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7. Model Estimation and Inferences
This section presents the results and outlines general implications of our analysis.
We discuss the importance of the identified themes as they relate to Facebook user
activity and how the effect of specific themes changed over the course of our
sample period. In our discussion of results in section 7.A., we focus on the models
using the natural log of likes as the dependent variable (rather than the natural log
of comments) because of the advantages in interpretation discussed in section 6.A.
Still, as Facebook only offers users a like button, Facebook user reaction to posts
that generate a negative response may be better measured by comments than likes.
Table 3 and Table 4 summarize the statistically significant (p<0.05) variables
of interest in the models. Percent changes listed in the tables below reflect the
percent change in the expected number of likes (or comments) when a given post
contains the variable listed. For example, as shown in Table 3, the hunger strike
variable results in a 4.4 percent increase in the number of likes, which means
that a post containing the theme hunger strike is expected to have 4.4 percent
25
more likes than a post not containing that theme, all else constant. Full regression
results of models are included in Appendix H. The unit of analysis in these
models are individual Facebook posts. Both models that use the natural log of
likes for the dependent variable have a high R
2
, which suggests these models
explain the change in user activity over the course of the movement on these
two Facebook pages fairly well.
Table 3. Basic Model Summary Results,
Statistically Significant Variables of Main Interest
Explanatory Variables
Percent Change in
the Likes on a Post
Percent Change
in Comments
on a Post
Hazare -4.3% -4.2%
Hunger Strike 4.4%
RW Protest Event 7.7% -8.7%
RW Positive Govt Act 14.1% 15.2%
RW Negative Govt Act 15.0%
RW Parliament Session 21.2%
Video 4.5% 7.4%
Wednesday 8.8% 15.0%
Thursday 13.1% 16.5%
Friday 10.9% 16.1%
Source: Authors calculations
26
Table 4. Interaction Model Summary Results,
Statistically Significant Variables of Main Interest
Explanatory Variables
Percent Change in
the Likes on a Post
Percent Change
in Comments
on a Post
Corruption Phase 5 7.0%
Demonstration Phase 4 10.0%
Government Phase 6 29.8%
Hazare -60.6% -56.7%
Hazare Phase 2 -9.4% -0.9%
Hazare Phase 3 -9.5% -5.6%
Hazare Phase 4 2.7% -2.3%
Hazare Phase 5 3.8% 9.2%
Hazare Phase 6 4.8% 3.1%
Hazare Phase 7 8.4% 0.1%
Hunger Strike Phase 5 -20.9%
Hunger Strike Phase 6 -34.8%
Lokpal Phase 2 9.6%
Lokpal Phase 3 8.8%
Lokpal Phase 6 28.9%
Lokpal Phase 7 10.9%
RW Protest Event 14.4%
RW Positive Govt Act 13.3% 14.2%
RW Negative Govt Act 15.0%
RW Parliament Session 7.8% -16.0%
Video 5.3% 7.9%
Wednesday 9.1% 15.3%
Thursday 14.0% 17.8%
Friday 11.0% 16.5%
Source: Authors calculations
Running our regressions using basic ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions
produced results suffering from heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation. To correct
for these two issues, we ran these regressions as OLS with panel-corrected standard
errors accounting for first order autocorrelation. These models may still encounter
problems with reverse causality between the dependent variable and the variables
for real-world events occurring on the ground. We discuss the results of the
diagnostic tests for these problems more fully in Appendix I: Diagnostic Tests and
Limitations of the Models.
27
7.A. Regression Model Inferences
The regression models account for a wide range of factors potentially influencing
the amount of user activity on these two Facebook pages. The results suggest
which themes were most significant and how the different themes correlated with
increased user activity at different points in time. Analysis of the type of content
most likely to result in higher levels of user activity at a particular moment in the
anticorruption movement provides insight into how a social media movement can
be both monitored and potentially managed. Additionally, these results suggest
real-world events are an important factor in the level of user activity.
Several themes had a significant impact on the rate at which Facebook users
interacted with the posts, both overall and across time. Posts about Hazare himself
led to a decrease in the rate of Facebook user action overall, while posts about
hunger strikes significantly increased the rate of Facebook user interaction. No
one theme variable remained significant throughout the course of the entire
movement (in all seven phases).
Some themes were important during specific phases of the movement. Posts about
Hazare initially decreased the rate of user interaction with the post. However,
during phase 4, Hazares arrest led to a large protest. Following the arrest and
subsequent hunger strike, more posts about Hazare correlate with an increase in
the rate of Facebook user activity. This positive relationship grew throughout the
rest of the movement. This growth suggests that August may have been a tipping
point when Hazare became a key figurehead of the movement. In this case, the
government action to prevent him from protesting may have legitimized him as a
public figure and helped him gain support for the movement.
Early in the movement, an increase in social media reports about the Lokpal bill
itself correlates to an increased rate of user activity. In April, during Hazares first
hunger strike, posts about the Lokpal bill had a large positive effect on post
interaction rates. This effect continued into phase 3 while the Joint Drafting
Committee was meeting regularly to draft a Lokpal bill to bring before
Parliament. However, the Lokpal bills importance drops off during the August
protest, and it doesnt become important again until the beginning of 2012 when
the Rajya Sabha discusses the Lokpal bill following its passage in Parliaments
lower house.
Finally, posts that encouraged Facebook users to rally or become involved in the
movement in April and August resulted in an increase in Facebook user
interaction during the subsequent protests. This significance was not evident,
however, during Hazares hunger strike in December. This effect is reflected in
the real world by significantly lower protester turnout in December compared to
previous protests and could be related to Hazare calling off his protest
prematurely.
28
Some of the characteristics of the posts were also important. The addition of a
video increased the rate of Facebook user interaction. Posts on the AH page also
generated a significantly higher rate of interaction per post than posts on the IAC
page. Finally, posts created on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday appear to have
a higher rate of activity than during the rest of the week.
The variables with the largest impact on the rate of user interaction were the
variables coding the occurrence by date of organized protests, and dates the
government publically responded to the movement or took actions related
to it. During protest periods, the rate of Facebook user interaction increased
significantly. It also increased during periods when the government took action,
regardless of whether it targeted its actions against the movement and its leaders
or whether it gave in to and met movement demands. Likes also increased when
Parliament was in session. These real-world events seem to induce individuals to
log onto Facebook to get information, where they could interact with the
messages and information shared by the movement and other Facebook users.
This finding may suggest that the movement had its largest audience and could
most effectively share its message during periods of on-the-ground action.
7.B. Differences Between Natural Log of Likes
and Natural Log of Comments Regression Results
Although the results of models using the natural log of likes as the dependent
variable and models using the natural log of comments as the dependent variable
have many similarities, some significant differences remain. These differences
could be attributed to the fact that liking and commenting on Facebook are
fundamentally different actions. These differences could explain the differences in
users responses to posts over time when comparing likes and comments. This
finding could be particularly important for certain themes or time periods where
Facebook users might respond more negatively to the content of posts. Although
the natural log of likes appears to be a better metric to use in these regressions, the
results of the models that use the natural log of comments are worth exploring.
The most interesting difference between the models is the results for the real-
world negative government action variables. The models that use the natural log
of comments find that when the government took actions contrary to what the
anticorruption movement wanted, the rate of commenting increased significantly.
When the natural log of likes is the dependent variable, however, the real-world
negative government action variable is insignificant. This finding likely reflects
the fact that Facebook users can respond negatively to posts only through
comments, not through likes. This model also found real-world protest events and
parliamentary sessions to be insignificant or negatively related to the rate at which
users commented on these posts.
The natural log of comments interaction model identified additional themes as
significant drivers of user activity in several phases. It also found a few themes
that had been identified as important by the natural log of likes model to be
29
insignificant. The natural log of comments model found that discussion of the
Lokpal bill did not significantly affect the rate of Facebook user interaction in
phases 2, 3, or 7. Instead, it suggests that discussion of the Lokpal bill correlated
with decreased Facebook user interaction in phase 6 when Parliament was
debating the Lokpal bill. Posts that discussed the hunger strikes had a significant
effect, demonstrated by a reduction in Facebook comments during phases 5 and 6.
The comments interaction model also found that posts about corruption were
insignificant in all of the phases except phase 5, the period between Hazares
August and December hunger strikes. Finally, this model suggests that posts
about the Indian government were related to an increase in the rate of Facebook
user interaction in December while Parliament debated the Lokpal bill.
8. Summary and Recommendations for Further Work
To collect data, we performed a census of top-level post content from two
significant and widely followed Facebook pages. The nature and scope of our
data, however, are inadequate to robustly investigate or demonstrate causal
relationships between Facebook activity and subsequent real-world actions, as
discussed in Appendix G. Data on user behavior beyond the top-level posts would
enable investigation of the influence of individual Facebook users in a social
movement. As Facebook records and publishes the identity of each user who likes
or comments on a post and links the activity to that users profile, researchers may
be able to develop a tracking mechanism to record the frequency of likes and
comments per individual, catalogue and correlate the temporal and thematic
nature of those interactions, and explore the profiles of the most-engaged or most-
influential individuals. In so doing, the researcher could determine the extent of
an individuals own friend circle. The researcher could learn about an individuals
stated attendance or role in protest activities and ability to mobilize friends to
attend or participate in another way. Skilled computer programmers and library
science personnel should be able extract this information through the native
Facebook Application Programming Interface and organize it in an analytically
useful way. Appendices J and K present potential approaches to expanding the
universe of data collection.
This is not to say that the dataset we created is without value. Information gained
through the collection and analysis of Facebook data does support several
important conclusions concerning the role social media played in the 2011-12
anticorruption movement in India. Using user activity as a measure of social
engagement with real-world action, we discuss potential implications of our
results for future social movements. Our statistical models demonstrate that real-
world events effects on Facebook are consistent in practical and statistical
significance. This important observation supports the conclusion that spikes in
user activity are not principally driven by the incorporation of thematic language
or multimedia links but rather by real-world actions taken by the movement and
the government. People turn to Facebook (1) to get information from a primary
source; (2) to learn how a movement will engage with or respond to government
30
actions; and (3) to identify ways in which they themselves can become engaged
online or on the groundwithin the movement.
