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 / je.burgess@qut.edu.au@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

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

#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?

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

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

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

#ausvotes (July-Aug. 2010)

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

#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

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

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

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess