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Blogs as a collective war diary

Authors:

Mossaab Bagdouri,

Kenneth AndersonAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '12: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

Pages 37 - 46

https://doi.org/10.1145/2145204.2145215

Published: 11 February 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Disaster-related research in human-centered computing has typically focused on the shorter-term, emergency period of a disaster event, whereas effects of some crises are long-term, lasting years. Social media archived on the Internet provides researchers the opportunity to examine societal reactions to a disaster over time. In this paper we examine how blogs written during a protracted conflict might reflect a collective view of the event. The sheer amount of data originating from the Internet about a significant event poses a challenge to researchers; we employ topic modeling and pronoun analysis as methods to analyze such large-scale data. First, we discovered that blog war topics temporally tracked the actual, measurable violence in the society suggesting that blog content can be an indicator of the health or state of the affected population. We also found that people exhibited a collective identity when they blogged about war, as evidenced by a higher use of first-person plural pronouns compared to blogging on other topics. Blogging about daily life decreased as violence in the society increased; when violence waned, there was a resurgence of daily life topics, potentially illustrating how a society returns to normalcy.

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Cited By

Ng LLim ALee RChua TNgo CKumar RLauw HKa-Wei Lee R(2024)Love-Hate Dataset: A Multi-Modal Multi-Platform Dataset Depicting Emotions in the 2023 Israel-Hamas WarCompanion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202410.1145/3589335.3651966(1807-1815)Online publication date: 13-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589335.3651966
Kot SMozolevska APolishchuk O(2024)Digital war diaries: Witnessing the 2022 Russian War against UkraineMemory, Mind & Media10.1017/mem.2024.113Online publication date: 30-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1017/mem.2024.11
Lei QKuksenok KTang RGuo JJi RLI J(2023)Identity Struggles as Online Activism in China: A Case Study Based on "The Inviting Plan for 985 Fives" Community on DoubanProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100707:CSCW2(1-25)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610070
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Index Terms

Blogs as a collective war diary
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing and business

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cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '12: Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

February 2012

1460 pages

ISBN:9781450310864

DOI:10.1145/2145204

General Chairs:
Steven Poltrock
Boeing Research & Technology
,
Carla Simone
University of Milano-Biccoca
,
Program Chairs:
Jonathan Grudin
Microsoft Research
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Gloria Mark
University of California, Irvine
,
John Riedl
University of Minnesota

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

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Published: 11 February 2012

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CSCW '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 164 of 415 submissions, 40%;

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Kot SMozolevska APolishchuk O(2024)Digital war diaries: Witnessing the 2022 Russian War against UkraineMemory, Mind & Media10.1017/mem.2024.113Online publication date: 30-May-2024
Lei QKuksenok KTang RGuo JJi RLI J(2023)Identity Struggles as Online Activism in China: A Case Study Based on "The Inviting Plan for 985 Fives" Community on DoubanProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100707:CSCW2(1-25)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
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