Getting Granular on Twitter Tweets from a Conference and their Limited Usefulness for Non-Participants

Getting Granular on Twitter: Tweets from a Conference and Their Limited Usefulness for Non-participants Martin Ebner, Herbert Mühlburger, Sandra Schaffert, Mandy Schiefner, Wolfgang Reinhardt, Steve Wheeler

Increase of devices http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddhiestand/197704394/

Mobile Learning? http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/ Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

„Hence, learning materials must be designed for easy access by the nomadic learners during using mobile technology regardless of where they are located and which network infrastructure they are using to access information“ Allen, 2007 Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Is microblogging a possibility for a specific community to exchange ideas, interests and information? http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividbreeze/480057824

Microblogging is a small-scale form of blogging, generally made up of short, succinct messages, used by both users and business to share news, post status updates and carry on conversations Templeton, 2008 http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418

http://www.jaiku.com http://www.pownce.com(do wn on December 15, 2008) http://www.twitter.com http://identi.ca/ http://www.plurk.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/1815164756/ Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

http://www.twitter.com Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

What the hell is twitter? - 140 character - from mobile, client or web interface - Followers - Direct messages - @Replies and Retweets - #Hashtags - Open API Getting Granular on Twitter http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195 Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

btw, thanks for the last slide to ... Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

http://www.slideshare.net/mweller/twitter-microblogging-and-living-in-the-stream-presentation?type=powerpoint Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_ways_to_have_fun_with_twitter.php Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Different kind of people using microblogs Templeton, 2007 Java et al, 2008 Exchanger Communicator Daily Chatter Reporter http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418

http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Twitter ok, but how can we use it for scientific conferences? http://www.flickr.com/photos/leapfrog_photo/2532068489 Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Pre-studies – Use of Twitter at conferences • ED-Media 2008 • Summer School 2008 • ED-Media 2009 http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525 Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Twitter stream beside keynote(ED-Media 2008) Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

„in the background we discussed things more deeply than the guys on the stage“ versus „Twitter can be distracting - you pay less attention“ http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuagedenuit/276092250

Number of Tweets at ED-Media 2009 Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

„... top trend makers show who is the heartbeat of this online community and the key terms pointed out, what the community was talking about“ http://www.flickr.com/photos/radekreks/316541927 Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Research outcomes – Twitter can be used in the context of conferences: • for communication amongst participants • for communication amongst organizers /presenters and audience • for reporting to non-participants about the conference http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525 Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Research Question: Is Twitter proper to report from a conference in order to share the event with the scientific community from outside the conference? Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Study: •Educamp Hamburg 2010 (barcamp; unconference) • Twitter was monitored from 5.2 – 4.3.2010 (used Hashtag #ec10hh) • In summary 2110 tweets were examined • Two stage analysis – automatically and manually Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Four categories of Tweets: •Irrelevant Tweets “Who found my drinking cup? #ec10hh” • Administrative Tweets “Wifi is not available #ec10hh” • Topical Discussions “nice idea of @estudyskills Aggregation of all student weblogs at Tumblelog gives overview” • Topical Tweets “open-learning: initiative on OER usage for informal education: http://u.nu/4a7ya #ec10hh” Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Analyses of participants Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Categories of Tweets (manual analysis) Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Detailed Analysis of Tweets (manual analysis) Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Discussion •Keyword extraction (automatically analysis) did not show any interesting result – no direct correlation • In average each user posted 6 tweets during the conference period • High number of Retweets (18%) – often not useful without the necessary context Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Main Outcome: If we reduce the tweets to those occurring during the conference period (5th and 6th February) only 120 posts are of interest at all, which relates to about 6% Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Practically, the obviously limited usefulness of the tweets of the EduCamp participants for interested external participants evokes new ideas for practical and effective alternative usage of the tweets as well as the need for appropriate tools. http://www.flickr.com/photos/minaartwork/3695954155 Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Interpretation – Twitter usage follows other logic: • usage as backchannel with limited comprehension potential for outsiders •usage of self promotion and profiling to generate attention for own profile • documentation and illustrating connections • usage as a public notepad • usage as an evaluation tool Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Outlook: How must a web-based application that can also be used offline (without Internet connection) for information retrieval and knowledge discovery based on a micro-content system like Twitter look like? Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

http://grabeeter.tugraz.at Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Archive and Search offline Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Grabeeter allows ... • Micro-content (tweets) is achievable due to the fact that any tweet can be retrieved at anytime from a local hard- drive • Micro-content is storable in a way that the user can distinguish between different events • Micro-content is searchable along keywords, hashtags, time frames as well as different entities (URLs, @, ... ) Getting Granular on Twitter Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Microblogging as potential for the future - if we see it as a new communication channel Getting Granular on Twitter http://www.flickr.com/photos/161/ Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Grab and Search your Tweets http://grabeeter.tugraz.at martin.ebner@tugraz.at Slides available at: http://elearningblog.tugraz.at SOCIAL LEARNING Computer and Information Services Graz University of Technology Martin Ebner http://elearningblog.tugraz.at mebner http://elearning.tugraz.at

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Getting Granular on Twitter Tweets from a Conference and their Limited Usefulness for Non-Participants

by Martin Ebner

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