Mapping Online Publics: Understanding the Role of Twitter in Public Communication

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

Mapping Online Publics:Understanding the Role of Twitter in Public Communication

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

[email protected] – http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_infohttp://mappingonlinepublics.net/

mailto:[email protected]

http://snurb.info/

http://twitter.com/snurb_dot_info


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


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

in Online Social Networkso Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (2010-13) – $410,000

o 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 Addressing the problem of scale (‘Big Data’) and disciplinary change in media,

cultural and communication studies – natively digital methodso Studying society with the Internet (Richard Rogers)



#hashtag Publicso #hashtags

o ‘#’ + keyword makes tweets easily discoverable and marks themeso E.g. #ausvotes, #qldfloods, #londonriots, #royalwedding, #euro2012,

…

o Publics o Attend to matters of shared concern with some level of co-awarenesso Varied in intensity and temporalityo Emergent, constituted via discourse & affect

o #hashtag publicso Not all hashtags constitute publics; Twitter doesn’t ‘contain’ publicso What are the patterns in the dynamics of different hashtag-based

publics?o What might account for these differences?


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, multiplatform: extracts key concepts from

large corpora of text, examines and visualises concept co-occurrenceo 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


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?

#qldfloods @replies

mainstream media

authorities


#ausvotes: Leaders

#royalwedding


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 #auspol: ~65% of all tweets

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


Towards Comparative Metrics


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?


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

Twitter and/in the Media Ecology


Twitter and/in the Media Ecology


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 informationo Retrieving follower/followee information for each account

(very slow)

o Progress update:o ~950,000 Australian users identified so far, ~21m

connections ~2 million Australian users in total?


The Australian Twittersphere?

Follower/followee network:~150,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~550,000 known accounts by mid-2011) colour = outdegree, size = indegree

The Australian Twittersphere?

Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = outdegree, size = indegree

Thematic ClustersPerth

Marketing / 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

Austra

lian

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

#royalwedding

Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = #royalwedding tweets, size = indeg.

abc.net.au URLs

Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = tweets with URLs, size = indegree


Understanding Twitter Publics

o #hashtags:o Useful coordinating mechanism for core discussiono Relatively easy to capture and analyseo Fails to capture non-hashtagged tweets about the topico Good case studies, but very little comparative work to date

o National / global Twittersphere mapso Crucial contextual baseline for #hashtag case studieso Slow and laborious data gathering process, never completeo Very long-term perspective, beyond most funded projectso Indispensable for study of Twitter as a public space


‘Big Data’ and the Digital Humanities

o Emerging needs in Twitter research:o Unified, compatible methods and metrics for Twitter analysis

Tools and approaches shared at http://mappingonlinepublics.net/o Powerful infrastructure for long-term, high-volume tracking of

Australian public communication on Twitter Data access requires substantial funding stream

o Facilities for long-term data storage and preservation Key roles for National Library, National Archives

o Integration with related datasets (e.g. MSM content) Need to address data interoperability questions

o Twitter as a test case for digital humanities researcho Widespread, open, public platform for everyday communicationo Tool for observing society at scale through Internet research

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


@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess@_StephenH@DrTNitins@timhighfield@cdtavijit



http://twitter.com/jeanburgess

http://twitter.com/jeanburgess

http://twitter.com/_StephenH

http://twitter.com/_StephenH

http://twitter.com/DrTNitins

http://twitter.com/DrTNitins

http://twitter.com/timhighfield

http://twitter.com/timhighfield

http://twitter.com/cdtavijit

http://twitter.com/cdtavijit

Education

Mapping Online Publics: Understanding the Role of Twitter in Public Communication