Real-world actions drive thematic language use on Facebook. For example, the
natural log of likes regression demonstrates that Lokpal was significant as a theme
in phases 2, 3, and 7. This result is understandable in the context of the
movement, as these are phases in which the government took action that could
lead individuals to believe progress would be made on the bill. The announcement
of the formation of the Joint Drafting Committee occurred in phase 2; the
committee met during phase 3; and users responded to the passage of the Lokpal
bill in phase 7. These findings demonstrate the regression analysis identified the
most significant themes at a given point in the anticorruption movement.
Throughout the movement as social momentum grew during the various action
phases, user activity peaked and then sharply decreased following some form
of government action. These results suggest that positive government action can
increase user activity for a short period of time when Facebook users discuss
the government action or concession. However, government action may halt
or reduce real-world protest action as social activists wait for the government
to fulfill a promise or concession. This waiting is reflected by a temporally
correlated decrease in user activity. Reaction on Facebook holds until the
movement decides that by protesting again it may reenergize a stalled
process or receive further concessions from the government.
Government actions taken to repress the movement were significant in the natural
log of comments model regression, and they correlated with an increase in the
number of comments. Negative government action was not significant in the
natural log of likes model. This difference makes sense when we consider the
nature of the like action. A Facebook post detailing an unfavorable government
action would garner fewer likes than a neutral or positive government action
simply because movement supporters likely would disagree with the activity and
therefore decline to like it. Thus, a post about a negative government action would
not be expected to induce a large number of likes but would more likely lead to an
increase in the number of comments as Facebook users discuss the implications of
the action. Contrary to positive government action, which may lead to temporary
lulls in user activity, negative government actions seem to act as catalysts,
increasing social media momentum and triggering further on-the-ground
responses if the negative action is not effective in forcing the movement
to change direction or fail at achieving its goals.
Understanding the distinction between positive and negative actions and their
consequences is extremely important for any government looking to respond to a
social movement. Government actors can also understand the inherent risk in a
given action. For example, the police arrest of Hazare in August set off the largest
spike in Facebook activity of the entire surveyed period and a major push of real-
world protest activity. In contrast, the Lok Sabhas passage of the weaker Lokpal
bill on December 27 led the movement to use Facebook to get out the message
31
that the movement was reorganizing and shifting focus. The governments
positive action on the legislation (albeit still perceived as inadequate by some)
undermined movement support and created an identity crisis for IAC leaders
who in turn changed the goals and direction of the movement.
As for organizers of social movements, they could track Facebook user activity to
help identify actions and events that were influential enough to garner responses
from news media and the government. A movement could monitor the response to
the themes organizers feel are critical to advancing the message. Tracking activity
related to specific posts could help the movement to better define its message and
purpose and better use themes that resonate most with Facebook users. Matching
the message to the audience is a primary task of any movement looking to grow
support. While keeping on message by creating content around the most important
theme at a specific time, the movement would need to be aware of the potential
for post fatigue. We see the AH page received a larger number of likes and
comments per post relative to the IAC page even though IAC posted many more
times per day, which may reflect that users only interact with a certain amount of
content each day. A movement might want to limit the number and topics of
messages it shares.
Overall, we view Facebook and other forms of social media as excellent organizing
tools for social movements. The content and focus of the posts provide a daily
insight into the function of the movement and the message it is trying to advance.
Paying attention to this content can help participants and observers better evaluate
messages reported by government or traditional news sources. Understanding
Facebook content can help observers make a best guess at what a social
movement might plan for its next move and thus have time to develop a response.
We present possible methodological options and issues in appendices J and K.
Additionally, social media activity can be used to identify important events in a
movement. Analysts can focus on identified dates or events of interest to more
closely observe what occurred and how events may shape government and
social movement responses. Analysts can use Facebook almost instantaneously
for such observations given the real-time posting of massive amounts of
content. Changes in content and message can be identified quickly via social
media. The instantaneous nature of social media provides information that
differs from that found in news media.
This initial look into the use of Facebook by Indias anticorruption movement
in 2011-12 can have implications for future social movements. The metrics of
measurement can serve as a template for analysis of ongoing social movements.
The benefit of this form of analysis is the wide, free, and instantaneous
availability of social media data and content. Themes specific to a movement
can be quickly identified and tested. Lists of themes can expand as the movement
progresses. For broader implementation, we recommend a real-time gathering and
coding of data so that points of interest and key events identified by spikes in
Facebook and social media user activity can be identified quickly, an approach
32
that may allow sufficient time to craft responses. This ongoing real-time analysis
allows for immediate insights about actions and responses, as well as a reflective
look at the movements history as recorded on Facebook. Although further work
should be done to identify the existence of any causal relationships between social
media content and on-the-ground action, we are certain that valuable information
about a particular social movement can be gleaned from this type of data using the
method described in this analysis.
33
Appendix A: Narrative Timeline
2010
Government drafted a version of the Lokpal bill. Social activists said it was not
strong enough and drafted their own bill. India Against Corruption (IAC) formed
to lead fight against corruption.
65
Jan 6
2011
Indian government formed Group of Ministers to consider measures that
government could take to tackle corruption.
66
Jan 30
Marches were held in more than 60 cities to demand anticorruption Lokpal bill.
Social reformer Anna Hazare participated in New Delhi rally.
67
Feb 26
Hazare announced fast unto death from April 5 if Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh did not cover civil society members in the Lokpal bill.
68
Mar 7
Hazare and colleagues met with the prime minister, law minister, and other
senior officials. Both sides agreed to have a sub-committee of the Group of
Ministers discuss the draft.
69
Apr 4
Prime minister's office announced its "deep disappointment that Shri Anna
Hazare is still planning to go ahead with his planned hunger strike."
70
Apr 5 Hazare began first hunger strike for stronger Lokpal bill.
71
Apr 8 Government agreed to draft stronger bill and form a joint committee.
72
Apr 9
Indian government issued a notification creating a joint drafting committee,
charged with preparing a draft of the Lokpal bill.
73
Apr 9
Hazare's first fast ended, and he set August 15 deadline for Parliament to pass
bill.
74
Apr 16 First meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
75
May 2 Second meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
76
May 7 Third meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
77
May 13 India ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption.
78
May 23 Fourth meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
79
May 30
Fifth meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
Disagreement arose over who should be included.
80
Jun 1
Social activist Baba Ramdev came to New Delhi to start the Satyagraha against
Corruption campaign. Met with four senior ministers to discuss his issues and
demands.
81
Jun 3
Baba Ramdev and the government completed talks; both sides claimed to have
reached a consensus.
82
Jun 4
Despite agreement, Baba Ramdev held protest at the public square Ramlila
Maidan in New Delhi.
83
Jun 5
Police raided Baba Ramdevs protest site during the night, detained him, and
removed his supporters using tear gas.
84
Jun 6
Sixth meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill. Civil
society members boycotted in protest of detention of Baba Ramdev.
85
Jun 12
The government disclosed details of wealth, assets, and funds Baba Ramdev
owns but cannot explain how they were obtained. Baba Ramdev lost his
following, ending his protests.
86
Jun 15 Seventh meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
87
Jun 16
Joint Drafting Committee talks remained inconclusive, and Hazare announced
he will hold a hunger strike on August 16.
88
Jun 20 Eight meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
89
34
Jun 21
Ninth meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee to draft the Lokpal bill. The
meeting ended with large disagreements between parties on scope of the
Lokpal bill.
90
Jul 3
All-party meeting on the Lokpal bill yielded agreement that the government
should bring a strong and effective Lokpal bill before the next session of
Parliament and follow established procedures.
91
Jul 12 Court charged Hazare in a case of alleged misappropriation of funds.
92
Jul 28 Cabinet approved the Lokpal bill.
93
Jul 28
Hazare rejected Joint Drafting Committees version of the Lokpal bill and
announced his intent to begin the hunger strike on August 16 as planned.
94
Jul 30
Police denied Anna Hazares movement permission to stage a protest at the
Jantar Mantar observatory.
95
Aug 1
Public interest litigation filed in Supreme Court against Hazare to restrain him
from going on a fast because demands are "unconstitutional" and amount to
"interference in legislative process."
96
Aug 3
IAC volunteers burn copy of Lokpal bill near Sampurnanand Sanskrit
University.
97
Aug 4 Lokpal bill introduced in the Lok Sabha.
98
Aug 4 Team Anna members burn copies of Lokpal version introduced in Lok Sabha.
99
Aug 13
Prime minister replied to a letter from Hazare, directing Hazare to take his
grievances about the restrictions placed on his fast to the police.
100
Aug 14
Congress Party leaders launched a negative information campaign against
Hazare, accusing him of being corrupt. The personal accusations are withdrawn
the next day.
101
Aug 15
Prime minister gave Independence Day speech. He devoted one quarter of the
speech to corruption and the Lokpal bill.
102
Aug 16
Hazare arrested just before hunger strike begins and taken to Tihar Jail. This
arrest sparked large protests in numerous locations.
103
Aug 16 Hazare released from jail but refused to leave and continued fast in jail.
104
Aug 17
Police negotiated with Hazare on terms of his public hunger strike. Hazare
refused to leave jail until a deal was struck early on August 18.
105
Aug 17
Prime minister and leaders of the Congress Party suggested a "foreign hand"
(an allusion to the United States) behind Hazare's campaign.
106
Aug 18
Hazare left jail and continued hunger strike at Ramlila Maidan as huge rallies
and protests continued.
107
Aug 23
Prime minister wrote to Anna and requested he end his fast for the sake of his
health and reiterated the government's intention to pass the best possible
Lokpal bill.
108
Aug 23
Hazare agreed to hold discussions with the government and representatives of
both parties.
109
Aug 24 All parties met in Parliament on Hazare and Lokpal bill.
110
Aug 25 Parliament agreed to debate all versions of Lokpal bill.
111
Aug 27 Both houses of Parliament adopt a resolution of the Lokpal bill.
112
Aug 28
Government agreed to pass Lokpal bill, and Hazare ended his second hunger
strike.
113
Sep 2
Income tax office issues notice to chief Hazare aide Arvind Kejriwal for overdue
taxes; Team Anna calls it a dirty trick, while government insists it is a routine
affair.
114
35
Sep 3
Key members of Team Anna (Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan, and Kiran Bedi)
receive breach of privilege notices for remarks against members of
Parliament.
115
Sep 6
Government accepted the Group of Ministers recommendations fast-tracking
cases against public servants accused of corruption.
116
Sep 28-29
Seventh meeting of the Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative of the Asian
Development Bank/Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development
for Asia and the Pacific held in New Delhi.
117
Oct 16 Hazare begins maunvrat (vow of silence) for mental peace and good health.
118
Oct 17-18
Congress party loses all four special elections; Hazare warns that election results
are sign that party should ensure Lokpal passes during Winter session.
119
Nov 4
Hazare ended 19-day vow of silence, threatened another hunger strike, and
vowed to campaign against the majority party in five states if Parliament failed
to pass a strong Lokpal bill.
120
Dec 7
Parliaments Standing Committee meets to adopt Lokpal bill draft report;
decision on prime minister inclusion left to Parliament.
121
Dec 9
Standing Committees Lokpal report tabled in Parliament; Team Anna urges
protest against weak Lokpal.
122
Dec 11
Prime Minister invites all party leaders to meet December 14 in light of
conflicting views on Lokpal and pressure from Hazare.
123
Dec 11
Hazare sits on daylong fast in New Delhi to protest Standing Committees
weaker Lokpal proposals; warns of indefinite fast beginning December 27 if
strong Lokpal does not pass.
124
Dec 13
Parliament passes three anti-graft bills aimed at higher-level corruption: Judicial
Standards and Accountability Bill; Grievances Redressal Bill; and
Whistleblowers Bill.
125
Dec 15
Hazare announced a jail bharo for January 1 if Parliament failed to pass the
Lokpal bill and threatened a hunger strike.
126
Dec 22
Government introduced a new comprehensive Lokpal and Lokayuktas (state-
level anti-corruption agencies) bill in the Lok Sabha, withdrawing earlier version
of the Lokpal bill.
127
Dec 27
Hazare began a hunger strike in Mumbai in protest of the weaker version of the
Lokpal bill.
128
Dec 27 Lok Sabha passed Lokpal bill after ten hours of debate.
129
Dec 28 Hazare broke his fast due to poor health and calls off the jail bharo.
130
Dec 30
Rajya Sabha adjourned at the end of the Winter session without passing the
Lokpal bill following a 13-hour debate session.
131
Jan 3
2012
Hazare announces that he will tour the five states to canvass against political
parties that opposed strong Lokpal bill in the Parliament. Team Anna says the
trip depends on Hazare's health.
132
Jan 8
Hazare is discharged from hospital, and he cancels his plan to tour the five
states. He says he will take one month off to rest.
133
Jan 11
Hazares colleagues decide to tour the five states for a strong Lokpal bill but will
not campaign against any specific party.
134
Feb 2
Hazares colleagues launch a multi-city campaign in Uttar Pradesh to create
awareness about a strong Lokpal bill but stay away from directly targeting any
one political party.
135
Feb 4 Hazare hospitalized again. Hazares colleagues continue multi-city campaign.
136
36
Appendix B: Gathering Facebook Data
In developing our social media sampling methodology, we considered a variety of
approaches. Within the constraints of reasonable ethical and technical boundaries,
we settled on a manual data collection method known as screen scraping
whereby we visited the Facebook page of interest and viewed all top-level posts
on that page for the date range of study, January 27, 2011, to February 19, 2012.
This approach limited our data collection to posts viewable by any registered
Facebook user with no additional content access controls.
With all posts displayed, we saved the data into a native .html file (for archiving
and reference) and .txt file (for further processing). We copied and pasted the
contents of the .txt file into a blank Microsoft Excel workbook, and each line of
text on the web page became a separate row in the workbook.
With the data in Excel, we then went about cleaning, sorting, and categorizing.
We assigned each line of content a unique serial number and Facebook page ID
for future reference and to enable data sorting. Next, we sorted the data by
content so that we could purge any blank rows, rows without relevant content
(punctuation characters, gibberish, superfluous spaces, etc.). We then re-sorted
the data by serial number into original sequence. Using a mix of Excels in-built
features and functions, we extracted the date- and time-of-post information; the
number of likes, comments, and shares per post. Using Excel COUNTIF
formulae, we developed keyword-specified thematic variables to characterize the
content of each post into social media reference categories we identified as critical
to the movement. These include six substantive themes we identified through
reading posts and studying the movement: Hazare, corruption, lokpal, hunger
strike, demonstration, and government. The reference categories also included
five post-content types: video, blog, news (traditional), web, and photo. Finally,
we wrote macro code using Microsoft Visual Basic to automate the process of
summarizing the per-post data. A documented version of the Visual Basic code is
provided in this appendix, and full specification of thematic keywords is provided
in Appendix E.
Step-by-Step Instructions for Data Collection
We used the following method to collect data from the Facebook pages and create
Excel spreadsheets.
1. Open Mozilla Firefox
2. Navigate to Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/)
3. Log in
4. In the Facebook Search box, enter the target page/terms
a. Ex. India Against Corruption (IndiACor)
5. On the wall, scroll your screen to view the posts in the date range of interest
a. Continue clicking Older Posts until the entire date range is displayed
37
6. Once full date range is expanded, press CTRL-A to select all contents of the
browser window
7. When selected, press CTRL-C to copy all contents into memory
a. AVOID Right-Click / Copy or risk losing all post expansion work with
a misplaced click
8. Open Windows Notepad
9. Press CTRL-V to paste all contents into Windows Notepad
a. This step removes all formatting from the text for ease of use in Excel
10. Save As Notepad file to Dropbox folder with Encoding UTF-8 and file
name [Website-Page-yyyy-mm-dd].txt
a. Ex. Facebook- IndiACor -2012-02-23.txt
11. Once pasted, press CTRL-A to select all contents of the text document
12. When selected, press CTRL-C to copy all contents into memory
13. Open Microsoft Excel, and click on cell A1
14. Press CTRL-V to paste all contents into the Excel spreadsheet
a. Pasted contents should automatically fill by line in Column A
15. Save Excel file to Dropbox folder with file name [Website-Page-yyyy-mm-
dd].xlsx
a. Ex. Facebook- IndiACor -2012-02-23.xlsx
16. Return to Mozilla Firefox, and click the orange Firefox Menu
17. Select Save Page As
a. This step retains all formatting from the web page for later use
18. Save web page to Dropbox folder with type Web Page, complete and file
name [Website-Page-yyyy-mm-dd]
a. Ex. Facebook-IndiACor-2012-02-23
19. Firefox will create an HTML document and a folder of all images, scripts, and
stylesheets
20. Data are now archived and ready for further processing
Summarizing Facebook Data in Excel with Visual Basic Macros
We used the following code to automatically code and summarize the scraped
Facebook data in Excel using Visual Basic macros.
Sub insertRowSummarizeData()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
To insert a blank space between wall posts
Do
If InStr(1, Selection.Value, "Write a comment...") > 0 Then
Selection.Offset(1, 0).Select
Selection.EntireRow.Insert
End If
Selection.Offset(1, 0).Select
Loop While Selection.Value <> ""
Dim lngLastRow As Long, _
38
lngFormulaRowStart As Long, _
lngFormulaRowEnd As Long
Dim rngCell As Range
lngLastRow = Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row + 1
lngFormulaRowStart = 2
lngFormulaRowEnd = 2
For columns with data to COPY from the cell above [ID, page]
For Each rngCell In Range("A2:A" & lngLastRow)
If Len(rngCell.Value) = 0 Then
lngFormulaRowEnd = rngCell.Row - 1
rngCell.Value = rngCell.Offset(-1, 0).Value
lngFormulaRowStart = rngCell.Offset(1, 0).Row
lngFormulaRowEnd = rngCell.Offset(1, 0).Row
End If
Next rngCell
For columns with data to SUM [date, time, like, share, comment, & variables]
For Each rngCell In Range("C2:C" & lngLastRow)
If Len(rngCell.Value) = 0 Then
lngFormulaRowEnd = rngCell.Row - 1
rngCell.Formula = "=SUM(C" & lngFormulaRowStart & ":C" &
lngFormulaRowEnd & ")"
lngFormulaRowStart = rngCell.Offset(1, 0).Row
lngFormulaRowEnd = rngCell.Offset(1, 0).Row
End If
Next rngCell
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
39
Appendix C: Facebook Mechanics
The mission of Facebook is to give people the power to share and make the
world more open and connected.
137
Anyone older than 13 years with an e-mail
account can sign up for a free Facebook account. The account holder can then
enter personal information, including education, work experience, relationship
status, and contact information on his or her Facebook profile. Users add friends
to construct actual social networks. New account holders can search for people
they know and send friend requests by clicking . The recipient of the
friend request has the option to confirm the friend request, which allows the
sender to view the profile or hide the request. The new account holder may also
receive friend requests, which he or she can confirm or hide.
Two basic functions of Facebook most relevant to this analysis are posting on
walls and joining groups. Wall posts can originate from the profile owner, in
the form of status updates, or from the owners friends. Content of a wall post,
whether a status update or a post by a friend, entirely depends on the poster,
and it can range from simple text to links to outside websites, videos, or images.
Any account holder can like, share, or comment on posts. An account holder can
upload photographs or videos for friends to view. Account holders can also be
tagged in friends photos. A tag is an identifier for the individuals associated
with the photograph. Individuals can also join groups and, in doing so, gain
access to the group profile. The group profile may serve as a conduit for mass
communication between group organizers and members through sending
messages.
An important part of Facebooks operation is privacy. Individual account holders
can arrange their security settings to customize how much information is
conveyed to non-friends. Additionally, account holders have the option of
choosing privacy settings for content that friends would otherwise be able to see,
such as individual wall posts or photographs. Privacy settings for wall posts or
photographs can be set to allow viewing by certain friends. Groups can exercise
privacy controls through membership, in that organizers establishing an open
group allow any Facebook account holder to join, while closed groups allow
new members by invitation.
