We present a new approach to measuring political polarization, including a novel algorithm and open source Python code, which leverages... Show moreWe present a new approach to measuring political polarization, including a novel algorithm and open source Python code, which leverages Twitter content to produce measures of polarization for both users and hashtags. #Polar scores provide advantages over existing measures because they (1) can be calculated throughout the legislative cycle, (2) allow for easy differentiation between users with similar scores, (3) are chamber-agnostic, and (4) are a generic approach that can be applied beyond the U.S. Congress. #Polar scores leverage available information such as party labels, word frequency, and hashtags to create an accessible, straightforward algorithm for estimating polarity using text. (from the paper: Hemphill, L., Culotta, A., and Heston, M. (forthcoming) #Polar Scores: Measuring partisanship using social media content. Journal of Information Technology & Politics.) The dataset contains one plain text TSV file with the following information for each of the 55,244 tweets used to develop #Polar scores : tweet_id, created_at, user_id, screen_name, tag, shortid, sex, party, state, chamber, name. The file contains one row per hashtag, and therefore tweets may appear more than once. The Python code for calculating #Polar scores is available here: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.53888 Show less
Bulge Lab is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) about masculinity, body image, and viruses. Michael DeAnda developed this ARG using a series of... Show moreBulge Lab is an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) about masculinity, body image, and viruses. Michael DeAnda developed this ARG using a series of social media sites and blogs to post content and an email address that autoresponds to players using a series of filters and canned responses. The game begins on Bulge Lab, a fictitious underwear store developing products to make gay men more attractive by standards of hegemonic masculinity. This site serves as the rabbit hole for the ARG. Upon subscribing to the company’s newsletter, the player is told that one of the company’s prospective models has gone missing. By following a link to his blog, the player begins investigating what happened to him and serves as a detective for Bulge Lab. The contained file is a clickable walkthrough. Show less
