Quantitative Approaches to Comparing Communication Patterns on Twitter
TL;DR: Drawing on a range of communicative metrics, it is shown that thematic and contextual factors influence the usage of different communicative tools available to Twitter users, such as original tweets, @replies, retweets, and URLs.
Abstract: To date, the available literature mainly discusses Twitter activity patterns in the context of individual case studies, while comparative research on a large number of communicative events and their dynamics and patterns is missing. By conducting a comparative study of more than 40 different cases (covering topics such as elections, natural disasters, corporate crises, and televised events) we identify a number of distinct types of discussion that can be observed on Twitter. Drawing on a range of communicative metrics, we show that thematic and contextual factors influence the usage of different communicative tools available to Twitter users, such as original tweets, @replies, retweets, and URLs. Based on this first analysis of the overall metrics of Twitter discussions, we also demonstrate stable patterns in the use of Twitter in the context of major topics and events.
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TL;DR: This work outlines a catalogue of widely applicable, standardised metrics for analysing Twitter-based communication, with particular focus on hashtagged exchanges and points to potential uses for such metrics, presenting an indication of what broader comparisons of diverse cases can achieve.
Abstract: Twitter is an important and influential social media platform, but much research into its uses remains centred around isolated cases – e.g. of events in political communication, crisis communication, or popular culture, often coordinated by shared hashtags (brief keywords, prefixed with the symbol ‘#’). In particular, a lack of standard metrics for comparing communicative patterns across cases prevents researchers from developing a more comprehensive perspective on the diverse, sometimes crucial roles which hashtags play in Twitter-based communication. We address this problem by outlining a catalogue of widely applicable, standardised metrics for analysing Twitter-based communication, with particular focus on hashtagged exchanges. We also point to potential uses for such metrics, presenting an indication of what broader comparisons of diverse cases can achieve.
268 citations
Cites background from "Quantitative Approaches to Comparin..."
...…developments in this area, we close by comparing, in Figure 5, two key metrics from our toolbox across a diverse range of hashtag data-sets (also cf. Bruns & Stieglitz, 2012): for each hashtag, it charts the percentage of URLs in all tweets against the percentage of unedited retweets in all tweets....
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01 Apr 2013
TL;DR: This article examines the use of Twitter as a technology for the expression of shared fandom in the context of a major, internationally televised annual media event: the Eurovision Song Contest.
Abstract: Amongst the most prominent uses of Twitter at present is its role in the discussion of widely televised events: Twitter’s own statistics for 2011, for example, list major entertainment spectacles (the MTV Music Awards, the BET Awards) and sports matches (the UEFA Champions League final, the FIFA Women’s World Cup final) amongst the events generating the most tweets per second during the year (Twitter, 2011). User activities during such televised events constitute a specific, unique category of Twitter use, which differs clearly from the other major events which generate a high rate of tweets per second (such as crises and breaking news, from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami to the death of Steve Jobs), as preliminary research has shown.
During such major media events, by contrast, Twitter is used most predominantly as a technology of fandom instead: it serves in the first place as a backchannel to television and other streaming audiovisual media, enabling users offer their own running commentary on the universally shared media text of the event broadcast as it unfolds live. Centrally, this communion of fans around the shared text is facilitated by the use of Twitter hashtags – unifying textual markers which are now often promoted to prospective audiences by the broadcasters well in advance of the live event itself. This paper examines the use of Twitter as a technology for the expression of shared fandom in the context of a major, internationally televised annual media event: the Eurovision Song Contest. It constitutes a highly publicised, highly choreographed media spectacle whose eventual outcomes are unknown ahead of time and attracts a diverse international audience. Our analysis draws on comprehensive datasets for the ‘official’ event hashtags, #eurovision, #esc, and #sbseurovision.
Using innovative methods which combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of Twitter datasets containing several hundreds of thousands, we examine overall patterns of participation to discover how audiences express their fandom throughout the event. Minute-by-minute tracking of Twitter activity during the live broadcasts enables us to identify the most resonant moments during each event; we also examine the networks of interaction between participants to detect thematically or geographically determined clusters of interaction, and to identify the most visible and influential participants in each network. Such analysis is able to provide a unique insight into the use of Twitter as a technology for fandom and for what in cultural studies research is called ‘audiencing’: the public performance of belonging to the distributed audience for a shared media event. Our work thus contributes to the examination of fandom practices led by Henry Jenkins (2006) and other scholars, and points to Twitter as an important new medium facilitating the connection and communion of such fans.
208 citations
Cites methods from "Quantitative Approaches to Comparin..."
...Our methods for gathering Twitter data have been developed through several previous studies, examining Twitter use around a range of contexts, including crises and election campaigns (see Bruns & Liang 2012; Bruns & Stieglitz 2012, for more detail)....
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TL;DR: Twitter analysis suggested the emergence of a community of Twitter users, predominantly based in the UK, where greater interaction between contrasting views took place, and illustrated the presence of a campaign by the non-governmental organization Avaaz, aimed at increasing media coverage of the IPCC report.
Abstract: In September 2013 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its Working Group 1 report, the first comprehensive assessment of physical climate science in six years, constituting a critical event in the societal debate about climate change. This paper analyses the nature of this debate in one public forum: Twitter. Using statistical methods, tweets were analyzed to discover the hashtags used when people tweeted about the IPCC report, and how Twitter users formed communities around their conversational connections. In short, the paper presents the topics and tweeters at this particular moment in the climate debate. The most used hashtags related to themes of science, geographical location and social issues connected to climate change. Particularly noteworthy were tweets connected to Australian politics, US politics, geoengineering and fracking. Three communities of Twitter users were identified. Researcher coding of Twitter users showed how these varied according to geographical location and whether users were supportive, unsupportive or neutral in their tweets about the IPCC. Overall, users were most likely to converse with users holding similar views. However, qualitative analysis suggested the emergence of a community of Twitter users, predominantly based in the UK, where greater interaction between contrasting views took place. This analysis also illustrated the presence of a campaign by the non-governmental organization Avaaz, aimed at increasing media coverage of the IPCC report.
205 citations
Cites background from "Quantitative Approaches to Comparin..."
...According to Bruns & Stieglitz [23], only one percent of tweeters are the most active and nine percent highly active while most tweeters (90%) only sent very few tweets (the authors do not quantify the differences between these categories, but use it as a heuristic to demonstrate how a small number of Twitter users send the majority of tweets)....
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...According to Bruns & Stieglitz [23], only one percent of tweeters are the most active and nine percent highly active while most tweeters (90...
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TL;DR: This article examined the use of Twitter as a technology for the expression of shared fandom in the context of a major, internationally televised annual media event: the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC).
Abstract: Amongst the most prominent uses of Twitter at present is its role in the discussion of widely televised events: Twitter’s own statistics for 2011, for example, list major entertainment spectacles (the MTV Music Awards, the BET Awards) and sports matches (the UEFA Champions League final, the FIFA Women’s World Cup final) amongst the events generating the most tweets per second during the year (Twitter, 2011). User activities during such televised events constitute a specific, unique category of Twitter use, which differs clearly from the other major events which generate a high rate of tweets per second (such as crises and breaking news, from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami to the death of Steve Jobs), as preliminary research has shown. During such major media events, by contrast, Twitter is used most predominantly as a technology of fandom instead: it serves in the first place as a backchannel to television and other streaming audiovisual media, enabling users offer their own running commentary on the universally shared media text of the event broadcast as it unfolds live. Centrally, this communion of fans around the shared text is facilitated by the use of Twitter hashtags – unifying textual markers which are now often promoted to prospective audiences by the broadcasters well in advance of the live event itself. This paper examines the use of Twitter as a technology for the expression of shared fandom in the context of a major, internationally televised annual media event: the Eurovision Song Contest. It constitutes a highly publicised, highly choreographed media spectacle whose eventual outcomes are unknown ahead of time and attracts a diverse international audience. Our analysis draws on comprehensive datasets for the ‘official’ event hashtags, #eurovision, #esc, and #sbseurovision. Using innovative methods which combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of Twitter datasets containing several hundreds of thousands, we examine overall patterns of participation to discover how audiences express their fandom throughout the event. Minute-by-minute tracking of Twitter activity during the live broadcasts enables us to identify the most resonant moments during each event; we also examine the networks of interaction between participants to detect thematically or geographically determined clusters of interaction, and to identify the most visible and influential participants in each network. Such analysis is able to provide a unique insight into the use of Twitter as a technology for fandom and for what in cultural studies research is called ‘audiencing’: the public performance of belonging to the distributed audience for a shared media event. Our work thus contributes to the examination of fandom practices led by Henry Jenkins (2006) and other scholars, and points to Twitter as an important new medium facilitating the connection and communion of such fans.
200 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose the use of social media data and sentiment analysis to study the affect-based responses to organizational actions by citizens, and critically discuss and compare the method used to measure organizational legitimacy.
Abstract: Conventional quantitative methods for the measurement of organizational legitimacy consider mainly three sources that make judgments about organizations visible: news media, accreditation bodies, and surveys Over the last decade, however, social media have enabled ordinary citizens to bypass the gatekeeping function of these institutional evaluators and autonomously make individual judgments public This inclusion of voices beyond functional and formally organized stakeholder groups potentially pluralizes the ongoing discussions about organizations The individual judgments in blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts give indication about the broader fit between an organization’s perceived behavior and heterogeneous social norms and therefore constitute an indicator of organizational legitimacy that can be accessed and measured We propose the use of social media data and sentiment analysis to study the affect-based responses to organizational actions by citizens We critically discuss and compare the method wi
143 citations
Cites methods from "Quantitative Approaches to Comparin..."
...Topic-based sampling techniques extract information containing specific keywords (Bruns & Stieglitz, 2012)....
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References
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TL;DR: The era of Big Data has begun as discussed by the authors, where diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing genetic sequences, social media interactions, health records, phone logs, government records, and other digital traces left by people.
Abstract: The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and other scholars are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing genetic sequences, social media interactions, health records, phone logs, government records, and other digital traces left by people. Significant questions emerge. Will large-scale search data help us create better tools, services, and public goods? Or will it usher in a new wave of privacy incursions and invasive marketing? Will data analytics help us understand online communities and political movements? Or will it be used to track protesters and suppress speech? Will it transform how we study human communication and culture, or narrow the palette of research options and alter what ‘research’ means? Given the rise of Big Data as a socio-tech...
3,955 citations
"Quantitative Approaches to Comparin..." refers background in this paper
...Such “big data” research (boyd & Crawford 2012), drawing on comprehensive access to user activity data through platform APIs, remains in its infancy but is set to generate significant new opportunities for researchers in the humanities and allied disciplines....
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TL;DR: This article investigates how content producers navigate ‘imagined audiences’ on Twitter, talking with participants who have different types of followings to understand their techniques, including targeting different audiences, concealing subjects, and maintaining authenticity.
Abstract: Social media technologies collapse multiple audiences into single contexts, making it difficult for people to use the same techniques online that they do to handle multiplicity in face-to-face conversation. This article investigates how content producers navigate ‘imagined audiences’ on Twitter. We talked with participants who have different types of followings to understand their techniques, including targeting different audiences, concealing subjects, and maintaining authenticity. Some techniques of audience management resemble the practices of ‘micro-celebrity’ and personal branding, both strategic self-commodification. Our model of the networked audience assumes a many-to-many communication through which individuals conceptualize an imagined audience evoked through their tweets.
3,062 citations
Additional excerpts
...…cultural and sporting events, and conferences to a wide variety of uses for everyday interpersonal communication (e.g., boyd, Golder, & Lotan, 2010; Deller, 2011; Dröge, Maghferat, Puschmann, Verbina, & Weller, 2011; Marwick & boyd, 2011; Papacharissi, 2011; Weller, Dröge, & Puschmann, 2011)....