40
Running
Like
count
Terms
Top-level post: We use the term top-level post to refer to any post on a
Facebook group page posted by the page owner or by a user authorized by the
page owner to post. Top-level posts may receive visitor likes, comments, and
shares. In this analysis, on the IAC page, someone affiliated with IAC who holds
security permissions for the account writes and posts a top-level post. For
example:
Like: A like is an indicator of approval or agreement with a Facebook post
signified by a thumbs up icon and generated by clicking on the like link. For
example:
The ability to like something typically depends on a pages privacy settings. In the
case of Anna Hazare and IAC community pages, open privacy settings allow
for anyone to access the site and like its posts. Individual Facebook users can
like any number of posts, but a user can only like the same post one time.
Comment: Comments function as written responses to wall posts. They can be
positive, negative, or addendums to the original post. For example:
A Facebook user
can like this
post by clicking
this link.
41
Share: When a Facebook user shares another users post, the post appears on the
sharers wall in the same way the profile owner would write a post. A description
at the top of the post states that the profile owner shared the post, and the content
of the post is visible to all users who have access to the sharers profile. For
example:
Running
comment
count
Users can
comment
by clicking
the
Comment
link or
typing
here.
42
Scrape/scraping: Scrape or scraping refers to the act of copying and pasting the
content of a Facebook page.
The following is how content appears in plain text once scraped off of a Facebook
page:
India Against Corruption
The accused had to spend nine more days behind bars since all
government offices including the courts were closed due to Eid holidays
that ended on Sunday.
Hazare supporters granted bail in Dubai
www.rediff.com
The public prosecution in Dubai has granted bail to five Anna Hazare
supporters who were jailed for violating United Arab Emirates national
security laws on August 21...
Like Share September 4, 2011 at 11:29pm
760 people like this.
Facebook
users can
share this
post with
friends
by
clicking
Share.
Number
of shares
Clicking
on this
icon will
show
who
shared
this post.
43
Appendix D: News Media Data Collection
To incorporate a quantitative analysis component into our comparison of social
media to two online newspapers, we collected data on the number of articles
published per day about the anticorruption movement from The Times of India
and The Hindu. We were limited in our ability to collect data from other news
sources, such as The Hindustan, because their articles were not available in online
databases for the entire period of our study. We did not include any newspapers
that were not in English because of language restrictions.
The data on the volume of articles from The Times of India and The Hindu do not
include all of the articles they published about the movement. While searching on
the newspapers online archives on their respective webpages, we limited our
search to articles that mentioned Hazare or the Lokpal bill. As a result, other
articles related to other aspects of the movement could have been missed. In
addition to this problem, some articles identified by the search engine on those
sites were not directly related to the movement, although we tried to exclude these
articles from our article count. Finally, many of the same articles were listed
multiple times on the same day or on consecutive days in the website search
results. As a result, these data on the volume of news articles per day should be
taken as a way to observe the overall changes in volume but not as an accurate
portrayal of the exact number of unique articles written on each day.
Case Study of Problems with this Data Collection Method:
December 5 December 9
In early December, the Indian Parliament discussed the Lokpal bill. Long-
standing differences of opinion on inclusion of the Indian prime minister
under the authority of the Lokpal, the role of the Central Bureau of Investigation,
and whether the lower-level bureaucracy should be overseen by the central
government anticorruption agency or its equivalents at the state level (the
Lokayuktas) filled the debate.
138
Anna Hazare and his supporters engaged with
news media to promote events and protests to support a stronger Lokpal bill as
well as to publicly criticize parts of the current bill that did not meet their
expectations.
139
Although content of news articles during this four-day period suggests a significant
upcoming event in the anticorruption movement, particularly a vote on the Lokpal
bill, the news media article counts for The Hindu and The Times of India do not
increase significantly above the average number of articles per day. As can be seen
in Table D-1, only the combined article tally on December 8 comes close to
approaching 22.5, the average number of Facebook posts per day over the
movement. However, the high level of Facebook activity draws attention to this
time period. With the exception of December 5, Facebook likes and comments
exceed their combined daily averages (15,163.1 and 2,902.1 respectively) for
December 6 through December 9.
140
Though averages are very basic metrics,
44
this contrast in activity suggests that the two newspapers in this period did not
cover a story that attracted significant attention on Facebook.
Table D-1. Volume Comparison Between News Media and Facebook Activity
Date News Media Posts Likes Comments
5 Dec 10 18 11,285 2,002
6 Dec 17 26 27,908 7,019
7 Dec 15 28 25,254 3,899
8 Dec 20 32 23,274 2,913
9 Dec 18 29 18,457 2,954
Source: Authors calculations
Strong reactions to Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal and his attempts
to encourage Internet companies to prescreen site content could be an issue
motivating these higher levels of social media activity that may not have
warranted the same levels of attention from news media sources.
141
On December 5, the AH page had no posts, but typical like traffic on the IAC
page tended to be between 400 and the upper 600s, with posts about plans for
December 11 rallies attracting much of the attention. To contrast, an IAC post
linking to an article in the New York Times about the Indian government asking
Internet companies and social media to prescreen site content in an effort to
remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online
gathered 1,084 likes.
142
By the following day, likes on posts about the Indian
governments battle on Internet content were well into the 2,000s. A post at
10:31 a.m. linking to an article in The Times of India about Google refusing to
remove controversial material from its sites gained 2,817 likes and a Way to go,
Google!!
143
These posts were accompanied by a 1:27 a.m. post on Anna
Hazares Facebook page attracting 2,361 likes that stated, Kapil Sibal wants to
censor Facebook and other social media. The government is making all attempts
to block off communication channels for the anticorruption movement. In
comparison, a December 6 post on the IAC page at 1:00 p.m. about Anna
Hazares proposed December 11 debate with political party leaders, which had
already started attracting news media coverage, gained 660 likes. Contrasts
between activity on censorship-related posts and posts on the Lokpal or Hazares
upcoming fast continued throughout most of the time period.
A drawback to measuring news media volume is the exclusion of articles
mentioning Sibal and censorship when using the search keywords Anna Hazare
and Lokpal. Using these terms, our search of The Hindu and The Times of India
turned up only three articles that mentioned Sibal and the Internet. However,
when conducting a search using keywords more specific to the issue (person name
Kapil Sibal and topic censorship), article counts appear fairly similar, as
presented in Table D-2. When news articles from these two sources are combined,
all of them but December 5 are significantly above average.
45
Table D-2. Comparison of News Media Keywords
Date
Initial search:
(Anna Hazare and Lokpal)
Censorship search:
(Kapil Sibal and censorship)
Total News
Articles
5 Dec 10 8 18
6 Dec 17 16 33
7 Dec 15 11 26
8 Dec 20 20 40
9 Dec 18 10 28
Source: Authors calculations
Social media may be more flexible in describing real-world action than news
media because social media better reflect the many factors influencing movement
participation. By restricting our search for news articles to those containing Anna
Hazare and Lokpal, we limited our ability to identify all of the news articles
relevant to the movement and the people involved. As a result, pure analysis of
our news media volume data would have missed the increase in activity at this
point in time. It could have also failed to identify some issues important to
members of the movement but unrelated directly to the movement itself.
46
Appendix E: Codebook
This codebook includes descriptions of all of the variables in our dataset, though
not all the variables were included in our models.
Identifiers
ID: line in original Excel sheet containing content of all posts
ID2: unique id number for each post, created using Excel
PAGE: specific Facebook page from which the post was scraped
0: Anna Hazare fan page
1: India Against Corruption community page
AUTHOR: author of original post
0: owner of the page
1: all other authors
UNIQUEDATE: number assigned to each original post in sequential order
MON: posts made on Monday (IST - UTC+05:30)
1: posts made on Monday
0: all other posts
TUE: posts made on Tuesday (IST - UTC+05:30)
1: posts made on Tuesday
0: all other posts
WED: posts made on Wednesday (IST - UTC+05:30)
1: posts made on Wednesday
0: all other posts
THU: posts made on Thursday (IST - UTC+05:30)
1: posts made on Thursday
0: all other posts
FRI: posts made on Friday (IST - UTC+05:30)
1: posts made on Friday
0: all other posts
SAT: posts made on Saturday (IST - UTC+05:30)
1: posts made on Saturday
0: all other posts
47
SUN: posts made on Sunday (IST - UTC+05:30)
1: posts made on Sunday
0: all other posts
Activity Variables
LIKES: total number of likes of original post
LNLIKES: natural log of LIKES
COMMENTS: total number of comments on original post
LNCOMMENTS: natural log of COMMENTS.
