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From "Bangtan Boys" to "International Relations Professor": Mapping Self‐Identifications in the UN's Twitter Public
[journal article]
Abstract Digitalization and social media established world-encompassing publics that engage with international organizations. While scholarship has analyzed how international organizations communicate with such digital publics, this article determines who participates in these publics. We created a novel dat... view more
Digitalization and social media established world-encompassing publics that engage with international organizations. While scholarship has analyzed how international organizations communicate with such digital publics, this article determines who participates in these publics. We created a novel dataset to map the UN’s digital public on Twitter and analyzed the bios of 243,168 accounts that have interacted with the UN. Members of this public provide self-identifications (such as researcher, consultant, or scientist) that indicate a professional interest in the UN. We analyzed clusters of users that self-identify with similar words. We find high heterogeneity in the UN’s digital public: Clusters of professional, academic, and organizational users suggest that the technocratic history of international organizations reflects in the members of its digital public. At the same time, the digital public of the UN extends to very different groups (human rights activists and K-Pop fans feature in the UN’s public on Twitter). We demonstrate for future research how multiple correspondence analysis can reveal clusters in unstructured biographical data. The article contributes the first analysis of self-identifications in digital publics of global politics.... view less
Keywords
twitter; international organization; UNO; social media; the public
Classification
International Relations, International Politics, Foreign Affairs, Development Policy
Impact Research, Recipient Research
Free Keywords
big data; publics
Document language
English
Publication Year
2023
Page/Pages
p. 120-133
Journal
Politics and Governance, 11 (2023) 3
Issue topic
Publics in Global Politics
ISSN
2183-2463
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed