News via Voldemort:The role of parody and satire in topical discussions on Twitter

Tim HighfieldARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationQueensland University of Technology | Curtin UniversityBrisbane, Australia | Perth, Australiat.highfield @ qut.edu.au@timhighfieldhttp://mappingonlinepublics.net/ | http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• What is the role of parody/gimmick/humour accounts in discussion of news?

• Do they act as bridges or form separated, disconnected takes on news?

• Are the same roles carried out across multiple topics?• How does topical content relate to these accounts’

‘usual’ tweets?

#OVERLYHONESTMETHODS

• This research is a by-product of accumulated studies into discussions on Twitter about politics, popular culture, live broadcasts, sport, crises…

– An accidental paper, with impetus provided by serendipity

– Also a very exploratory paper, providing some initial comments on some of the questions raised and ideas for further exploration…

#OVERLYHONESTMETHODS

OVERVIEW

• Parody accounts and their ilk are “part of the fabric” of Twitter (Vis, 2013)– Three of 25 most-mentioned accounts discussing 2011 UK

riots on Twitter were fake/spoof accounts

• Neither new nor Twitter-specific, though– Creation of MySpace accounts ‘as’ fictional characters,

mixing the personal and the original text (Booth, 2010)– Gimmick accounts prevalent on message boards, fora,

comments sections

OVERVIEW

• Cultural context– Creation of fake/parody accounts as a memetic practice on

Twitter• Memetic: “extensive user engagement by way of creative

derivatives” (Shifman, 2012)

– Breaking news, cultural phenomena, gaffes, quickly followed by accounts spoofing events

• Meta-meme/trope of Twitter?

• Not limited to any one field– Political parodies well-established, but not the only fake

contributors to discussions on Twitter

(INITIAL) TYPOLOGY

• Character-specific– e.g. Lord_Voldemort7

• Public figure-specific– Queen_UK, YourMateColin

• Parodying an idea/stereotype of a type of person– NotTildaSwinton, MatureAge

• Organisation/non-human– DeathStarPR, SarcasticRover, https://twitter.com/Exciting_Perth

• Topic-specific (including character/figure/thing) – more short-lived?– Subiaco_Cat, Hoyts_Mouse, PerthMillipede,

numerous Obama chair accounts…

• Hoax – deliberately malicious• Role-playing• …

METHODS

• Exploratory study, for further development• A mixture of manual and automated data collection and

analysis, covering multiple datasets since 2011

• For automated collection and analysis:– yourTwapperKeeper– Gawk scripts, Gephi (see Mapping Online Publics)

• Augmented by manual capture

GENERAL AND TOPICAL

GENERAL AND TOPICAL

• Eurovision – the reach of @queen_uk: red nodes are those directly linked to @queen_uk; blue: @planet_jedward; green: @bbceurovision; yellow: @loreen_talhaoui; pink: @eurovision

GENERAL AND TOPICAL

• Armstrong (keyword dataset) (25-26 August) – some Lance Armstrong, death of Neil Armstrong:– red (@lord_voldemort7)– green (@nbcnightly)

GENERAL AND TOPICAL

• Tour de France– Presence of parody accounts for (Australian) presenters

– Fostered by familiarity with broadcast– Tropes of the coverage, captive audience (three weeks

of racing)– Topic-specific; limited non-cycling/sport coverage?

TOPICALITY OF PARODY ACCOUNTS

• Five months of tweets (May-October 2013) from @queen_uk, @lord_voldemort7, @deathstarpr

TOPICALITY OF PARODY ACCOUNTS

Lord_Voldemort7 Queen_UK DeathStarPR

Original tweets 165 605 146

RTs of others 2 2 9

Replies 0 1 43

Total 167 608 198

Tweets per day 1.07 3.90 1.27

TOPICALITY OF PARODY ACCOUNTS

deathstarprStarWars reply

Topical Self-promotion (web content)

RT Trending

MT Self-promotion (purchase)

queen_uk

TopicalCharacter-specificSelf-promotion (web content)self-promotion (shop)sponsoredRT

lord_voldemort7

HPTrendingTopicalSponsoredOtherRTPromo

TOPICALITY OF PARODY ACCOUNTS

Lord_Voldemort7

Queen_UK DeathStarPR

n RTs (mean) Faves (mean) n RTs (mean) Faves (mean) n RTs (mean) Faves (mean)

Topical 35 3982.71 1864.14 392 794.05 220.93 41 949.88 248.98

RT 2 2315.50 1611.50 2 139.00 53.50 9 733.67 128.00

Character-specific 66 2907.68 1595.73 143 554.74 168.45 88 609.00 234.61

Trending 41 2164.93 1114.71 2 335.50 140.50

MT 1 95.00 55.00

Self-promo (web) 1 76.00 155.00 49 109.45 42.37 13 27.31 34.46

Self-promo (shop) 17 97.71 50.41 1 14.00 13.00

Reply 17.00 23.00 43 5.28 10.09

Sponsored 16 93.19 103.19 5 703.20 168.20

Other 6 2251.67 924.50

TOPICALITY OF PARODY ACCOUNTS

• Cross-over:– Celebrity and gossip:

• Kim Kardashian and Kanye West named their child "North West". It's like you WANT us to destroy your planet. [1541 | 377]

• One can confirm that the new Royal baby will not be called North West. This is mainly because William and Catherine are not morons. [4036 | 1061]

• So I'm assuming that North West won't be a One Direction fan? [28424 | 11276]

• If Prince William and Kate Middleton have a daughter and DON'T call her Princess Leia, they're wasting everybody's time. #RoyalBaby [1626 | 380]

TOPICALITY OF PARODY ACCOUNTS

• Cross-over:– Breaking news:

• Text from Ed Miliband: "Delighted Catherine has joined labour. Together we will rebuild Britain" Absolute idiot. [8135 | 2057]

• The half-blood prince has been born as the seventh month dies. #RoyalBaby [6464 | 2909]

• Due to our govt shutdown, the following non-essential depts are closed: education, health, welfare. Planet exploding to continue as normal. [893 | 257]

• American Government started to shut down. Not sure what the fuss is. Italian Government shut down about 40 years ago and no one's noticed. [2406 | 714]

• Clearly this whole "shut down" is just the US government's way of hiding the dementor attacks. [5133 | 2089]

TOPICALITY OF PARODY ACCOUNTS

• Cross-over:– Geek and tech culture:

• Just upgraded to #iOS7 and now our exhaust port force field is on the fritz. Oh well, what are the chances of Rebels attacking us n [636 | 222]

• Dear most of the world, there will be a short break in leadership whilst one downloads iOS 7. This will take approximate seven years. EIIR [1610 | 503]

• George R. R. Martin is avada kedavraing more people? He's about three deaths away from being called a Dark Lord. [2524 | 1102]

• George R. R. Martin kills more people than the Death Star. #GameofThrones [1174 | 323]

• One is not the next Dr Who. [1099 | 299]• Ben Affleck as Batman will be the opposite of "movie magic." That is

"movie muggles.“ [1485 | 595]

INITIAL POINTS/FURTHER DIRECTIONS

• Topical coverage attracts more RTs/favourites than other comments– Extends audience? Appeals to more users than account’s

usual comments?• Thematic framing around subject of interest provides original

take on news – encourages RTing in addition to/in place of news organisations?

• Importance of humour to news coverage – type of event important, although an audience for humour/satire/black humour – see also comedians, for instance

• Types of event vs. types of account – celebrity news (and trending topics) more common fodder than politics?

INITIAL POINTS/FURTHER DIRECTIONS

• Limited engagement with other accounts?– DeathStarPR the exception here, with 40+ @replies over

the five months– This applies too to other parody accounts – despite there

being accounts for other royals/HP characters, the Queen and Voldemort do not engage with them

• DeathStarPR mentions/RTs @JerkSuperman, but this account is by the same people?

– Parody operates in a bubble?• Participating in social discussions (e.g. #eurovision) and

attracting/encouraging RTs, but not responding to audience or surroundings?

INITIAL POINTS/FURTHER DIRECTIONS

• Parody as meta-commentary– Established parody accounts dismissing the inevitable

influx of new parody accounts in response to breaking news (staying in character as the ‘real’ (fake) subject?)

• Impact of reporting on Twitter activity by news outlets– Drives spikes in RTing/favouriting?– Aggregating humorous tweets in response to news stories

may lead to increased audience for these tweets/accounts• Getting more coverage and reaction in this way may

encourage further topical commentary? (albeit brief engagement with topics)

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