Archiving the Immediate: How and Why Archives Should Approach Social Media

Archiving the Immediate: How and Why Archives Should Approach Social Media
Assoc. Prof. Axel BrunsARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationQueensland University of TechnologyBrisbane, Australia
a.bruns@qut.edu.au / @snurb_dot_info
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

Why Social Media?
Social Media:
Facebook: 10+ million users in Australia
Twitter: 1-2 million users in Australia
User-generated content and discussions
Themes from the personal to the public
(news.com.au)
(theage.com.au)
(abc.net.au)

Background: Researching Twitter
Mapping Online Publics:
ARC Discovery project, 2010-12: Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns and Dr. Jean Burgess, QUT
Methodology and outcomes: http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
Further projects on social media and crisis communication under development
Tools for Twitter analysis:
yourTwapperkeeper: API-based data capture
Gawk – open source, multiplatform, programmable command-line tool for processing CSV documents
WordStat – commercial, PC-only text analysis tool; generates concept co-occurrence data that can be exported for visualisation
Gephi – open source, multiplatform network visualisation tool

#spill: 23 June 2010, 6-7 p.m.

#spill: 23 June 2010, 7-8 p.m.

#spill: 23 June 2010, 8-9 p.m.

#qldfloods Tweets
10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011

#qldfloods @replies
authorities
mainstream media

#qldfloods Themes
From CCI Report on the use of Twitter in the Queensland floods – Shaw et al. (forthcoming, 2011).
Every 20th tweet coded.

#ausvotes: Leaders

#ausvotes: Themes

#ausvotes: Discussion Network(17 July to 25 Aug. 2010 / All @replies / Node size: Indegree / Node colours: betweenness centrality)

#royalwedding (29 Apr. 2011)

Why Do We Care?
Historical significance:
Social media coverage as a first draft of the present
Especially Twitter: flat, open, self-organising network
First-hand, unfiltered, direct insights into Australians’ views
Rich data on specific events and on long-term trends
 We archive journalistic publications, so why not this?
Readily available, but easily lost:
Access to rich data (and metadata) through standard APIs
Especially on Twitter, limited immediate ethical concerns
Ephemeral content which is lost to posterity unless archived
‘Big data’, but far from unmanageable
 Better start archiving now than make up for lost material later

How to Archive Social Media
Twitter:
U.S. Library of Congress already receives full feed of all tweets
Made accessible after six-month delay (from when? to whom?)
Potential to join partnership or set up similar deal for Australia?
Twitter access to high-volume tweet feeds via Gnip.com
Flat fee + volume cost of US$1/10,000 tweets received
Potential to negotiate discount for Australian public archives?
Different levels of inclusiveness in tracking
Track all Australian Twitter users? Top 500,000? Top 100,000?
Raw datasets in standard formats, and/or in-house processing
Show leadership in developing ethical usage protocols

Filipinos
Marketing / PR
Adelaide
Wine
Perth / PR
News / Business
Latika Bourke
Australia on Twitter
Food
Journalism / Politics / News
Mumbrella
Annabel Crabb
Leigh Sales
Fashion / Style / Parenting
Malcolm Turnbull
Marie Claire
ABC News
Crikey
Fashion / Magazines
Celebrities / Media
Arts
Joe Hockey
Mia Freedman
Laurie Oakes
Sunrise on 7
Music / Triple J
Tony Abbott
Julia Gillard
Matt Preston
Kevin Rudd
Triple J
Teens / TV Hits
Wil Anderson
TV
(follower/followee network – 140,000 most connected Australia users, of 550,000 processed so far)
Football (Soccer)
7pm Project
AFL
Radio
Teens / Short Stack
NRL
Cricket
Sports
Hamish and Andy

The Promise of ‘Big Data’ Research
Insights on Australian public communication on Twitter:
Micro: @reply and retweet conversations
Meso: hashtag ‘communities’
Macro: follower/followee networks
 Multiple overlapping publics / networks
Evidence of processes in the Australian public sphere:
What drives the formation and dissipation of online publics?
How do they interact and interweave?
How are they interleaved with the wider media ecology?
How is information disseminated across complex networks?

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess
@_StephenH
@DrTNitins
@timhighfield

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Archiving the Immediate: How and Why Archives Should Approach Social Media

by Axel Bruns

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