Theme Variables
CORRUPT: posts discussing the theme of corruption
1: posts containing the words corrupt, graft, or black money
0: all other posts
LOKPAL: posts discussing the theme of the Lokpal bill
1: posts containing the words lokpal, ombudsman, jokepal, or bill
0: all other posts
HAZARE: posts discussing Anna Hazare
1: posts containing the words hazare or anna
0: all other posts
STRIKE: posts referencing the theme of a hunger strike
1: posts containing the words fast, hunger, or strike
0: all other posts
DEMO: posts referencing the theme of demonstrations or calls to action
1: posts containing the words demonstrat, gather, meet, rally,
relay, march, event, burn, join, missed call, vigil, street
play, or anger of the people
0: all other posts
GOVT: refers to posts that discuss the theme of government
1: posts containing the words government, parliament, congress,
joint committee, CBI, BJP, manmohan singh, rahul gandhi,
sonia gandhi, swaraj, the house, rajya sabha, rajyasabha, lok
sabha, or loksabha
0: all other posts
48
Content Variables
VIDEO: posts containing a video or link to a video
1: posts containing the words youtube, length, webcast, or ndtv
0: all other posts
BLOG: posts containing a link to a blog post
1: posts containing the words blog or wordpress
0: all other posts
NEWS: posts containing links to news articles
1: posts containing the words indiatimes, hindustantimes, thehindu,
or dnaindia
0: all other posts
WEB: posts containing a link to a website
1: posts containing the words .com, .org, .net, .in, or http
0: all other posts
PHOTOS: posts containing photos or a link to photos
1: posts containing the words photo, picture, pics, or cdr
0: all other posts
Phase Variables
PHASE1: posts were made in the first phase
1: posts made in the first phase
0: all other posts
PHASE2: posts were made in the second phase
1: posts made in the second phase
0: all other posts
PHASE3: posts were made in the third phase
1: posts made in the third phase
0: all other posts
PHASE4: posts were made in the fourth phase
1: posts made in the fourth phase
0: all other posts
PHASE5: posts were made in the fifth phase
1: posts made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
49
PHASE6: posts were made in the sixth phase
1: posts made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
PHASE7: posts were made in the seventh phase
1: posts made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
Corruption/Phase Interaction Variables
CORRUPT1: product of CORRUPT and PHASE1
1: posts referencing corruption made in the first phase
0: all other posts
CORRUPT2: product of CORRUPT and PHASE2
1: posts referencing corruption made in the second phase
0: all other posts
CORRUPT3: product of CORRUPT and PHASE3
1: posts referencing corruption made in the third phase
0: all other posts
CORRUPT4: product of CORRUPT and PHASE4
1: posts referencing corruption made in the fourth phase
0: all other posts
CORRUPT5: product of CORRUPT and PHASE5
1: posts referencing corruption made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
CORRUPT6: product of CORRUPT and PHASE6
1: posts referencing corruption made in the sixth phase
0: all other posts
CORRUPT7: product of CORRUPT and PHASE7
1: posts referencing corruption made in the seventh phase
0: all other posts
Lokpal/Phase Interaction Variables
LOKPAL1: product of LOKPAL and PHASE1
1: posts referencing the Lokpal bill made in the first phase
0: all other posts
LOKPAL2: product of LOKPAL and PHASE2
1: posts referencing the Lokpal bill made in the second phase
0: all other posts
50
LOKPAL3: product of LOKPAL and PHASE3
1: posts referencing the Lokpal bill made in the third phase
0: all other posts
LOKPAL4: product of LOKPAL and PHASE4
1: posts referencing the Lokpal bill made in the fourth phase
0: all other posts
LOKPAL5: product of LOKPAL and PHASE5
1: posts referencing the Lokpal bill made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
LOKPAL6: product of LOKPAL and PHASE6
1: posts referencing the Lokpal bill made in the sixth phase
0: all other posts
LOKPAL7: product of LOKPAL and PHASE7
1: posts referencing the Lokpal bill made in the seventh phase
0: all other posts
Hazare/Phase Interaction Variables
HAZARE1: product of HAZARE and PHASE1
1: posts referencing Anna Hazare made in the first phase
0: all other posts
HAZARE2: product of HAZARE and PHASE2
1: posts referencing Anna Hazare made in the second phase
0: all other posts
HAZARE3: product of HAZARE and PHASE3
1: posts referencing Anna Hazare made in the third phase
0: all other posts
HAZARE4: product of HAZARE and PHASE4
1: posts referencing Anna Hazare made in the fourth phase
0: all other posts
HAZARE5: product of HAZARE and PHASE5
1: posts referencing Anna Hazare made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
HAZARE6: product of HAZARE and PHASE6
1: posts referencing Anna Hazare made in the sixth phase
0: all other posts
51
HAZARE7: product of HAZARE and PHASE7
1: posts referencing Anna Hazare made in the seventh phase
0: all other posts
Hunger Strike/Phase Interaction Variables
STRIKE1: product of STRIKE and PHASE1
1: posts referencing a hunger strike or fast made in the first phase
0: all other posts
STRIKE2: product of STRIKE and PHASE2
1: posts referencing a hunger strike or fast made in the second phase
0: all other posts
STRIKE3: product of STRIKE and PHASE3
1: posts referencing a hunger strike or fast made in the third phase
0: all other posts
STRIKE4: product of STRIKE and PHASE4
1: posts referencing a hunger strike or fast made in the fourth phase
0: all other posts
STRIKE5: product of STRIKE and PHASE5
1: posts referencing a hunger strike or fast made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
STRIKE6: product of STRIKE and PHASE6
1: posts referencing a hunger strike or fast made in the sixth phase
0: all other posts
STRIKE7: product of STRIKE and PHASE7
1: posts referencing a hunger strike or fast made in the seventh phase
0: all other posts
Demonstration/Phase Interaction Variables
DEMO1: product of DEMO and PHASE1
1: posts referencing a demonstration or call to action made in the first
phase
0: all other posts
DEMO2: product of DEMO and PHASE2
1: posts referencing a demonstration or call to action made in the second
phase
0: all other posts
52
DEMO3: product of DEMO and PHASE3
1: posts referencing a demonstration or call to action made in the third
phase
0: all other posts
DEMO4: product of DEMO and PHASE4
1: posts referencing a demonstration or call to action made in the fourth
phase
0: all other posts
DEMO5: product of DEMO and PHASE5
1: posts referencing a demonstration or call to action made in the fifth
phase
0: all other posts
DEMO6: product of DEMO and PHASE6
1: posts referencing a demonstration or call to action made in the sixth
phase
0: all other posts
DEMO7: product of DEMO and PHASE7
1: posts referencing a demonstration or call to action made in the seventh
phase
0: all other posts
Government/Phase Interaction Variables
GOVT1: product of GOVT and PHASE1
1: posts referencing the government made in the first phase
0: all other posts
GOVT2: product of GOVT and PHASE2
1: posts referencing the government made in the second phase
0: all other posts
GOVT3: product of GOVT and PHASE3
1: posts referencing the government made in the third phase
0: all other posts
GOVT4: product of GOVT and PHASE4
1: posts referencing the government made in the fourth phase
O: all other posts
GOVT5: product of GOVT and PHASE5
1: posts referencing the government made in the fifth phase
0: all other posts
53
GOVT6: product of GOVT and PHASE6
1: posts referencing the government made in the sixth phase
0: all other posts
GOVT7: product of GOVT and PHASE7
1: posts referencing the government made in the seventh phase
0: all other posts
Real-World Event Variables
RWPOSGOVACT: posts made on days when the government took action
complementary to the interests of the anticorruption movement
1: posts made on March 7; April 8, 9, 16; May 2, 7, 23, 30; June 3, 6, 15,
20, 21; July 3, 28; August 4, 15, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28; September 6;
December 7, 9, 13, 20, 22, and 27
0: all other posts
RWNEGGOVACT: posts made on days when the government took action
directly or indirectly against the interests of the anticorruption movement
1: posts made on June 5; July 30; August 1, 14, 16, 17; September 2, 3;
and December 30
0: all other posts
RWPROTESTEVENT: posts made while a major anticorruption protest was in
progress
1: posts made on January 29 31; April 3 14; June 3 11; August 3 8,
12 31; December 9 14, and 18 31
0: all other posts
RWPARLSESS: posts made while parliament was in session
1: posts made on February 21 March 25; August 1 September 8; and
November 22 December 29
0: all other posts
54
Appendix F: Summary Statistics
The following tables present descriptive statistics for variables in our dataset.
See Appendix E for the codebook that describes the variables.
Table F-1. Identifiers
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
id 8103
id2 8103
page 8104 0.927 0.260 0 1
author 8103 0.956 0.206 0 1
uniquedate 8103 3803.624 2146.534 1 7512
mon 8103 0.135 0.341 0 1
tue 8103 0.141 0.348 0 1
wed 8103 0.139 0.346 0 1
thu 8103 0.155 0.362 0 1
fri 8103 0.150 0.357 0 1
sat 8103 0.144 0.351 0 1
sun 8103 0.137 0.344 0 1
Table F-2. Activity Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
likes 8103 727.932 797.655 0 10465
lnlikes 8071 5.917 1.424 0 9.256
comments 8103 139.321 204.592 0 3771
lncomments 7981 4.206 1.352 0 8.235
Table F-3. Theme Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
corrupt 8103 0.229 0.420 0 1
lokpal 8103 0.271 0.445 0 1
hazare 8103 0.315 0.464 0 1
strike 8103 0.082 0.275 0 1
demo 8103 0.272 0.445 0 1
govt 8103 0.180 0.385 0 1
Table F-4. Content Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
video 8103 0.072 0.259 0 1
blog 8103 0.039 0.192 0 1
news 8103 0.147 0.354 0 1
web 8103 0.479 0.500 0 1
photos 8103 0.107 0.309 0 1
55
Table F-5. Phase Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
phase1 8103 0.179 0.383 0 1
phase2 8103 0.095 0.293 0 1
phase3 8103 0.239 0.426 0 1
phase4 8103 0.177 0.382 0 1
phase5 8103 0.202 0.402 0 1
phase6 8103 0.042 0.201 0 1
phase7 8103 0.066 0.249 0 1
Table F-6. Corruption/Phase Interaction Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
corrupt1 8103 0.056 0.230 0 1
corrupt2 8103 0.032 0.177 0 1
corrupt3 8103 0.065 0.246 0 1
corrupt4 8103 0.026 0.159 0 1
corrupt5 8103 0.031 0.175 0 1
corrupt6 8103 0.008 0.087 0 1
corrupt7 8103 0.011 0.103 0 1
Table F-7. Lokpal/Phase Interaction Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
lokpal1 8103 0.026 0.160 0 1
lokpal2 8103 0.017 0.130 0 1
lokpal3 8103 0.092 0.289 0 1
lokpal4 8103 0.054 0.227 0 1
lokpal5 8103 0.055 0.228 0 1
lokpal6 8103 0.017 0.130 0 1
lokpal7 8103 0.010 0.099 0 1
Table F-8. Hazare/Phase Interaction Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
hazare1 8103 0.076 0.264 0 1
hazare2 8103 0.020 0.140 0 1
hazare3 8103 0.064 0.245 0 1
hazare4 8103 0.061 0.240 0 1
hazare5 8103 0.061 0.240 0 1
hazare6 8103 0.013 0.112 0 1
hazare7 8103 0.019 0.138 0 1
56
Table F-9. Hunger Strike/Phase Interaction Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
strike1 8103 0.013 0.113 0 1
strike2 8103 0.019 0.137 0 1
strike3 8103 0.023 0.150 0 1
strike4 8103 0.012 0.110 0 1
strike5 8103 0.010 0.099 0 1
strike6 8103 0.003 0.057 0 1
strike7 8103 0.002 0.040 0 1
Table F-10. Demonstration/Phase Interaction Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
demo1 8103 0.051 0.219 0 1
demo2 8103 0.027 0.161 0 1
demo3 8103 0.061 0.240 0 1
demo4 8103 0.069 0.254 0 1
demo5 8103 0.040 0.195 0 1
demo6 8103 0.010 0.102 0 1
demo7 8103 0.014 0.118 0 1
Table F-11. Government/Phase Interaction Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
govt1 8103 0.038 0.192 0 1
govt2 8103 0.016 0.127 0 1
govt3 8103 0.042 0.201 0 1
govt4 8103 0.017 0.131 0 1
govt5 8103 0.043 0.204 0 1
govt6 8103 0.012 0.107 0 1
govt7 8103 0.011 0.107 0 1
Table F-12. Real-World Event Variables
Variable Observations Mean
Standard
Deviation
Minimum Maximum
rwposgovact 8103 0.144 0.351 0 1
rwneggovact 8103 0.076 0.266 0 1
rwprotestevent 8103 0.273 0.446 0 1
rwparlsess 8103 0.430 0.495 0 1
57
Appendix G: Predictive Regression Model
We investigated possible causal linkages between Facebook activity and real-
world activitynamely government responses to protest movement demands. To
establish a causal link between Facebook activity and real-world activity, it would
be useful to demonstrate a strong relationship between key indicators of Facebook
activity in the days or weeks prior to government activity and subsequent
government action. If we find a strong temporal relationship between likes or
comments and government actions in the days preceding the government action,
the correlation in activity could support further investigative means to establish
causality (Figure G-1).
