Alexander Nwala Computer Science Ph.D student, Old Dominion University

Summer Fellow, Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab

Dr. Michael Nelson, Dr. Michele Weigle Department of Computer Science, Old Dominion University

July 17, 2016

Tweet Visibility Dynamics in a Tweet Conversation Graph

t1 t2 t4

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Key

tweettweet id

t1 (parent) replied by t2 (child)

tweet selected

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t1 t2

Tweet Visibility Dynamics in a Tweet Conversation Graph

t1 (#something)

Consider tweet t1 by user Alice which contains #something

A

3

t1 (contains #something)

reply to a tweet

(contains #somethingelse)

#Alice’s tweets

Through the browser or API we can see Alice’s tweets: the first tweet (t1), contains #something, the second tweet, is a reply, and the third tweet contains #somethingelse

A

A

A

4

We can see Alice’s tweet (t1) using #something (via browser or API). The hashtag also contains tweets from other users: Bob and Carol

#something

Carol’s tweets

t1 (#something)

Bob’s tweets

Alice’s tweets

(#something)

(#something)

#somethingAlice’s tweets

Bob’s tweets

Carol’s tweets

A

C

B

A A

BB

C

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Consider the tweet conversation containing tweet t1 and t2

t1 t2 t4

t5

t6

t8t3

t7

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#something does not “stitch” the conversations across multiple users who replied t1

#something

Carol’s tweet

Bob’s tweet

Alice’s tweet t1 t2 t4

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t8t3

t7

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There is no neat way of collecting tweets in a conversation, since the subset of the graph seen depends on what tweet is selected (represented as red dot in the next slide):

From the browser, the selected tweet can see the parent tweets, (plus parent ancestors - above) and children tweets (plus children descendants - below), but NOT sibling tweets (sideways).

From the API, the selected tweet can see the parent tweets (plus parent ancestors - above), but NOT children tweets (plus children descendants - below), and NOT sibling tweets (sideways).

See the next slide to see how the tweet graph changes depending on what tweet is selected:

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API

Browser

API

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Browser

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API

Browser

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t1 t2 t4

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t1 t2 t4

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t1 t2 t4

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t1 t2 t4

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t1 t2 t4

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t1 t2 t4

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t1 t2 t4

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t1 t2 t4

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