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 & Innovation
Queensland 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?
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
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?

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)

Crisis Communication Research in the CCI
Jan.-June 2011
Focus on uses of social media during the Qld Floods
Archive of tweets using #qldfloodshashtag
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. 2011 14 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. 2011 14 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
authorities
mainstream media

Twitter and the Christchurch Earthquake: #eqnz @replies
mainstream media
authorities
utilities

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 Twitteruserbase?
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

Football (rugby)
Sports
Football (soccer)
Twitter Celebrities
South Australia
Wine
Media, Journalism, Politics
Music
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/
Image by campoalto
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess

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

by Axel Bruns

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