Mapping the Australian Twittersphere
Jean Burgess & Axel Bruns@jeanburgess @snurb_dot_infohttp://mappingonlinepublics.net/ Queensland University of Technology
NEW MEDIA AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION: MAPPING AUSTRALIAN USER-CREATED CONTENT
IN ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS
• Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (2010-13) – $410,000– QUT (Brisbane), Sociomantic Labs (Berlin)– First comprehensive study of Australian social media use– Computer-assisted cultural analysis: tracking, mapping, analysing blogs, Twitter,
Flickr, YouTube as ‘networked publics’– Motivated by media, communication & cultural studies’ concerns; combining
quantitative analytics with qualitative analysis
‘BIG DATA’ & INTERNET RESEARCH
• Big Data as currency across the sciences and social sciences• Business intelligence & ‘data markets’ (including social media &
online behavioral data).• ‘Computational turn’ in new humanities research: shift from
computational tools to a new computational paradigm, changing the ontologies and epistemologies of humanities research (Berry, 2012).
• Eg shift from ‘close’ to ‘distant’ reading (Moretti); ‘software studies’ (eg Fuller, 2008) and ANT approaches to new media platforms;
• From ‘virtual’/trad social research methods to ‘natively’ digital methods to diagnose patterns of social change (Rogers, 2009).
• Data Gathering– yourTwapperkeeper + in-house crawler– Reliant on Twitter API
• Data Processing– Custom Gawk scripts – open source, multiplatform,
programmable command-line tool for processing CSV documents
• Analytics & Visualisation– Gephi – open source, multiplatform network visualisation tool– MS Excel – comparative metrics, coding
A TWITTER RESEARCH TOOLKIT
#HASHTAG PUBLICS
• Publics – Attend to matters of shared concern with some level of co-awareness– Varied in intensity and temporality– Emergent, constituted via discourse & affect
• #hashtags– ‘#’ + keyword makes tweets easily discoverable and marks themes– E.g. #ausvotes, #qldfloods, #mit8, #swag, #nofilter, …
• #hashtag publics– Not all hashtags constitute publics; hashtags don’t represent the sum of
engagement with these topics on Twitter; Twitter doesn’t ‘contain’ publics– What are the patterns in the dynamics of different hashtag-based publics?– What might account for these differences?
#QLDFLOODS TWEETS
10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011
#AUSVOTES: LEADERS
#QLDFLOODS @REPLIES
mainstream media
authorities
#AUSPOL (FEB.-DEC. 2011)
TOWARDS COMPARATIVE METRICS
MAPPING THE AUSTRALIAN TWITTERSPHERE
• Snowballing: what is the Australian user-base?• Starting from selected hashtag communities in 2010
(e.g. #ausvotes, #qldfloods, #masterchef)• Identifying participating accounts, testing for ‘Australianness’:
• Timezone setting, location information, profile information
• Retrieving follower/followee information for each account (very slow)
• Progress update (end 2012):• ~1.06 million Australian accounts identified so far• ~2 million Australian accounts in total?
DISCLAIMERS
The map is not the territory (Korzybski)
…and certainly not the destination
Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = outdegree, size = indegree
PerthMarketing / PR
DesignWeb
Creative
FarmingAgriculture
HardlineConservatives
ConservativesJournalists
ALPProgressives
Greens
News
OpinionNews
NGOsSocial Policy
ITTech
Social MediaTechPR
Advertising
Real EstateProperty
JobsHR
Business
BusinessProperty
Parenting
Mums CraftArts
FoodWine
Beer
Adelaide
SocialICTs
CreativeDesign
FashionBeauty
UtilitiesServices
Net Culture
BooksLiteraturePublishing
Film
TheatreArts
RadioTV Music
DanceHip Hop
Triple J
TalkbackBreakfast TVCelebritiesCycling
Union
NRL
Football
CricketAFL
SwimmingV8s
Evangelicals
Teachinge-Learning
Schools
ChristiansHillsong
Teens
Jonas Bros.Beliebers
Australian Bands
@KRuddMP
@JuliaGillard
#AUSPOL
Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = #auspol tweets, size = indegree
#AUSVOTES
Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = #ausvotes tweets, size = indegree
#QLDFLOODS
Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = #qldfloods tweets, size = indegree
#EQNZ
Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = #eqnz tweets, size = indegree
#ROYALWEDDING
Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = #royalwedding tweets, size = indeg.
#MASTERCHEF
Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = #masterchef tweets, size = indeg.
ABC.NET.AU URLS
URLs for Feb 2013Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = tweets with URLs, size = indegree
NEWS.COM.AU URLS
URLs for Feb 2013Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = tweets with URLs, size = indegree
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/