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This presentation offers a descriptive account of Twitter (a micro-blogging service) across four high profile, mass convergence events—two emergency and two national security. We statistically examine how Twitter is being used surrounding these events, and compare and contrast how that behavior is different from more general Twitter use. Our findings suggest that Twitter messages sent during these types of events contain more displays of information broadcasting and brokerage, and we observe that general Twitter use seems to have evolved over time to offer more of an information-sharing purpose. We also provide preliminary evidence that Twitter users who join during and in apparent relation to a mass convergence or emergency event are more likely to become long-term adopters of the technology.
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Twitter Adoption and Use in Mass Convergence and
Emergency Events
Amanda Lee Hughes & Leysia PalenConnectivIT Lab
University of Colorado at Boulder
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Overview
• Quantitative & Opportunistic study of Twitter in the late summer of 2008
• Examine use in four mass convergence events– 2 emergency
– 2 non-emergency
• Future research
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• Micro-blogging service• Short messages up to 140 characters • Messages (also known as tweets) can
be sent and retrieved through various means
• Over 3 million user accounts• Nearly 1 million messages sent per day
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Events of Study August and September of 2008
• Democratic National Convention (DNC)– August 25-28, 2008– Denver, Colorado– Estimated attendance of 50,000
• Republican National Convention (RNC)– September 1-4, 2008– Saint Paul, Minnesota– Estimated attendance of 45,000
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Events of Study August and September of 2008
• Hurricane Gustav– August 25-September 4, 2008– US Landfall near Cocodrie, Louisiana on
September 1, 2008– Nearly two million evacuated in the US
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Events of Study August and September of 2008
• Hurricane Ike– September 1-September 14, 2008– US Landfall at Galveston, Texas on
September 13, 2008– Mandatory evacuation of 160,000 in the US
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Event Timeline
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Data Collection
Event Data Collection Timeframe
Search Terms # Tweets
Conventions
DNC 21 Aug 2008 – 28 Aug 2008
Denver, DNC 21,139
RNC 8 Aug 2008 – 4 Sep 2008
RNC, St Paul, Saint Paul
17,588
Hurricanes
Gustav 25 Aug 2008 – 4 Sep 2008
Gustav, hurricane 38,373
Ike 1 Sep 2008 – 14 Sep 2008
Ike, hurricane 59,963
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Data Collection
• General Twitter Sample - to compare against our event specific data– Taken during our entire data collection timeframe,
August 21, 2008 – September 14, 2008.
– Of the approximately 27 million tweets sent during this time frame we randomly sampled 1%
– Tweets from our other data sets were included
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Convention Daily Twitter Activity
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
21-Aug-0822-Aug-0823-Aug-0824-Aug-0825-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-08
DNC
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
28-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08
RNC
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Convention Daily Twitter Activity
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
21-Aug-0822-Aug-0823-Aug-0824-Aug-0825-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-08
DNC
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
28-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08
RNC
Days of each convention
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Hurricane Daily Twitter Activity
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
25-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08
Gustav
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
1-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-085-Sep-086-Sep-087-Sep-088-Sep-089-Sep-0810-Sep-0811-Sep-0812-Sep-0813-Sep-0814-Sep-08
Ike
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Hurricane Daily Twitter Activity
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
25-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08
Gustav
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
# Tweets
1-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-085-Sep-086-Sep-087-Sep-088-Sep-089-Sep-0810-Sep-0811-Sep-0812-Sep-0813-Sep-0814-Sep-08
Ike
US Landfall US LandfallCuba Landfall
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Number of Tweets Per User
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
80.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
DNCRNCGustavIke
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Reply Tweet Example
“@miamiherald what did Gov. Crist say this morning about the Hurricane and Evacs? #Ike”
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Reply Tweets
0
5
10
15
20
25
% ReplyTweets
DNCRNCGustavIkeGeneral
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URL Tweet Examples
“Hurricane Ike hampers relief effort in Haiti - guardian.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/5qwkjo”
“For latest shelter info: http://www.msema.org/ #gustav”
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URL Tweets
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
% URL Tweets
DNC
RNC
Gustav
Ike
General
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Adoption of Twitter
• Collected information about all the new users in each data set
• Examined how many tweets each new user had sent since the time of the original data collection
• Defined “active users” as those who have contributed one or more tweet every week
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Adoption of Twitter
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
% Active Users
DNCRNCGustavIkeGeneral
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Conclusions
• Twitter supports information broadcasting and brokerage.
• Preliminary evidence that those new Twitter users who join during and in apparent relation to a non-routine event are more likely to become long-term adopters of the technology.
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Future Research
• This research serves as a baseline.• Twitter activity is changing.• Right now, we are looking at Twitter
activity around the recent Red River floods and Oklahoma fires. – Quantitative– Qualitative
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Future Research
• Look for more to come soon...
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Thank You!
• This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation:
– NSF CAREER Grant IIS-0546315
• For more information about our research in Crisis Informatics:
– http://disaster.cs.colorado.edu/
