Twitter, Public Communication and the Media Ecology: The Case of the Queensland Floods

Twitter, Public Communication and the Media Ecology:The Case of the Queensland Floods

Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns / Dr. Jean BurgessARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & InnovationQueensland University of Technology

Social Media Research in the CCI

• ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (national, based at QUT)– Project: Media Ecologies & Methodological Innovation

• With Journalism & Media Research Centre (JMRC) @ UNSW

• Aims to implement new methods to understand the changing media environment;

• Focusing on the relationship between social media and traditional media and communication platforms;

• Combining large-scale computer-assisted techniques with qualitative social research and close textual analysis

• Focus on Crisis Communication

– Natural disasters

– Other ‘acute events’

New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks

• Bruns, Burgess, Kirchhoff & Nicolai• http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

• Australian Research Council (ARC): Discovery Project (2010-13) – $410,000– QUT (Brisbane), Sociomantic Labs (Berlin)

– First comprehensive study of Australian social media use.– Computer-assisted cultural analysis: tracking, mapping, analysing blogs, twitter,

flickr, youtube as ‘networked publics’– Builds on previous work of the research team (UCC, YouTube, blogosphere

mapping)– Advances beyond established approaches - beyond political blogospheres,

beyond snapshots– Addressing the problem of scale (‘Big Data’) and disciplinary change in media,

cultural and communication studies.

theoretical framework • changing media ecology (UCC and ‘mainstream’ media)• dynamics of public communication (emergent, event-based,

affective)

baseline empirical questions • levels of activity? • topics of interest? • clusters and communities?• changes over time?

advanced questions: cultural implications• do matters of shared concern activate new connections among different

communities/networks? • how do acute media ‘events’ transform the media ecology?

methods• large-scale data gathering• development of computer-assisted techniques for both broad and recursively

focused analysis• identification of key events, clusters and communities• close qualitative analysis

• Data Gathering– Blogs: In-house crawler & database + export tools– Twitter: YourTwapperkeeper + in-house crawler

• Data Processing– Gawk – open source, multiplatform, programmable command-line tool for processing

CSV documents

• Textual Analysis– Leximancer – commercial (University of Queensland), multiplatform: extracts key

concepts from large corpora of text, examines and visualises concept co-occurrence– WordStat – commercial, PC-only text analysis tool; generates concept co-occurrence

data that can be exported for visualisation

• Visualisation– Gephi – open source, multiplatform network visualisation tool

Tools

Analysis – Twapperkeeper (#hashtags)

•Volume over time

•Keyword frequencies

Patterns of Activity over Time

•Conversation vs. follower network

•Dissemination of RTs vs. @replies

Networks of @Replies(short/long term)

•Keyword analysis over time

•Keyword co-occurrence maps

Keyword / Key Phrase Mapping

Crisis Communication Research in the CCI

Jan.-June 2011

– Focus on uses of social media during the Qld Floods

– Archive of tweets using #qldfloods hashtag

– Analysis

• Volume of tweets over time

• @replies and retweets: key actors and their networks

• URLs: key media resources, user-uploaded images and videos

• Emergence and uptake of hashtags and other user conventions

• Content analysis: themes and purposes over time

Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods tweets

10 Jan. 2011 11 Jan. 2011 12 Jan. 2011 13 Jan. 201114 Jan. 2011 15 Jan. 2011

Local Focus: #qldfloods from Toowoomba to Brisbane

• Toowoomba vs. Lockyer/Grantham vs. Ipswich vs. Brisbane slide

10 Jan. 2011 11 Jan. 2011 12 Jan. 2011 13 Jan. 201114 Jan. 2011 15 Jan. 2011

Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods posters

retweet feeds

mainstream media

Qld Police

Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods @replies

mainstream media

authorit ies

Twitter and the Christchurch Earthquake: #eqnz @replies

mainstream media

authorit ies

ut i l i t ies

Key Accounts over Time

@QPSmedia as Central #qldfloods Information Source

Case study: @QPSMedia

#qldfloods Network Map – Most Active Accounts Only(Degree >= 15 / Node size: indegree / node colour: outdegree)

Twitter and the Queensland Floods

• First lessons:– #qldfloods as coordinating tool – one central hashtag

• Go where the users are – and help establish hashtag

• Plus inventive additions – e.g. @QPSmedia #Mythbuster tweets

– Most activity by individuals – but key official accounts cut through• Enable easy retweeting and sharing of messages

• Respond and engage – value voluntary contributions from ‘average’ users

– Mainstream media are important in social media environments, too• Twitter as an amplifier of key messages

– Twitter vs. Facebook – which works when?

Twitter and the Japanese Tsunami: Beyond the #Hashtag

Twitter Events in Perspective: Comparing the Main 24h

Next Steps in Crisis Communication Research

– More forensics: successes and failures, especially rumours and misinformation

– Further comparison with other recent natural disasters

– Comparing mainstream and social media coverage

– Social context: in-depth interviews with residents

– Direct engagement with emergency services, government and media

Beyond Crises

• Where to from here? Further applications:– Identifying overall Twitter participation patterns – key themes, key users– How does information travel across the Twittersphere?– How can we ensure and enhance the distribution of important messages?

• What is the structure of the Twitter community?– Mapping online publics: network structure, clusters, interconnections, themes– Identifying key participants: opinion leaders, information hubs, connectors– Change over time: fluidity of network structures, response to stimuli

• How does Twitter sit in the wider media ecology?– Use of materials from elsewhere: distribution of attention through links– Interconnections between Twitter and other media: tweets about TV,

newspapers, ...

Understanding Australian Twitter Use

• What is the Australian Twitter userbase?– Large-scale snowballing project– Starting from selected hashtag communities

(e.g. #ausvotes, #qldfloods, #masterchef)– Identifying participating users, testing for ‘Australianness’:

• Timezone setting, location information, profile information

– Retrieving follower/followee information for each account (very slow)

• Progress update:– ~550,000 Australian users identified so far

South Australia

Wine

Music

Football (soccer)

Football (rugby)Sports

Media, Journalism,

Politics

Twitter Celebrities

Follower/followee network:~40,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~440,000 known accounts so far) in-degree 20+, dark lines = mutual,colour = indegree, size = outdegree

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/ @snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess

Image by campoalto