new methodologies for researching news discussion on twitter

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

New Methodologies for Researching News Discussion 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/

Why Twitter?

o Researching news discussion on 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 Flat and open network structure:

non-reciprocal following, public profiles by default

o Commonly used in the coverage and discussion of breaking news events and ongoing stories

o Good API for data journalism

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

Twitter and the News

o Key news-related uses of Twitter:o First-hand news reports:

o Emergency landing in the Hudson; Abbottabad raid; storms, earthquakes, tsunamis

o Continuing news discussion:o Information sharing (gatewatching); commentary;

story curation through hashtagso ‘Ambient’ news coverage (Hermida; Burns):

o Early indicator of breaking stories; trending topics, themes, URLs, etc.

Tool for sourcing, tracking, finding stories

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/

#hashtags in Context?

Follower/followee network:~150,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~550,000 known accounts so far) colour = outdegree, size = indegree

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

Data Journalism (Research) beyond Twitter

o Data journalism is a growing fieldo Data journalism research necessary to inform

both journalism theory and practiceo Twitter is a key news space now, and needs to be

further researchedo Other social media may come to replace it, but

many methods will remain similaro Potential to generate new insights well beyond

journalism itself: popular sentiment and interests, communication, culture, …

o Many tools available, but more methods work necessary!

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

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess