A metric for the measurement of passively transparent behavior in communication chains

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method for empirically measuring the extent to which social institutions actively cooperate in the provision of public information. The method described here allows researchers to collect accurate empirical data corresponding to specific items of requested information to produce presentable meta-data on the information collection process. The data are extracted from communication chains and generated by tracking each unitary item of requested information in an item chain. After describing the data collection process and how the data are indexed using a three-figure tag, we explain how the collected data can be used to produce aggregated passive transparency ratings for institutions across content topics and for content topics across institutions. The article ends with a discussion of the social value of using transparency data, and the benefits that might be derived from institutional and content-specific passive transparency ratings.