replacement of Weaving Traditions in the Thai Silk Industry 

The practice of handmade silk weaving has disappeared from much of the world, but continues to be practiced by thousands of people in Northeastern Thailand. However, as the Thai economy becomes increasingly embedded into global flows and networks of commodities, capital and culture, there are worries that silk weaving as a practice will either cease to be reproduced or will have to radically change in order to service the global market. This paper, based on in-depth interviews and surveys with sellers of silk, examines this dilemma faced by the industry. It finds that the means through which economic information is codified and transmitted over space and the tastes of non-local markets are ultimately resulting in changes to production practices throughout the country. Despite the fact that the internet is enabling trade and thereby allowing production practices to continue, fears are being realized about traditional practices being replaced as producers become ever more integrated into global networks. 

.......

And a few more photos that I took during fieldwork in Isaan:

Oxford seminar series: Media and Governance in Developing Countries: Networks of Power and Strategic Narratives

My friend Iginio Gagliardone is organising a seminar series on media and governance in developing countries. The talks look great, and I'd encourage anyone in the area to come along.

Wednesdays – 17:00-18:30 – Seminar Room D – Social Science Building – Manor Road, Oxford 

This seminar series explores the role the media play as political actors in developing countries and fragile states. It gathers scholars from a variety of disciplines to examine how old and new media are used to support different political agenda: from foreign countries trying to win the hearts and minds of a local population to local governments aiming at increasing their ability to communicate with, but also exercise control over, their citizens. Particular attention will be paid to understanding how flows of information can be mapped in contexts characterized by an increasing media density, resulting from the liberalization of the airwaves, the diffusion of mobile phones and new media, and the persistence of traditional modes of communication. 

The seminar series is part of a year-long programme of events organized by the Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CGHR) at the University of Cambridge, the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Politics (PCMLP), Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, at the University of Oxford and the Justice and Security Research Programme (JSRP) at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Week 2 

Wed 25 January

The Use of ICTs for Political Mobilization and Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Round Table: Dr Sharath Srinivasan, Dr Florence Brisset-Foucault, University of Cambridge, Dr Iginio Gagliardone, University of Oxford

Week 3 

Wed 1 February 

The eParticipation Ecology of Kenya

Dr Vincenzo Cavallo, Cultural Video Foundation, Nairobi

Week 4

Wed 8 February

The Conditions of Strategic Narrative Effectiveness: Infrastructure, Intention, Experience

Dr Ben O’Loughlin, Royal Holloway, University of London

Week 5

Wed 15 February 

China's International Outreach: Soft Power and the Soft Use of Power

Professor Gary Rawnsley, University of Leeds

Week 6

Wed 22 February 

Broadcasting the State: Tribe, Citizenship and the Politics of Radio Drama in Afghanistan  

Professor Marie Gillespie, Open University

Week 7

Wed 29 February

An Anthropological Analysis of the Use of the Media for Political Mobilization

Dr John Postill, Sheffield Hallam University

All are welcome, please email iginio.gagliardone@csls.ox.ac.uk for further information

Mapping Wikipedia Article Quality in the Middle East

"Knowledge is a public good and increases in value as the number of people possessing it increases" - John Wilbanks

Few would disagree with the above quote, but a key issue is that the production of knowledge is far from evenly distributed. The maps below visualise article length of Wikipedia articles (in English) about the Middle East. The first graphic shows a few unexpected patterns. 

First, we actually don't see that many articles created about the region - compared to content created about many other parts of the planet. 

Also noticeable is the fact that we see a thick layer of information that has been created over most of Azerbaijan. As mentioned in a post that I wrote a few weeks ago, Azerbaijan has the lowest average word count per article out of any country in the world (159 words per article). This is most likely the case because of both the thousands of stubs that have been created in the country (i.e. articles containing little or no content) and the fact that there are only very few articles containing a lot of text in the country.

Looking at non-stubs, we see clusters of content in many of the large cities on the Persian Gulf (e.g. Kuwait City, Manama, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai) and an even bigger cluster of articles over Sana'a in Yemen. A series of relatively long articles about places in Iraq are also noticeable along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

But maybe the most visible cluster of user-generated information sits over Israel and the Palestinian Territories in the far-western side of the map. There are significantly more high-quality (i.e. long) articles about that area than the rest of the region. 

The cluster of information over Israel and the Palestinian Territories can be even more clearly seen in the map above. Amazingly, content about Cairo - the Middle East's largest city - is barely noticeable compared to the glowing dots that represent information that has been created about the land between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.

Wikipedia Article Quality in Africa

Out of all of the parts of the world in which we've looked at the geographies of Wikipedia articles, it is Africa that is characterised by some of the most interesting patterns. 

The most obvious fact is that there is simply a lack of information about much of the continent. The glow of content in Southern Europe at the top of the map stands in stark contrast the absence of any information about most parts of Africa.  

Regional differences are then apparent in Africa. Articles within Madagascar and Ethiopia tend to be quite long; whereas those about Tanzania and Algeria are on average much shorter.  

The reasons for these differences are unclear. It is doubtful that features, places and events in Ethiopia in need of more detailed description than those in South Africa or  Ghana. I'm also not convinced that Ugandans or the Malagasy are more verbose than Tanzanians and Kenyans.

How are these regional differences then be explained? It is likely that (as we've seen before), regional patterns can largely be explained by a few diligent editors that have an interest in describing certain parts of the world. 

But how do we move towards encouraging participation from and about the parts of the continent that are left out of these virtual representations? Visualising the presences and absences of information and knowledge is obviously the first step: allowing people to see what is, and isn't, represented. 

After that, there is also a clear need for plans like Wikimedia's new collaboration with the Qatar Foundation in order to put into place concrete policies and strategies that will boost content. Our team is also beginning a similar initiative that will start with two workshops in April 2012 (in Cairo and Amman). The workshops will bring together local Wikipedians and allow us to understand the most significant barriers contributors face to creating content about their cities, regions and countries. I'll post more details about the workshops on this blog as we begin to finalise our schedules and strategies. 

Wikipedia Article Quality in East Asia

The map below visualises the article length of every English-language Wikipedia article in Japan, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and eastern China. 

It is Japan that really stands out on this map. The country glows with content in contrast to its neighbours which have much sparser layers of information defining them. The yellow dots in linear patterns that crisscross the country suggest that some diligent editors have been creating a lots of short articles about the entirety of the Japanese railway system (e.g. the list of every station in the country). 

Even ignoring the prominence of information about the Japanese rail system on the map, you can see that the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan region is represented by a thick cloud of information that is much broader than the equivalent layers of articles about Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Some of this can be explained because Tokyo is a larger city, but it also remains that there is simply more information created about Japan than any other country in the region. 

As always, more maps soon...

Hilary Term "Society and the Internet" lecture series (open to the public)

I am happy to be hosting the next batch of talks in the Oxford Internet Institute's "Society and the Internet" lecture series. The series of lectures run every Tuesday afternoon at 4pm and bring together the most important and ground-breaking scholarship produced by OII faculty, visitors and associates.

Anyone is welcome to attend. Please just click on the individual links below for abstracts and sign-up details.

Hilary 2012

17^th Jan: Laura Mann: "Information Technologies and Marginalization in African Market Economies"
24^th Jan: Grant Blank and William Dutton: "Next Generation Internet Users: Digital Divides, Choices, and Inequalities"

31^st Jan: Bernie Hogan: "Online Social Networks and Everyday Life"

7^th Feb: Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon: "Online Networks and Bottom-Up Politics"

14^th Feb: Greg Taylor: "The Attention Economy and the Economics of Search"

21^st Feb: Eric Meyer and Ralph Schroeder: "New Threads in the Global Web of Knowledge"

28^th Feb: Yorick Wilks: "The Internet, Web, and Beyond"

6^th Mar: Miriyam Aoragh: "Constructing Identity: Palestine Online"

Technology as an Agent of Economic and Social Change in Africa? Connecting Historical and Contemporary Debates (call for participation)

Call for participation

CAS@50 : Cutting Edges and Retrospectives, 
Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh
6th June 2012 09:00 – 8th June 2012

This panel aims to address some of the ahistoricity of the Information and Communication Technologies for Development field (ICT4D). It does so by focusing on experienced, enacted, and imagined changes in African economic relationships and positionalities due to technologies of connectivity in a contemporary and historical perspective.

ICT4D is a term used to denote a collection of activities that have framed electronic technologies as being useful for socio-economic development. Such technologies (and technologically mediated practices) may incorporate computers, mobile phones and the Internet, and may be used for a variety of developmental ends including health, education and economic activities. Much of the ICT4D literature tends to depict these technologies as ‘revolutionary’ and frames the changes that they engender as unique to our current age. This outlook neglects the longer history of the notion that economies in Africa can be ‘revolutionised’ through technologies – ideas which have been seminal both to the ‘civilising missions’ of the European colonial empires and in the development programmes of colonial and post-colonial states.

This dialogue between historical and contemporary perspectives has a number of approaches and theories to draw upon, including among others Kapil Raj’s ideas about ‘Relocating Modern Science’, Helen Tilley’s notion of ‘Africa as a Living Laboratory’, David Edgerton’s use orientated approach to technological development and Timothy Mitchell’s contributions to post-colonial theory. What these approaches have in common is that they forcefully challenge any simplistic notion of technological diffusion and economic development. As Timothy Mitchell writes, "the practices that form the economy operate, in part, to establish equivalences, contain circulations, identify social actors or agents, make quantities and performances measurable, and designate relations of control and command". This panel will use these theories as building blocks on which to understand how technological change reshapes our understandings about how the economy operates, the way in which the economy is measured and the way in which economic space is territorialised, both socially and spatially. It will therefore look critically at how contemporary ICT diffusion compare with earlier technological and economic ‘revolutions’.

Themes may include:

• past and current aspects of control over and use of new technologies of connectivity
• the relations between newly introduced technologies and existing technologies and material culture
• shifting perceptions of the benefits and beneficiaries of new technologies  
• patterns of communication and imagined social, economic and political identities within, between and beyond African border
• changing ideas and conceptualisations of technology as a driver of economic change and development
• comparative studies of different forms of technologies in relation to economic development and economic theory
• the role of technologies in the territorialization and de-territorialization of economic space
• shifting roles of state and non-state agents in contemporary ICT4D and its historical predecessors
• the diffusion of technology as a justification of wider political or social projects

In order to best provoke discussion, we would like participants to prepare short papers (4-5000 words) that will be circulated ahead of time and to prepare short presentations (5-10 minutes) so as to maximize discussion and debate during the roundtable. We ultimately hope for participants to expand their papers into contributions for an edited volume.

Panel Organizers:
Casper Andersen, Department of Culture and Society/Aarhus University, Laura Mann and Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute/University of Oxford

If you are interested in taking part, please send abstracts to Laura Mann (lauramann82@gmail.com) by February 31st, 2012.