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05 Jan 2010
TL;DR: This paper examines the practice of retweeting as a way by which participants can be "in a conversation" and highlights how authorship, attribution, and communicative fidelity are negotiated in diverse ways.
Abstract: Twitter - a microblogging service that enables users to post messages ("tweets") of up to 140 characters - supports a variety of communicative practices; participants use Twitter to converse with individuals, groups, and the public at large, so when conversations emerge, they are often experienced by broader audiences than just the interlocutors. This paper examines the practice of retweeting as a way by which participants can be "in a conversation." While retweeting has become a convention inside Twitter, participants retweet using different styles and for diverse reasons. We highlight how authorship, attribution, and communicative fidelity are negotiated in diverse ways. Using a series of case studies and empirical data, this paper maps out retweeting as a conversational practice.
1,953 citations
05 Jul 2011
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that the network of political retweets exhibits a highly segregated partisan structure, with extremely limited connectivity between left- and right-leaning users, and surprisingly this is not the case for the user-to-user mention network, which is dominated by a single politically heterogeneous cluster of users.
Abstract: In this study we investigate how social media shape the networked public sphere and facilitate communication between communities with different political orientations. We examine two networks of political communication on Twitter, comprised of more than 250,000 tweets from the six weeks leading up to the 2010 U.S. congressional midterm elections. Using a combination of network clustering algorithms and manually-annotated data we demonstrate that the network of political retweets exhibits a highly segregated partisan structure, with extremely limited connectivity between left- and right-leaning users. Surprisingly this is not the case for the user-to-user mention network, which is dominated by a single politically heterogeneous cluster of users in which ideologically-opposed individuals interact at a much higher rate compared to the network of retweets. To explain the distinct topologies of the retweet and mention networks we conjecture that politically motivated individuals provoke interaction by injecting partisan content into information streams whose primary audience consists of ideologically-opposed users. We conclude with statistical evidence in support of this hypothesis.
1,379 citations
"Quantitative Approaches to Comparin..." refers background in this paper
...Conover et al. (2011) examine two networks of political communication on Twitter with more than 250,000 tweets from the 6 weeks leading up to the 2010 U....
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PARC1
TL;DR: It is found that, amongst content features, URLs and hashtags have strong relationships with retweetability and the number of followers and followees as well as the age of the account seem to affect retweetability, while, interestingly, thenumber of past tweets does not predict retweetability of a user's tweet.
Abstract: Retweeting is the key mechanism for information diffusion in Twitter. It emerged as a simple yet powerful way of disseminating information in the Twitter social network. Even though a lot of information is shared in Twitter, little is known yet about how and why certain information spreads more widely than others. In this paper, we examine a number of features that might affect retweetability of tweets. We gathered content and contextual features from 74M tweets and used this data set to identify factors that are significantly associated with retweet rate. We also built a predictive retweet model. We found that, amongst content features, URLs and hashtags have strong relationships with retweetability. Amongst contextual features, the number of followers and followees as well as the age of the account seem to affect retweetability, while, interestingly, the number of past tweets does not predict retweetability of a user's tweet. We believe that this research would inform the design of sensemaking and analytics tools for social media streams.
1,192 citations
"Quantitative Approaches to Comparin..." refers background in this paper
...In a large-scale study, Suh, Hong, Pirolli, and Chi (2010) addressed these questions and identified several factors that significantly impact on the retweetability of Twitter messages (tweets), including the presence of URLs and hashtags, as well as the number of followers and the age of the…...
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...In a large-scale study, Suh, Hong, Pirolli, and Chi (2010) addressed these questions and identified several factors that significantly impact on the retweetability of Twitter messages (tweets), including the presence of URLs and hashtags, as well as the number of followers and the age of the originating user’s account....
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...Other studies have already made some first steps to investigate how and why certain information items spread more widely than others (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, forthcoming [Suh, Hong, Pirolli, & Chi, 2010])....
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