Figure G-1. Idealized Predictive and Responsive Temporal Correlations in Ln Likes,
Relative to Government Action
The method we employed to test temporal correlation is a basic logit model
regression with exponentiated coefficients (odds ratios). We employed
government activity as our dependent, dichotomous variable. The natural log of
likes or comments are independent variables, as are post themes, content types,
protest events, parliamentary sessions, and days of the week:
log _
p(0o:tAct)
1 p(0o:tAct)
_
= o +[
1
InIikcs (loggcJ)
+ [
2
PostIcmc
+ [
3
HcJioIypc
+ [
4
ProtcstE:cnt
+[
5
PorliomcntScssion
+ [
6
oy0wcck + e
We ran multiple variations on the model, employing single day lags on (+/- 1 to 6
days) and cumulative day lags (+/- 1 through 6 days). No results proved predictive
of government action, while odds ratios in response to negative government
action were positive and statistically significant. As such, our data does not
support causal inference.
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
-6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
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d
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Government Action (+/- Day Lags)
Prediction of Govt Action Response to Govt Action
58
Appendix H: Regression Results
This table presents the full regression results of the basic and interaction models
using the natural log of likes and the natural log of comments as the dependent
variable.
Table H-1. Regression Results. Standard errors in parentheses. Levels of statistical
significance indicated by asterisks: *** 99%; ** 95%; * 90%.
Models Basic Model Interaction Model
Explanatory
Variables
(1)
Ln Likes
(2)
Ln Comments
(3)
Ln Likes
(4)
Ln Comments
Corruption
-0.008 -0.009 -0.044 -0.082
(-0.016) (-0.025) (-0.035) (-0.055)
Lokpal
-0.000 -0.022 -0.042 0.043
(-0.016) (-0.024) (-0.047) (-0.073)
Hazare
-0.043*** -0.042* -0.606*** -0.567***
(-0.016) (-0.024) (-0.056) (-0.078)
Strike
0.044* -0.006 0.055 0.065
(-0.026) (-0.039) (-0.065) (-0.105)
Demonstration
-0.008 0.033 -0.039 0.005
(-0.015) (-0.023) (-0.037) (-0.057)
Government
-0.004 0.014 -0.005 -0.035
(-0.018) (-0.027) (-0.039) (-0.060)
Video
0.045* 0.074* 0.053** 0.079*
(-0.027) (-0.040) (-0.027) (-0.041)
Blog
0.042 0.036 0.046 0.039
(-0.034) (-0.052) (-0.035) (-0.052)
News
-0.007 -0.013 -0.010 -0.016
(-0.021) (-0.032) (-0.021) (-0.032)
Web
-0.004 -0.012 -0.026 -0.033
(-0.017) (-0.025) (-0.017) (-0.026)
Photo
0.007 0.022 0.003 0.017
(-0.022) (-0.033) (-0.022) (-0.034)
RW Protest Act
0.077** -0.087* 0.144*** -0.021
(-0.037) (-0.049) (-0.036) (-0.049)
RW Positive Gov't
Act
0.141*** 0.152*** 0.133*** 0.142***
(-0.033) (-0.043) (-0.031) (-0.042)
RW Negative Gov't
Act
0.020 0.150*** 0.024 0.150***
(-0.037) (-0.049) (-0.035) (-0.048)
RW Parliament
Session
0.212*** -0.050 0.078** -0.160***
(-0.032) (-0.042) (-0.033) (-0.044)
Page
-0.467*** -0.646*** -0.455*** -0.635***
(-0.036) (-0.048) (-0.036) (-0.048)
Phase2
2.467*** 1.864*** 2.066*** 1.451***
(-0.056) (-0.074) (-0.067) (-0.094)
Phase3
2.401*** 1.968*** 2.080*** 1.670***
(-0.038) (-0.050) (-0.049) (-0.069)
Phase4
3.391*** 2.798*** 3.103*** 2.517***
(-0.052) (-0.068) (-0.059) (-0.082)
Phase5
3.236*** 2.488*** 2.974*** 2.233***
(-0.037) (-0.049) (-0.047) (-0.066)
59
Models Basic Model Interaction Model
Explanatory
Variables
(1)
Ln Likes
(2)
Ln Comments
(3)
Ln Likes
(4)
Ln Comments
Phase6
3.048*** 2.273*** 2.824*** 2.125***
(-0.066) (-0.087) (-0.078) (-0.109)
Phase7
3.141*** 2.086*** 2.782*** 1.778***
(-0.053) (-0.069) (-0.065) (-0.090)
Tuesday
0.017 0.041 0.026 0.050
(-0.039) (-0.053) (-0.038) (-0.052)
Wednesday
0.088** 0.150*** 0.091** 0.153***
(-0.040) (-0.054) (-0.038) (-0.053)
Thursday
0.131*** 0.165*** 0.140*** 0.178***
(-0.040) (-0.053) (-0.038) (-0.051)
Friday
0.109*** 0.161*** 0.110*** 0.165***
(-0.040) (-0.053) (-0.038) (-0.052)
Saturday
0.005 -0.039 0.008 -0.032
(-0.040) (-0.053) (-0.038) (-0.052)
Sunday
-0.025 -0.033 -0.011 -0.017
(-0.039) (-0.053) (-0.038) (-0.052)
Corruption2
-0.002 0.077
(-0.060) (-0.091)
Corruption3
0.040 0.084
(-0.047) (-0.072)
Corruption4
0.071 0.088
(-0.056) (-0.086)
Corruption5
0.060 0.152*
(-0.054) (-0.082)
Corruption6
-0.102 -0.142
(-0.092) (-0.139)
Corruption7
0.028 -0.106
(-0.079) (-0.119)
Lokpal2
0.138* 0.005
(-0.078) (-0.119)
Lokpal3
0.130** 0.0131
(-0.055) (-0.086)
Lokpal4
-0.016 -0.078
(-0.058) (-0.091)
Lokpal5
0.003 -0.135
(-0.058) (-0.089)
Lokpal6
-0.004 -0.332**
(-0.088) (-0.134)
Lokpal7
0.151* 0.005
(-0.091) (-0.138)
Hazare2
0.512*** 0.558***
(-0.088) (-0.129)
Hazare3
0.511*** 0.511***
(-0.065) (-0.093)
Hazare4
0.633*** 0.544***
(-0.066) (-0.094)
Hazare5
0.644*** 0.659***
(-0.065) (-0.092)
60
Models Basic Model Interaction Model
Explanatory
Variables
(1)
Ln Likes
(2)
Ln Comments
(3)
Ln Likes
(4)
Ln Comments
Hazare6
0.654*** 0.598***
(-0.093) (-0.136)
Hazare7
0.690*** 0.568***
(-0.081) (-0.117)
HungerStrike2
0.117 0.077
(-0.094) (-0.147)
HungerStrike3
0.034 -0.045
(-0.081) (-0.128)
HungerStrike4
-0.017 -0.047
(-0.089) (-0.139)
HungerStrike5
-0.098 -0.274*
(-0.094) (-0.146)
HungerSrike6
-0.143 -0.413*
(-0.142) (-0.217)
HungerStrike7
0.130 0.150
(-0.179) (-0.271)
Demonstration2
0.093 0.130
(-0.061) (-0.092)
Demonstration3
0.009 -0.006
(-0.048) (-0.074)
Demonstration4
0.108** 0.106
(-0.049) (-0.075)
Demonstration5
-0.044 -0.090
(-0.052) (-0.080)
Demonstration6
0.021 0.014
(-0.085) (-0.128)
Demonstration7
-0.012 0.094
(-0.072) (-0.109)
Government2
-0.007 0.009
(-0.069) (-0.105)
Government3
0.008 0.029
(-0.053) (-0.081)
Government4
0.021 0.086
(-0.066) (-0.100)
Government5
0.012 0.086
(-0.053) (-0.082)
Government6
0.088 0.333**
(-0.092) (-0.139)
Government7
-0.005 0.074
(-0.080) (-0.121)
Constant
3.764*** 2.842*** 4.075*** 3.127***
(-0.055) (-0.074) (-0.061) (-0.084)
N 8071 7981 8071 7981
R
2
0.673 0.392 0.694 0.407
Rho 0.395 0.313 0.357 0.295
Source: Authors calculations
61
Appendix I: Diagnostic Tests and Limitations of the Models
To ensure that these models provide an accurate analysis of the importance
of each of these variables, we need to verify that the models do not violate any
of the key assumptions of linear regression modeling and to try to correct for
them if they do. We associated several significant problems with running these
regressions using regular ordinary least squares (OLS). First, both the Breusch-
Page/Cook-Weisberg test and the White Test find that these models are
heteroscedastic, meaning the error terms do not have the same variance. This
heteroscedasticity can bias the standard errors of the coefficients and result in
incorrect conclusions about the significance of their impact on the dependent
variable. Autocorrelation also appeared to be a problem with our models. The
Durbin-Watson d-statistic is less than one in all of the models, which suggests
it is a significant problem in all of them. The Breusch-Godfrey test for
autocorrelation confirms this issue. This problem should not influence the
coefficients but does affect the standard errors of our variables.
To correct for these two issues, we used a Praise-Winsten OLS regression with
panel-corrected standard errors with a first order autoregressive process. This
regression method uses a weighting scheme to reduce the heteroscedasticity
problem in the model that is resulting from having different panels (in this case
two different pages) of data in our regression model.
144
This weight tries to
correct for the cross-sectional variance and the time-series autocorrelation.
145
A reverse causality problem may exist between the natural log of likes and the
natural log of comments and some of the independent variables, especially the
RWProtestEvent variable. This problem is because not only do real protests on
the ground seem to increase the rate of Facebook interaction, but it is also
possible that Facebook posts are helping to spread the word about the protests and
to encourage people to go and participate in them. If this relationship is the case,
then these independent variables based on real-world events would be endogenous
rather than exogenous. This issue may require using two-stage least squares
regression techniques to correct.
62
Appendix J: Methodological Ideals and Realities
The methodology we developed provided the data needed for this analysis, but a
number of considerations must be kept in mind when utilizing social media data
in such a context.
Privacy Concerns
Concerns about privacy are significant issues for any project that involves
observing the content of social media sites, especially for reasons not directly
related to national security. The general public likely would not see an analysis
of public opinion or Internet activity associated with social movements as a way
to reduce a national security threat. Instead, the public may see such an analysis
as a threat to privacy and free speech rights. An example of the public scrutiny
that may accompany monitoring social media sites for reasons other than national
security threats occurred in January 2012. Disclosed information showed that a
contractor paid by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security monitored social
media sites to gauge public opinion in Standish, Michigan, to a proposal to move
detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a local prison. Homeland Security
officials disputed whether the departments Social Networking/Media Capability
program tracked public opinion. Advocacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy
Information Center decried the program as having no legal foundation and
contradicting the First Amendment.
146
Cell Phones
Cell phone activity, particularly text messaging, is another valuable indicator of
social movement activity. Organizers use text messages as a way to disseminate
information and issue calls to action in a relatively short period of time. In certain
countries, cell phones may be more economically accessible to the public than the
Internet, and the population of cell phone users may therefore be much higher
than the population of Internet users.
A recent issue in the United States has been the ability of government to monitor
cell phone activity. The extent of this controversy has largely centered on the
government using location information from cell phones, but monitoring the
content of cell phone texts would likely encounter similar opposition and
questions of constitutionality.
147
Twitter
Ideally, we would have analyzed Facebook and Twitter, as both social media sites
have experienced significant growths in popularity since the mid-2000s. Twitter
might have provided more of an up-to-the-minute account of the 2011 Indian
anticorruption movements major events. However, with the methodology
developed to gather data from Facebook, tweets posted in earlier parts of the 2011
anticorruption movement were not accessible, which is problematic. At this stage,
63
we are unable to access the necessary tweets to collect data to compare to
Facebook activity.
Computer System Requirements
Searching through Facebook posts challenged us from a technological perspective
because of the amount of memory required for a typical consumer-oriented
computer system to view posts, particularly those posted over one year ago. Even
in an age where computers are equipped with much faster processors and greater
available memory than ever before, computers sold to the general public are
typically not equipped to handle this sort of task in a reliable and relatively quick
manner. Desktop computers may be able to handle the processing and memory
requirements, but many students opt for laptops due to greater portability. Finally,
the purchase of more powerful computers has significant financial constraints.
Unless these machines are dedicated to monitoring social media sites and posts, it
may be difficult to justify such purchases.
Demographic Information
Ideally, we would access pages owned by individuals following Anna Hazare or
India Against Corruption on Facebook. However, privacy settings largely derail
efforts to collect comprehensive demographic information in an analysis of the
2011-12 Indian anticorruption movement. Privacy settings on individual accounts
can vary in strictness. Settings can range from allowing non-friends to view only
the account holders name and profile picture to viewing all information and posts
on the profile page.
Discrepancies in personal information disclosure can also significantly limit
collection of demographic information. Some Facebook users post more personal
information on their profiles than others; therefore, information about location,
age, and gender may be harder to obtain on some pages than others.
Language
A significant barrier associated with a number of Facebook posts is language.
Posts that are published in Hindi characters or are phonetically written in Hindi
using English characters may contain valuable information for this analysis.
However, with no team members able to understand Hindi, we were not able to
extract data from those posts. The number of top-level posts written in Hindi was
higher for the Anna Hazare Facebook page than for the India Against Corruption
Facebook page, but the language barrier limited our attempt to analyze reactions
from general Indian Facebook users.
Switch to Timeline
Since September 2011, Facebook has been moving to Timeline, which is a format
for profile pages that allows users to tell their life stories with Facebook, as
opposed to their Facebook pages merely being logs of their social networking
64
activities.
148
We collected our data before the AH and IAC pages changed to
Timeline, but the new format may impede future collection of data from
Facebook posts for similar analyses. Data collection may be most hampered
by the new page layout, which changed from a linear presentation of Facebook
activity in the chronological order the posts were made to a sequential layout
based on the users life story. Posts of similar time periods are clustered in
Timeline, rather than appearing as a list, which may require substantially more
work, in terms of arranging posts in order of their chronological origin for coding.
65
Appendix K: Alternative Means and Methodologies
Three principle constraints limited our ability to gather social media data for this
analysis: ethical considerations for Institutional Review Board-exempted data,
technical skill set limitations, and funding. A brief discussion of these limitations,
unconstrained approaches to data collection, and current and proposed alternative
data resources follow.
Ethical Considerations
The University of Wisconsin requires Institutional Review Board approval for
research involving human subjects where researchers acquire data through
interaction or intervention or include private information.
149
Facebook data,
depending on its source and location, may or may not qualify as human subjects
data. To avoid approaching the human subjects data threshold, we limited
ourselves to data publicly viewable by any Facebook user. Our collection efforts
involved the top-level posts on the two pages of interestessentially a public
relations outlet for the India Against Corruption organization and an Anna Hazare
fan club. Furthermore, we made no attempt to collect, catalogue, investigate, or
track the user account identities of individuals who liked or commented on any
post.
To develop a more complete picture of the universe of social media activity
surrounding a real-world movement, however, we would need to engage in a
deeper exploration of the individuals associating with the movement through the
full array of social media sources or outlets available and utilized by movement
followers. Because Facebook requires users to create accounts and because the act
of liking or commenting on a post links the likers or commenters identity with
that action on the post, researchers may be able to fully catalogue an individual
user accounts actions with respect to a given social movement and capture the
entire gamut of a users public Facebook actions. Depending upon the users
configuration of account security settings, researchers may be able to track all
liking or commenting individuals to their personal walls and catalogue their
walls posts, unrelated like and comment activities, friend networks, photo
albums, and demographic and behavioral information explicit in the profile details
and implicit in user photo albums, pages liked, etc. Because top-level post likes
and comments are merely an indirect and incomplete measure of the significance
of social media in real-world social movements, exploring the activities of
individuals (e.g., rally attendance documented by self-published photographs,
reposts of others content, sharing with friends, etc.) through social media data is
an ideal means of determining virtual and real-world activity correlations. With
this information researchers may be able to profile, in relative and absolute terms,
an individuals participation, contribution, and importance to a movement through
the social media framework.
66
Technical and Budgetary Limitations
To accomplish this type of multi-level data collection, our manual screen
scraping methodology is unsuitable. Automated web spider programs that
systematically identify, explore, and catalogue all links, content, and
interconnections could be used. Such methods typically violate social networking
terms of use agreements due to the excessive hardware resource requirements
imposed by robot crawlers that simultaneously call upon multiple web pages
and linked content. Alternative collection approaches using the built-in
Application Programming Interface are available, robust, and explicitly
authorized by terms of use, but require specialized programming knowledge to
design queries appropriate to the provided interfaces. Our team did not possess
these programming skills, nor was it feasible to acquire them during the project
period. If future research is funded and research team members lack these
abilities, skilled programmers can be hired to develop keyword and content-
focused site-specific tools.
Making Friends
The web spider and Application Programming Interface approaches are
themselves limited in their ability to fully explore social networks by the privacy
and account settings afforded to individual users. If a Facebook user only allows
their personal pages content to be viewed by friends, then spider or Application
Programming Interface queries would only catalogue a minimal profile page with
user account name, profile photo, and other minimal demographic characteristics
permitted by the user. To map the full network of individuals following and
participating in a social media movement, researchers must befriend those
individuals to gain access to their full profiles, photo albums, wall postings, etc.
Generating favorable online identities and using those identities to pursue
friendships is one plausible means to this end. Based on our experience as
Facebook users, manufactured identities and friendships are far more likely to be
successful if the individuals of interest already have a high number of friends
associated with their account (250+). The greater number of friends makes it more
likely that a plausible acquaintance or kindred spirit would be accepted into a
friend network.
Alternative Data Sources
The Director of National Intelligence Open Source Center purports to catalogue
and host Internet and other open source content from more than 160 countries, in
more than 80 languages and hosts content from several commercial providers, as
well as content from Open Source Center partners.
