Zello allows for channels to have tags for organizing the channels within their app, and the most common tags of our initial sample include “Politics” (23), “Local” (20), “News” (17), “Religion” (9), “Humor” (4), and “Technology” (3). The average group size is just over 100 members per channel but this is skewed by some of the larger channels, as the median channel size is 31 members. The total sum of the channels’ overall sizes (as of 12 October 2020) is above 21,000, though there is likely substantial overlap between channels, meaning this number is likely a good deal lower.
Just looking at the channels that have not been deleted, average group membership is just above 100 people per channel, though the largest channels have around 1000 accounts among their membership. Not every channel has moderators, but those that do often have multiple moderators. For every channel there is one owner and at least one admin of the channel (owner level of connection to the channel is mutually inclusive with admin level, though some channels have many admins). Drawing connections between these two entity types netted us 1587 connections across these 1040 nodes. Of our sample of 223 Zello channels, we found 817 total associated moderation team accounts. What does the Zello militia data look like? These accounts and channels are then associated with one another along this relationship structure, and channels are classified by the ‘character’ of the group they represent (III%, Oath Keeper, Light Foot Militia, Local Militia, etc), as well as their use (General, Recruitment, Intel, etc). A few other points of data, such as length of time since last update, tags used to promote the channel, number of accounts in the channel, and number of accounts blocked from the channel. As one can see from this page, some channels have pretty sizeable moderation teams, which is likely also indicative of the number of people in the group that have at least some influence among the militia group within the overall group’s hierarchy.
Zello radio mods#
The way the data has been coded, these channels have an owner (indicated by the “Updated by” field under channel name), at least one admin (indicated by the “Channel administrators” area of the landing page), and sometimes mods (indicated by the “Channel moderators” section). Public landing pages also have a QR code for opening the channel on a phone, which has been removed from the above image Here’s a sample of what a Zello channel landing page looks like on their site, this one for a III% group of 133.
Zello radio mod#
For this project, large excel sheets and Kumu were used for structuring and analyzing the data.Īnd so by gathering publicly-available information from Zello channels hosted online under URLs, we were able to generate a network for analysis based on the mod and admin teams of each channel. There are a number of apps and programs for analyzing data that are structured by relationships within a network, including Gephi, several R packages, Kumu, and about a dozen others. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the set of tools and methodology geared towards analyzing networked interactions in order to better understand social ecosystems and information streams.
Zello radio how to#
Zello itself has used the Cajun Navy as advertising material on their blog and the Cajun Navy printed information about how to connect to their channel on their site. the New Yorker, the Observer, local news like KTBC FOX 7 Austin among countless others. The app made positive press for being a tool of choice for the Cajun Navy in responding to massive floods in Louisiana in 2016 and Texas in 2017, as reported in The Washington Post.
Zello radio android#
It is rated about 4.5/5 on both the iOS and Android stores with hundreds of thousands of ratings each, indicating a massive and mostly-happy userbase.
Zello radio for free#
They also have a personal and phone app that is available for free use and marketed towards connecting “with family, friends, and your community” via “public and private channels”. Their site aims their technology primarily towards Zello’s workplace solutions, ZelloWork, which covers industries such as “Transportation”, “Hospitality” and “Emergency Response”. Zello is a push-to-talk walkie-talkie app that allows users to create group communication lines across great distances, requiring only an internet or cellular data connection to broadcast one’s voice to a select audience across limitless miles.