The volume presents, in a synergistic manner, significant theoretical and practical contributions in the area of social media reputation and authorship measurement, visualization, and modeling. The book justifies and proposes contributions to a future agenda for understanding the requirements for making social media authorship more transparent. Building on work presented in a previous volume of this series, Roles, Trust, and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets, this book discusses new tools, applications, services, and algorithms that are needed for authoring content in a real-time publishing world. These insights may help people who interact and create content through social media better assess their potential for knowledge creation. They may also assist in analyzing audience attitudes, perceptions, and behavior in informal social media or in formal organizational structures. In addition, the volume includes several chapters that analyze the higher order ethical, critical thinking, and philosophical principles that may be used to ground social media authorship. Together, the perspectives presented in this volume help us understand how social media content is created and how its impact can be evaluated. The chapters demonstrate thought leadership through new ways of constructing social media experiences and making traces of social interaction visible. Transparency in Social Media aims to help researchers and practitioners design services, tools, or methods of analysis that encourage a more transparent process of interaction and communication on social media. Knowing who has added what content and with what authority to a specific online social media project can help the user community better understand, evaluate and make decisions and, ultimately, act on the basis of such information.

Grounded in solid research, Social Media in the Public Sector explores the myriad uses of social media in the public sector and combines existing practices with theories of public administration, networked governance, and information management. Comprehensive in scope, the book includes best practices, the strategic, managerial, administrative, and procedural aspects of using social media, and explains the theoretical dimensions of how social behavior affects the adoption of social media technologies. Praise for Social Media in the Public Sector "Mergel has produced a foundational work that combines the best kind of scholarship with shoe-leather reporting and anthropology that highlights the debates that government agencies are struggling to resolve and the fruits of their efforts as they embrace the social media revolution. Social Media in the Public Sector is a first and sets a high standard against which subsequent analysis will be measured." —Lee Rainie, director, Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project "Mergel is an award-winning author who again wields her story skills in this book. She excels in explaining in concrete, practical terms how government managers can use social media to serve the public. Her book puts years of research into one handy guide. It's practical. It's readable. And it's an essential read." —John M. Kamensky, senior fellow, IBM Center for The Business of Government "Mergel moves beyond the hype with detailed, comprehensive research on social media technologies, use, management, and policies in government. This book should be required reading for researchers and public managers alike." —Jane Fountain, professor and director, National Center for Digital Government, University of Massachusetts Amherst "Comprehensive and compelling, Social Media in the Public Sector makes the case that to achieve Government 2.0, agencies must first adopt Web 2.0 social technologies. Mergel explains both how and why in this contemporary study of traditional institutions adopting and adapting to new technologies." —Beth Simone Noveck, United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer (2009-2011)

A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.

Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices. Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, provide greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, sociohistorical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust—rather than trust—can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance. The first book addressing the interrelationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The way in which social media is utilized has changed over the years, making it a growing forum for political discussion. Due to this, analyzing relationships between social media and politics can lead to an increased awareness of current political affairs. Political Scandal, Corruption, and Legitimacy in the Age of Social Media is an essential research source for the latest information on national and international political propaganda and opinions spread by technological forums. Featuring expansive coverage on a number of relevant topics and perspectives, such as environmental justice, alternative ideology, and information and communication technologies (ICTs), this publication is ideally designed for researchers, students, and professionals seeking current research on the connection between social media and politics and its impact on modern society.

Increasingly governments around the world are experimenting with initiatives in transparency or 'open government'. These involve a variety of measures including the announcement of more user-friendly government websites, greater access to government data, the extension of freedom of information legislation and broader attempts to involve the public in government decision making. However, the role of the media in these initiatives has not hitherto been examined. This volume analyses the challenges and opportunities presented to journalists as they attempt to hold governments accountable in an era of professed transparency. In examining how transparency and open government initiatives have affected the accountability role of the press in the US and the UK, it also explores how policies in these two countries could change in the future to help journalists hold governments more accountable. This volume will be essential reading for all practising journalists, for students of journalism or politics, and for policymakers.

"This book examines the effect of conflicting opinions and views of news outlets and other mass media outlets on cultures, individuals, and groups. It also examines the role of the internet, mobile phones, and other digital platforms in creating an environment for discussing and sharing the latest controversial news"--