Microblogging

About: Microblogging is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4186 publications have been published within this topic receiving 137030 citations. The topic is also known as: microblog.

The refraction chamber: Twitter as sphere and network

Abstract: In this paper, we outline a study of the Twitter microblogging platform through a sample of French users. We discuss sampling methodology and compare three “issues” taken from the collected set of tweets. Based on the empirical findings we make a case for extending the notion of “information diffusion” to take into account questions of meaning, values, and ideology. We propose the concept of “refraction” to take a step toward this end.

Geography and Community: New Forms of Interaction Among People and Places:

Abstract: Today location-based data, such as GPS coordinates, are increasingly being incorporated into Internet sites such as Flickr, Jaiku, and Placeopedia. In turn, new practices are emerging that evoke innovative ways of relating among people and between individuals and places. This article investigates this geographic turn in networked interaction—particularly, emergent sensemaking regarding the role of location in distributed communities. The author uses an inductive, grounded theory methodology based on ethnographic interview and artifact data to compare the microblogging practices of two communities: those using Twitter and those using Jaiku. Findings suggest that the organizing practices of the two groups are quite different, despite the similarities in the tools they use to interact. Although each platform allows for the development of peripheral awareness and ambient intimacy within user groups, the design affordances of Twitter as a straightforward broadcasting tool result in social patterns that are qui...

Understanding users’ continuous content contribution behaviours on microblogs: an integrated perspective of uses and gratification theory and social influence theory

Abstract: Microblogs are revolutionising the way users produce, consume and distribute short content. The continuous content contributions of users are crucial for the sustainable development of microblogs. ...

Sina Microblog: An Information-Driven Online Social Network

Abstract: Online social network is becoming more and more popular these days. Some literatures about it have been published, but few papers talk about Sin a Weibo, which is the most prevalent micro log in China and has more than 100 million users. The goal of this paper is to study the topological characteristics of Sin a Weibo and show what people use Sin a Weibo for. There are two main researches in micro logging system: (i) How is the overlay formed, and (ii) How does the information transmit. We crawled the Sin a micro log for one month and got 1.12 million user profiles. We mainly study the topology of Sin a micro log, and find that: (1) the overlay of Weibo is dynamic, (2) most of the links between users are one-way, (3) there is a core network in Sin a Weibo, and (4) the radius of Sine Weibo is very short, which make it different from human social networks and other online social networks. Finally, we classify online social networks into two types according to our results. To the best of our knowledge this work is the first quantitative study on the topological characteristics of Sin a Weibo, and the results can make people know Sin a Weibo clearly.

An exploration of social identity: The geography and politics of news‐sharing communities in twitter

Abstract: The importance of collective social action in current events is manifest in the Arab Spring and Occupy movements. Electronic social media have become a pervasive channel for social interactions, and a basis of collective social response to information. The study of social media can reveal how individual actions combine to become the collective dynamics of society. Characterizing the groups that form spontaneously may reveal both how individuals self-identify and how they will act together. Here we map the social, political, and geographical properties of news-sharing communities on Twitter, a popular microblogging platform. We track user-generated messages that contain links to New York Times online articles and we label users according to the topic of the links they share, their geographic location, and their self-descriptive keywords. When users are clustered based on who follows whom in Twitter, we find social groups separate by whether they are interested in local (NY), national (US) or global (cosmopolitan) issues. The national group subdivides into liberal, conservative and other, the latter being a diverse but mostly business oriented group with sports, arts, and other splinters. The national political groups are based across the US but are distinct from the national group that is broadly interested in a variety of topics. A person who is cosmopolitan associates with others who are cosmopolitan, and a US liberal/conservative associates with others who are US liberal/conservative, creating separated social groups with those identities. The existence of “citizens” of local, national, and cosmopolitan communities is a basis for dialog and action at each of these levels of societal organization. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 19: 10–20, 2013