Tracking the dynamics of social
communities - Visualising altering word
clouds of Twitter groups
Wolfgang Reinhardt - University of Paderborn

What is Twitter?
• 140 characters • @Mentions (Replies) and Retweets
• from mobile, client or web interface • #Hashtags
• Followers • Open API
• Direct messages
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
2
Wolfgang Reinhardt

Who uses this?
Different kind of people
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418
using microblogs
Java et al, 2007
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
Exchanger
Daily Chatter
http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/
Communicator
Reporter
3
Wolfgang Reinhardt

Learning ?
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
• informal learning
• microsharing
• personal
http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/
4
Wolfgang Reinhardt

© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
Thx for the last two slides
5
Wolfgang Reinhardt

EduMedia 2009

Overview
Wolfgang Reinhardt
7
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn

Wolfgang Reinhardt
Share in communication
8
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn

Statistics
Wolfgang Reinhardt
9
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn

What‘s behind?

Analysis application
• inspect communication from communities on Twitter
• goal: track the changes within the community
• personal and topic networks
• hashtags
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
• usernames
• extract content and statistical data
11
Wolfgang Reinhardt

Mashup ?
• Twitter API
• Yahoo Term Extraction Web Service API
• providing enriched data via API
• JSON encoded
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
• to be enhanced in upcoming versions
• using geo location
• using multiple extractors
12
Wolfgang Reinhardt

Conclusion / Outlook
• tool for analysing and visualising group communication on Twitter
• main statistical data about the group
• tracking dynamics
• create widgets and incorporate in other systems
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
• conference pages
• course-wikis
• PLEs
13
Wolfgang Reinhardt

Conclusion / Outlook
• enhance qualitative evaluation
• named entities
• sophisticated metrics
• visualize communications among users
© Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn
• include links in the evaluation
• semantic closeness of tweets / persons
• Artefact-Actor-Networks
14
Wolfgang Reinhardt

Thank you
Want to know more?
http://twitter.com/wollepb
http://isitjustme.de
http://artefact-actor-networks.net
Wolfgang Reinhardt
University of Paderborn
Institute of Computer Science
Working Group Didactics of Informatics
http://ddi.upb.de

Image sources
• http://medyasia.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bluebird_1680x1050.jpg
• http://de.fotolia.com/id/3805293
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/leapfrog_photo/2532068489
• http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Old_door-dakhla-egypt.JPG
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418
• http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/
17