Now showing 1 - 10 of 23
  • Publication
    RWebData: A High-Level Interface to the Programmable Web
    (Ubiquity Press, 2018)
    The rise of the programmable web offers new opportunities for the empirically driven sciences. The access to, compilation and preparation of data from the programmable web for statistical analysis can, however, involve substantial up-front costs for the practical researcher. The R-package RWebData provides a high-level framework that allows data to be easily collected from the programmable web in a format that can be used directly for statistical analysis in R without bothering about the data’s initial format and nesting structure. It was developed specifically for users who have no experience with web technologies and merely use R as statistics software. This paper provides an overview of the high-level functions, explains the basic architecture of the package, illustrates the implemented data mapping algorithm, and discusses RWebData’s further development and reuse potential.
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    Scopus© Citations 1
  • Publication
    pvsR: An Open Source Interface to Big Data on the American Political Sphere
    (PLOS, 2015) ;
    Stutzer, Alois
    Digital data from the political sphere is abundant, omnipresent, and more and more directly accessible through the Internet. Project Vote Smart (PVS) is a prominent example of this big public data and covers various aspects of U.S. politics in astonishing detail. Despite the vast potential of PVS’ data for political science, economics, and sociology, it is hardly used in empirical research. The systematic compilation of semi-structured data can be complicated and time consuming as the data format is not designed for conventional scientific research. This paper presents a new tool that makes the data easily accessible to a broad scientific community. We provide the software called pvsR as an add-on to the R programming environment for statistical computing. This open source interface (OSI) serves as a direct link between a statistical analysis and the large PVS database. The free and open code is expected to substantially reduce the cost of research with PVS’ new big public data in a vast variety of possible applications. We discuss its advantages vis-à-vis traditional methods of data generation as well as already existing interfaces. The validity of the library is documented based on an illustration involving female representation in local politics. In addition, pvsR facilitates the replication of research with PVS data at low costs, including the pre-processing of data. Similar OSIs are recommended for other big public databases.
    Scopus© Citations 4
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  • Publication
    Who Owns the Online Media?
    We examine the ownership structure and reach of thousands of news websites in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. By combining data on domain registrants, firm ownership, and domain-level web traffic, we draw detailed ownership networks behind news domains. We find that more than half of these websites have one ultimate owner. Otherwise, they tend to have highly diversified ownership structures, making it non-transparent as to who is ultimately responsible for the content. Moreover, the market concentration for online news is moderate to high and varies substantially across countries. Financial industry firms ultimately own substantial shares in the online news market.
  • Publication
    Lobbying in Disguise
    ( 2023-03-11)
    Carattini, Stefano
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    We present (preliminary) evidence that seems consistent with "lobbying in disguise": - Markedly higher advertising spending by Koch Industries and big oil companies during crucial political periods - Big oil advertising dollars associated with (i) less newspaper coverage of the topic; (ii) lower coverage of the link between hurricanes and global warming; (iii) more skeptical leaning newspaper coverage in crucial years - Koch Industries advertising expenditure might have increased the Republican vote share in the 2008 and 2012 presidential races
  • Publication
    Conference Presentation: Uncovering Vote Trading Through Networks and Computation
    The empirical study of vote trading is very challenging due to the unobservable nature of trading agreements, which hinders the identification of vote trading in real-world data. We develop a new methodological framework for the empirical study of legislative vote trading. Building on the concept of reciprocity in directed weighted networks, our method facilitates the measurement of vote trading on a large scale, while preserving the micro-structure of trades between individual legislators. In principle, it can be applied to a broad variety of voting data and refined for various specific contexts. It allows, for example, to study how vote trading in a specific legislative assembly varies over time. We validate our method with a simulation study in which we have full control over the prevalence of vote trading in the data. Finally, we demonstrate our method in two applications based on roll calls in the US Congress and contrast our method and results with previous empirical work on vote trading. Our results provide first insights into the prevalence and variability of vote trading in the US House over the last four decades.
  • Publication
    Conference Presentation: Uncovering Vote Trading Through Networks and Computation
    The empirical study of vote trading is very challenging due to the unobservable nature of trading agreements, which hinders the identification of vote trading in real-world data. We develop a new methodological framework for the empirical study of legislative vote trading. Building on the concept of reciprocity in directed weighted networks, our method facilitates the measurement of vote trading on a large scale, while preserving the micro-structure of trades between individual legislators. In principle, it can be applied to a broad variety of voting data and refined for various specific contexts. It allows, for example, to study how vote trading in a specific legislative assembly varies over time. We validate our method with a simulation study in which we have full control over the prevalence of vote trading in the data. Finally, we demonstrate our method in two applications based on roll calls in the US Congress and contrast our method and results with previous empirical work on vote trading. Our results provide first insights into the prevalence and variability of vote trading in the US House over the last four decades.
  • Publication
    Special Interest Groups Versus Voters and the Political Economics of Attention
    (School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economics, University of St.Gallen, 2018)
    Balles, Patrick
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    Stutzer, Alois
    Asymmetric information between voters and legislative representatives poses a major challenge to the functioning of representative democracy. We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to politics. Combining data on campaign finance donations made by individuals and special interest groups with information on their preferences for particular bills, we construct novel measures of electoral and organized interests pressure that representatives face with regard to specific legislative votes. In our analysis based on 490 roll calls between 2005 and 2014 in the US House of Representatives, we find strong evidence that representatives are more likely to vote with special interests and against constituency interests when the two are in conflict. Importantly, the latter effect is significantly larger when there is less attention on politics. Thereby, we draw on exogenous newsworthy shock events that crowd out news on the legislative process, but are themselves not related to it. The opportunistic behavior seems not to be mediated by short-term scheduling of sensitive votes right after distracting events.