150
Access to the center
requires an official U.S. government purpose. For this reason we do not know and
cannot verify if the center catalogues foreign social media activity, but it seems to
be a natural home for aggregation of open source, publicly available information
of this nature. A January 2012 news media report suggests these data are being
collected and utilized.
151
67
Analytical Toolkits
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has published a request for information to
determine the capability of industry to provide an Open Source and social media
alert, mapping, and analysis application solution.
152
The request requires the
applicant to have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information
and intelligence that will allow [the Strategic Information and Operations Center]
to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging
threats.
153
If such a tool is proposed for bid, developed, and implemented, it
would greatly facilitate the data collection and analysis methods discussed above
and make obsolete our manual approach to content identification and impact
tracking.
68
Endnotes
1
Chang, Like My Status: Memology 2011.
2
@twitter, #numbers.
3
Facebook, Key Facts.
4
Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe, Benefits of Facebook Friends, 1145.
5
Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe, Benefits of Facebook Friends, 1146.
6
Zhang et al., Revolution Will Be Networked, 79.
7
Stein, Social Movement Web Use, 750
8
Stein, Social Movement Web Use, 753-754.
9
Stein, Social Movement Web Use, 754-755.
10
Sheedy, Social Media for Social Change, 7.
11
Papic and Noonan, Social Media as a Tool for Protest.
12
MacKinnon, Flatter World and Thicker Walls.
13
Allan and Brown, Mavi Marmara.
On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked a Turkish aid ship called the Mavi Marmara bound
for Gaza. Videos of the attack made from confiscated footage, CCTV cameras, and Israel Defence
Forces surveillance were uploaded to YouTube by Israels official public relations and media
body, while professional journalists and pro-Palestine activists who were onboard were detained
for a number of days and unable to report.
14
Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer, 25.
15
Government of India Ministry of Law and Justice. "The Right to Information Act."
16
Corruption in India: A Million Rupees Now.
Officials of the 2010 Commonwealth Games have been accused of corruption and
mismanagement, and the Indian Government has formed a committee to investigate these
accusations. The Games were plagued by problems such as infrastructure issues and
overspending. Officials of the Indian Premier League have been accused of tax evasion and graft,
clouding the reputation of the 4-year-old league. Government officials undercharged telecom
companies for licenses in the 2G spectrum scam, leading to arrests of politicians, corporate
executives, bureaucrats, and corporations.
17
Tharoor, India's Anti-Corruption Contest.
18
Jain, Dharma Does Not Live Here, 1591.
19
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government Accepts
Recommendations.
20
Sawyer and Sawyer, The Amazing Rise of Anna Hazare.
21
AnnaHazare.org, Biography.
22
Protests in India - Jail the Messenger.
23
Prime Minister's Office, Appeal to Anna Hazare.
24
India Activist Anna Hazare Ends Hunger Strike.
25
Khorana and Harindranath, New Technologies, Gandhian Activism, 3-5.
26
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Fifth Meeting.
69
27
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32; Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Sixth
Meeting.
28
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Ninth Meeting.
29
Prime Minister's Office, Prime Ministers Opening Remarks.
30
Prime Ministers Office, PMs Opening Remarks at the All Party Meeting; Ministry of
Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension, Cabinet Approves the Lokpal.
31
Vasudevan, Fighting Corruption.
32
Economic Times Bureau, Anna Hazare Denied Permission.
33
Benedict, Edgy Congress.
34
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32.
35
Protests in India - Jail the Messenger.
36
De Bendern and Scrutton, Police Order Anna Hazare Freed; Mukerji, A Tale of Three
Fasts, 28-32.
37
Magnier, Indian Activist Anna Hazare Ends Standoff with Government.
38
Benedict, Edgy Congress.
39
Press Trust of India, Parliament Adopts Sense of House.
40
Protests in India - The Fast and the Curious.
41
Bahree and Agarwal, India Moves to Toughen Fight.
42
Tharoor, India's Anti- Corruption Contest.
43
Press Trust of India, Hazare Discharged from Hospital.
44
Khorana and Harindranath, New Technologies, Gandhian Activism, 3.
45
Kurup, How Web 2.0 Responded to Hazare.
46
India Against Corruption Facebook Page.
47
Google Play.
48
Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2011, 25.
49
Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2011, 169.
50
Sharma and Vascellaro, Google and India Test the Limits.
51
Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2011, 167.
52
Press Trust of India, Kapil Sibals Web Censorship.
53
World Bank, Internet Users Per 100 People.
54
Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2011, 161; Quah, Curbing Corruption in India, 255.
55
Socialbakers.com, India Facebook Statistics.
56
Socialbakers.com, India Facebook Statistics.
57
Socialbakers.com, India Facebook Statistics.
58
Indo-Asian News Service, Anna Hazare to Go on Fast as Scheduled.
59
India Against Corruption Facebook Page.
60
India Against Corruption Facebook Page.
70
61
Press Trust of India, PMO Expresses Disappointment.
62
Anna Hazare Facebook Page 2012.
63
India Against Corruption Facebook Page.
64
PRS Legislative Research, Parliament Updates.
65
Desai, Social Activists Draft New Lokpal Bill.
66
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government Accepts
Recommendations.
67
Anna Hazares Crusade against Corruption: A Timeline.
68
Anna Hazares Crusade against Corruption: A Timeline.
69
Prime Minister's Office, Appeal to Anna Hazare.
70
Prime Minister's Office, Appeal to Anna Hazare.
71
Anna Hazare on Hunger Strike against Corruption.
72
India Activist Anna Hazare Ends Hunger Strike.
73
Ministry of Law and Justice, Government Issues Notification.
74
Anna Hazares Team Launched Website.
75
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the First Meeting.
76
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Second Meeting.
77
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Third Meeting.
78
Ministry of External Affairs, India Ratify UN Conventions.
79
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Fourth Meeting.
80
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Fifth Meeting.
81
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32.
82
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32.
83
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32.
84
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32.
85
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Sixth Meeting.
86
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32.
87
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Seventh Meeting.
88
SME News, Anna Hazare Announces Another Hunger Strike.
89
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Eighth Meeting.
90
Joint Drafting Committee, Minutes of the Ninth Meeting.
91
Prime Ministers Office, All Party Resolution on Lokpal Bill.
92
Agencies, Hazare Discharged in Funds.
93
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Cabinet Approves the Lokpal Bill.
94
Vasudevan, Fighting Corruption.
95
Economic Times Bureau, Anna Hazare Denied Permission.
71
96
Press Trust of India, PIL Filed in Supreme Court.
97
Times News Network, Protest against Govt-Drafted Lokpal Bill.
98
Prime Ministers Office, PMs Opening Remarks at All Party Meeting.
99
Times News Network, Lokpal Bill Tabled in Lok Sabha.
100
Prime Ministers Office, Prime Ministers Reply.
101
Benedict, Edgy Congress.
102
Mukerji, A Tale of Three Fasts, 28-32.
103
Times News Network, Anna Hazare Arrested.
104
Agencies, Released, Anna Stays Put.
105
Magnier, Indian Activist Anna Hazare Ends Standoff with Government.
106
Benedict, Edgy Congress.
107
India Corruption: Anna Hazare Leaves Jail.
108
Prime Ministers Office, Prime Minister Writes.
109
Prime Ministers Office, PMs Opening Remarks.
110
Prime Ministers Office, All Party Resolution on Lokpal Bill.
111
Anna Hazares Crusade against Corruption: A Timeline.
112
Prime Ministers Office, PMs Letter to Anna Hazare.
113
Agencies, Anna Hazare Ends Fast on Day 13.
114
Press Trust of India, IT Notice; Agencies, IB Harassing My Kin.
115
Parsai, Prashant Bhushan.
116
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government Accepts
Recommendations.
117
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, President to Inaugurate.
118
Staff Reporter, Hazare on Vow of Silence.
119
Times News Network, Congress Beaten 0-4 in Bypolls; Hazare Warns Congress.
120
Indo-Asian News Service, Anna Hazare Ends maun vrat.
121
Gupta, Standing Panel to Adopt Lokpal Bill; Dhawan , Lokpal Panel Leaves PM Issue.
122
Times News Network, Lokpal Bill Report Tabled; Indo-Asian News Service, Team Anna
Urges People to Protest.
123
Special Correspondent, Manmohan Calls All-Party Meet.
124
Press Trust of India, Anna Sits on Third Fast; Sinha, At 73, Fasting Not an Option.
125
Indo-Asian News Service, Government Okays Key Anti-Graft Bills.
126
Times News Network, Anna Hazare Announces jail bharo.
127
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill.
128
Fontanella-Khan and Crabtree, Hazare Begins Mumbai Hunger Strike.
129
Indo-Asian News Service, Lok Sabha Passes Lokpal Bill.
130
Times News Network, Anna Hazare to Break Fast.
72
131
Press Trust of India, Rajya Sabha Adjourned Sine Die.
132
Express News Service, Anna Hazares Condition Improves; Times News Network, Tour in
Poll-Bound States.
133
Press Trust of India, Hazare Discharged from Hospital.
134
Times News Network, Team Anna to Start Campaign.
135
Times News Network, Team Anna to Start Campaign.
136
Times News Network, Anna to Rest.
137
Facebook, About.
138
Gupta, Standing Panel to Adopt Lokpal Bill.
139
Press Trust of India, Congress Declines to Disclose Stand.
140
For this section, we obtained averages by summing total likes and comments per day across the
Anna Hazare and India Against Corruption pages and averaging the total for the 389-day period.
141
Special Correspondent, It Wont Work.
142
Timmons, India Asks Google.
143
All times listed are in Central Standard Time.
144
Bailey and Katz, Implementing Panel-Corrected.
145
Monogan, Pooling Space and Time.
146
Savage, Federal Contractor Monitored.
147
Richtel, Is the Government Tracking Us.
148
Lessin, Tell Your Story.
149
University of Wisconsin-Madison Health Sciences Institutional Review Boards, Protocol
Closure Guidance.
150
Open Source Center.
151
Martin, CIA Tracks Public Information.
152
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Social Media Application.
153
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Social Media Application.
73
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