mapping online publics on twitter
DESCRIPTION
Keynote presented by Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess at the Düsseldorf Workshop on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Twitter Analysis, 14 Sep. 2011.TRANSCRIPT
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
Mapping Online Publics on Twitter
Axel Bruns and Jean BurgessARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationQueensland University of TechnologyBrisbane, Australia
a.bruns / [email protected]@snurb_dot_info / @jeanburgesshttp://mappingonlinepublics.net/
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
Social Media Research in the CCI
o ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (national, based at QUT)o Project: Media Ecologies & Methodological Innovation
o With Journalism & Media Research Centre (JMRC) @ UNSWo Aims to implement new methods to understand the
changing media environment;o Focusing on the relationship between social media and
traditional media and communication platforms;o Combining large-scale computer-assisted techniques with
qualitative social research and close textual analysiso Focus on Crisis Communication
o Natural disasterso Other ‘acute events’
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social
Networks
o Bruns, Burgess, Kirchhoff & Nicolaio http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
o Australian Research Council (ARC): Discovery Project (2010-13) – $410,000o QUT (Brisbane), Sociomantic Labs (Berlin)
o First comprehensive study of Australian social media use.o Computer-assisted cultural analysis: tracking, mapping, analysing
blogs, twitter, flickr, youtube as ‘networked publics’o Builds on previous work of the research team (UCC, YouTube,
blogosphere mapping)o Advances beyond established approaches - beyond political
blogospheres, beyond snapshotso Addressing the problem of scale (‘Big Data’) and disciplinary change in
media, cultural and communication studies.
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
#hashtags on Twitter
o Hashtag =‘#’ + alphanumeric characters: oAutomatic tracking & aggregation of a
topic, represented with a hyperlinkoOriginally a (lead) user innovation, later
integrated into platformo Simple, adaptive and generativeoCan coordinate, render visible, and
constitute publics
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#hashtag Publics
Publics: o Attend to matters of shared concern with some
level of co-awarenesso Varied in intensity and temporalityo Emergent, constituted via discourse & affect
#hashtag publics:o Not all hashtags constitute publics; Twitter doesn’t
‘contain’ publicso What are the various patterns in the dynamics of
different hashtag-based publics?o What might account for these differences?
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o Data Gatheringo yourTwapperkeeper: API-based data capture
o Data Processingo Gawk – open source, multiplatform, programmable command-line tool for
processing CSV documents
o Textual Analysiso Leximancer – commercial (University of Queensland), multiplatform:
extracts key concepts from large corpora of text, examines and visualises concept co-occurrence
o WordStat – commercial, PC-only text analysis tool; generates concept co-occurrence data that can be exported for visualisation
o Visualisationo Gephi – open source, multiplatform network visualisation tool
Tools for Researching Twitter
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#ausvotes (July-Aug. 2010)
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#royalwedding (29 Apr. 2011)
#eqnz (Feb./Mar. 2011)
#qldfloods: @QPSmedia (Jan. 2011)
#ausvotes: Leaders
#ausvotes: Themes
#spill (23 June 2010)
#GoBackSBS (June/July 2011)
Comparative Metrics
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Towards a Typology of Twitter Uses
o How are hashtags used (during acute events)?o Gatewatching:
o Finding and sharing information about breaking news (before the mainstream media do?)
o Ad hoc publics: many URLs, many retweets (even unedited)o Audiencing:
o Shared experience of major (foreseen) eventso Imagined community of fellow participants: few URLs, limited
retweeting
o What other uses are there?o Continuing discussions (#auspol, #bundesliga, …)o Memes (#ghettohurricanenames, …)o Emotive hashtags (#fail, #win, #headdesk, …)o What about keywords?
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Beyond Hashtags
o Publics on Twitter:o Micro: @reply and retweet conversationso Meso: hashtag ‘communities’o Macro: follower/followee networks
Multiple overlapping publics / networks
o What drives their formation and dissipation?o How do they interact and interweave?o How are they interleaved with the wider
media ecology?o Twitter doesn’t contain publics: publics transcend
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Understanding Australian Twitter Use
o What is the Australian Twitter userbase?o Large-scale snowballing projecto Starting from selected hashtag communities
(e.g. #ausvotes, #qldfloods, #masterchef)o Identifying participating users, testing for
‘Australianness’:o Timezone setting, location information, profile information
o Retrieving follower/followee information for each account (very slow)
o Progress update:o ~550,000 Australian users identified so far
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The Australian Twittersphere
Follower/followee network:~150,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~550,000 known accounts so far) colour = outdegree, size = indegree
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The Australian Twittersphere
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http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess