Mapping Online Publics: Researching the Uses of Twitter

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

Mapping Online Publics:Researching the Uses of Twitter

Assoc. Prof. Axel BrunsARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationQueensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

a.bruns@qut.edu.au – http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_infohttp://mappingonlinepublics.net/

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

Why Twitter?

o Researching Twitter:o Significant world-wide social networko ~200 million users (but how many active?)o Varied range of uses: from phatic communication

to emergency coordinationo Healthy third-party ecosystem (for now)o Strong history of user innovation:

@replies, #hashtagso Flat and open network structure:

non-reciprocal following, public profiles by defaulto Good API for gathering data for research

(Google Maps)

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

The 2011 Queensland Floods

o Chronology:o December 2010 to January 2011: unprecedented

rainfallo Emergency declared for more than 50% of Queenslando Wivenhoe dam reaches 180% capacity

o December 2010: Flooding in northern Queensland

o January 2011: Floods in southeast Queenslando 10 January 2011: flash flooding in Toowoombao 10 January 2011: ‘inland tsunami’ in the Lockyer Valleyo 11 January 2011: flooding begins in Ipswicho 12-16 January 2011: major flooding in Brisbane

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(Google Maps)

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(ABC News)

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(ABC News)

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(news.com.au)

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(ABC News)

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(ABC News)

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(ABC News)

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Social Media during the Floods

o Various platforms:o Facebook, Twitter – updates and informationo YouTube, Flickr, Twitpic – first-hand video and photoso Google Maps, Ushahidi – map-based information mashups Different tools for different purposes

o Various levels of maturity:o Uses and use practices still developingo Different demographic reach

o Technological differences:o e.g. Facebook: built around personal networks; semi-private;

discussion threadso e.g. Twitter: open, flat network; public #hashtag conversations;

update stream

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

#qldfloods Tweets10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011

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10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011

#qldfloods from Toowoomba to Brisbane

#qldfloods @replies

mainstream media

authorities

@QPSmedia as Central #qldfloods Information Source

#qldfloods Network Map – Most Active Accounts Only

(Degree >= 15 / Node size: indegree / node colour: outdegree)

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The Queensland Floods Community

o Self-organisation:o Rapid establishment of #qldfloods hashtago Ad hoc development of community structureso Highlighting of leading accounts, vigilant against disruptiono Suspension of petty squabbles (e.g. state politics)

o Innovation and rapid prototyping:o Adjunct hashtags (#Mythbuster, #bakedrelief)o Sharing and gathering of online resourceso Additional tools (Google Maps, Ushahidi Maps)o Emergency services rapidly adopting social media tools

(despite lack of established strategies)

‘Go where they are’ rather than ‘build it and they will come’

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/Image by Maproom Systems

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New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content

in Online Social Networkso Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project

(2010-13) – $410,000o QUT (Brisbane), Sociomantic Labs (Berlin)

o First comprehensive study of Australian social media useo 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 – natively digital methods

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

o Data Gatheringo yourTwapperkeeper + in-house crawler

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

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Analysis – Twapperkeeper (#hashtags)

•Volume over time

•Keyword frequencies

Patterns of Activity over Time

•Conversation vs. follower network

•Dissemination of RTs vs. @replies

Networks of @Replies(short/long term)

•Keyword analysis over time

•Keyword co-occurrence maps

Keyword / Key Phrase Mapping

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But Why?

o Possible research questions:o Ad hoc events and publics:

o How do online publics form and dissolve? How do they interact, what structures do they form?

o Where do they draw information from? What do they share?

o Do they simply consist of the usual suspects? How insular and disconnected are online publics?

o Hashtags in context:o How do different hashtag events compare? Are there

common types of hashtags/publics?o How ‘big’ are they? What topics attract attention on

Twitter?o What community (?) structures emerge?

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#royalwedding

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Hashtag Publics, Hashtag Metrics

o How big is the central core of users?o Long tail distribution: most active users responsible for

the majority of contento 90/9/1 rule: how much does the top 1% of users

contribute?o #royalwedding: ~10% of all tweetso #qldfloods: ~17% of all tweetso #libya: ~49% of all tweets

o What do they do: inform, share, chat?o How many links to they share?o How much retweeting do they do (edited/unedited)?o How many @replies do they send / receive?o … etc.

Tweets by Top 1% of Contributors

Distinguishing Apples and Oranges(top 1% most active users in each hashtag; size = percentage of total tweet volume)

Top 1% most active users

Distinguishing Apples and Oranges

All contributors

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

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?

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

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

Twitter

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

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

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

The Australian Twittersphere

Follower/followee network:~150,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~550,000 known accounts so far) colour = outdegree, size = indegree

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

The Australian Twittersphere

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@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess