Aid Data's new report paints a detailed picture of how government and civil society leaders around the world are using data for decision making. National statistics demand a lot of attention. Civil society and citizen generated data aren't as prominent as ardent believers in the data revolution might have hoped.
Findings: A review of 133 cross-sectional studies finds that the most significant political effects of social media use across contexts have to do with expression of political views on social networking sites, while an experiment with Belgian legislators confirms the WUNC thesis of protest influence on elite opinion (ie: size matters, so does coherence). An experiment on public sector...