Twitter as a Global Collective Sense-making System under a Political

Crisis: Improvisation, Verification, and Solidification during the Jan 25th

Egypt Demonstration

Knight Foundation Event, Jan 17th, 2013, Cronkite School of Journalism, ASU

Hazel Kwon, PhD, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences

• This study explores Twitter as a collective awareness system during a social crisis. We trace how Twitter communications develop over time during the political crisis of the 2011 Egypt revolution, particularly January 25th demonstration. Refining the “milling” and “keynoting” concepts of the Emergent Norm Theory to the social media context, we suggest a sequential crisis communication model of IVS (Improvisation, Verification, and Solidification). An ad-hoc comparative analysis of the IVS model reveals that, while the ‘Improvised’ communication was salient among tweets originated from Egypt, communications purposed for the ‘Verification’ of situational information were especially noticeable in tweets originated from Non-Arab nations. In contrast, communications intended for the ‘Solidification’ of collective identity were evenly distributed across different regions of the globe. The IVS process was led primarily by personalized, spontaneous participation of politically active individuals.

“the Egyptian Revolution was a spontaneous movement led by nothing other than the wisdom of the [online] crowd”

Wael Ghonim (2012), the founder of the We Are All Khaled Saed Facebook page

part I: The Jan 25th Demonstration, Egypt 2011

25th25th

One monumental day during

Arab Spring: Jan 25th, 2011 Clear Goal: resignation of Mubarak

Rapid communication & the regime’s reaction

The role of the Internet

A long-term protest

started off

• Three day tweets (Jan 23-25)

• Hashtag #egypt

• A total of 4,431 tweets; Only English (81.6%) and Arabic (11.7%) considered

• 2, 925 tweets included geographical

information

• Tweets were collected real time, i.e. 8 times a day• 246 tweets from 23rd, 316 from 24th, and 3,869 from 25th. • Tweets were collected real time, i.e. 8 times a day• 246 tweets from 23rd, 316 from 24th, and 3,869 from 25th.

Part 2: Characterizing Crisis Communication in Twitter

Personalization & Immediateness: self-organized, self-connective participation

During Jan 25Demonstration…

Diffused Crowd CommunicationDiffused Crowd Communication: : A global sequential Processing A global sequential Processing

Geographical Distribution of Communication

Communication Type

Location Improvisation Verification Solidification

EgyptObs 391 209 160

Exp 317.5 297.8 144.7

SD. R. 4.1*** -5.1*** 1.3

Arab Country

Obs 246 196 88

Exp 221.4 207.7 100.9

SD. R. 1.7 -.8 -1.3

Non-Arab Country

Obs 585 741 309

Exp 683.1 640.6 311.3

SD. R. -3.8*** 4.0*** -.1

Note: ***p < .001

A short time window of a long-term event

Limitation of geographic information

Limitation & Future directions

Design implications for mobile and social

media?

Mechanism of info verification

Thank you! Thank you!

• Ghonim, W. (2012). Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power. Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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storytelling on #Egypt. Journal of Communication, 62, 255-282.• Turner, R. H., & Killian, L. M. (1987). Collective Behavior (3rd Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.