twitter and social movements

Twitter 201: Twitter & Social Movements

Washington University in St. Louis Libraries, April 26, 2012Jaleh Fazelian &Makiba Foster

Twitter and Social Movements

• Twitter Lingo• History• Being mobile• Censorship• Using #hashtags• Power of the RT• Questions

Twitter Lingo

• ReTweeting

• Hashtag

#IranElection

Green Protest / Javad Saharban/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

#IranElection

A Match Made in Heaven

Twitter for Android / yum9me / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Twitter Meeting @ Lowlands / Anne Helmond / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

What do these countries have in common?

• China – Full Twitter Ban

• Britain – Riots in 2011

• Iran – #IranElection

• Egypt – #Jan25

• South Korea – North Korean Twitter Account

Censorship

Twitter Pack / Carrot Creative / CC BY 2.0

Sina Weibo

Harnessing the Power of Twitter with# Hashtags #

Photo Credit: Christopher Lazo

Variations of #

#SocialMovements on Twitter

• Community• Awareness• Organization

Revolution & ReTweets (RT)

# × RT = Trending Topic

Twitter Year In ReviewHashtags of 2011

• #egypt• #tigerblood• #threewordstoliveby• #idontunderstandwhy• #japan• #improudtosay• #superbowl• #jan25

Trending World News 2011• Mubarak’s resignation• Raid on Osama bin Laden• Japanese earthquake and Fukushima

nuclear disaster• Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords• Gaddafi’s death• Swine Flu outbreak

Most ReTweeted 2010

1. Gulf Oil Spill 2. Haiti Earthquake 3. Pakistan Floods 4. Koreas Conflict 5. Chilean Miners Rescue 6. Chavez Tas Ponchao 7. Wikileaks Cablegate 8. Hurricane Earl 9. Prince Williams Engagement10. World Aids Day

Questions / Tim O'Brien / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Works Cited• Al-Rasheed, Madawi. “Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi Arabian Responses to the Arab Spring.”

Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, v. 11, no. 3, 2011.• Ding, Ling. “Micro-blogging in network society.” Journal of Digital and Research Publishing. http://

6pmjournal.blogspot.com/2011/02/micro-blogging-in-network-society.html Accessed 3/30/2012. • Furman, Henry “The Hashtag: A Case Study”. http://

wirescrossedblog.tumblr.com/post/15567326293/the-hashtag-acasestudy Accessed April 10, 2012• Golkar, Saeid. “Liberation or Suppression Technologies? The Internet, the Green Movement, and the

Regime in Iran.” International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, v. 9, no. 1, 2011. • Key Global Telecom Indicators for the World Telecommunication Service Sector in 2011 (http://

mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats#subscribers). Accessed April 10, 2012.• Mobile Statistics, Stats and Facts 2011. (

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/2011-mobile-statistics-stats-facts-marketing-infographic/). Accessed April 10, 2012.

• Parr, Ben. “Mindblowing #IranElection stats: 221,744 Tweets per Hour at Peak.” Mashable. http://mashable.com/2009/06/17/iranelection-crisis-numbers/ Accessed April 19, 2012.

• Starbird, Kate K. "(how) Will the Revolution be Retweeted? Information Diffusion and the 2011 Egyptian Uprising.” Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW '12. http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/StarbirdPalen_RevolutionRetweeted.pdf Accessed April 23, 2012

• Wasserman, Todd. “The Architect of #OccupyWallStreet Praises the Power of ‘Magical Hashtags’.” Mashable. http://mashable.com/2011/10/27/occupy-wall-street-adbusters/. Accessed April 10, 2012

Contact

• Jaleh Fazelian– @jalehf– jfazelia@wustl.edu

• Makiba Foster– @makibaj– mfoster@wustl.edu

• http://libguides.wustl.edu/twitter201 • @WUSTLlibraries