Social media
news audiences and
the quantified journalist
Tim Highfield + Axel Bruns
timhighfield.net / @timhighfield / t.highfield@qut.edu.au
snurb.info / @snurb_dot_info / a.bruns@qut.edu.au
#ica15, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 22 May 2015

RESEARCH CONTEXT
• Social media as journalistic tool
– Tweeting news as it happens (Vis, 2013)
– Information-sourcing and –sharing, sense-making
– ‘ambient news’ (Hermida, 2010)
• Interactions, attention, and information flows
– Competing for attention, prestige?
– ‘social infomediation of news’ (Smyrnaios & Rieder, 2013)
– ‘first draft of the present’ (Bruns & Highfield, 2012)
– ‘reciprocal journalism’ (Lewis, Holton, & Coddington, 2014)
– Previous spaces for responding to news, journalists, other readers
• comments on articles, on blogs à but hosted (and moderated?) spaces
• popular social media platforms more variable/unconstrained?
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 2

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• What news content are social media users sharing?
– Sharing as a metric of active and visible engagement (although not without limits)
• Which sources are popular/prominent here? What is the impact of new
online players in news environment?
– The Guardian (for Australia), The Conversation (and in general, see Medium, &c.)
• What are the roles of journalists and audiences in co-creating, critiquing, and
shaping news?
– Co-production: Ekstrom, Eriksson, & Kroom Lundell, 2013
– Across platforms – e.g. live blogs (Thurman & Walters, 2013)
• News-sharing within publics – and the role of this process in the formation of
publics?
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 3

RESEARCH PROJECT
• ARC Future Fellowship:
– Four-year project, $876,973
– Axel Bruns (FF); Postdoctoral Research Fellow; Felix Münch (PhD1, 2014-2017);
PhD2 (2015-2018)
At the intersection of mainstream, niche, and social media, the processes by
which public opinion forms and public debate unfolds are increasingly complex,
and poorly understood. This project draws on large datasets and innovative
methods to develop a new model of the Australian online public sphere.
• Also supported by ARC LIEF project:
– Two-year project (2014/15; QUT, Curtin, Deakin, Swinburne) to develop
comprehensive infrastructure for large-scale social media data analytics
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 4

DATA SOURCES
• Social media
– Facebook: user engagement with public pages (profile activity is semi-private)
– Twitter:
• hashtag, keyword, URL sharing datasets (public accounts only)
• Australian network data; Australian firehose (public accounts only)
– Other social media sources…
• Analytics and monitors
– Experian Hitwise:
• Australian Web browsing data (ISP-level, anonymous and opt-in panels, 1.5m users)
• Australian Web searching data (same methodology)
– Proprietary datasets:
• Website analytics for major news sites (e.g. News Ltd. / Fairfax Digital sites)
– Mainstream media monitoring:
• Content databases for mainstream media coverage
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 5

PROJECT AGENDA
• Data sources:
– Australian Internet browse / search patterns (Experian Hitwise)
– Online news media reading patterns (Fairfax Digital)
– Big social data on news sharing via social media (ARC LIEF)
• Multiple overlapping publics / networks:
– What drives their formation and dissipation?
– How do they interact and interweave?
– How are they interleaved with the wider media ecology?
– Social media do not contain publics: publics transcend social media
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 6

RESEARCH AIMS
• Methodological development (Y1):
How do we process and integrate these data?
• Short term (Y2):
What happens as news breaks?
• Medium term (Y3):
How do themes, topics, actors wax and wane?
• Long term (Y4):
How do these patterns affect public opinion formation?
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 7

HITWISE: NEWS BROWSING TRENDS
8

TWITTER: NEWS SHARING
TRENDS
9

TWITTER: NEWS SHARING
TRENDS
ATNIX
Australian Twitter
News Index
April 2015:
Covers ANZAC Day and
the executions of
members of Bali 9 – but
general trend that large-
scale mainstream media
coverage does not always
translate into substantial
on-sharing of related
articles – widespread
coverage reduces need or
impetus to share?
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 10

AUDIENCE OVERLAPS
Intersections between top 10,000 sharers for each site, Q1/2015
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 11

THE QUANTIFIED JOURNALIST?
• Metrics about story type
• The role of journalists within social media networks
– Source
– Critic
– Participant
– Amplifier
– Institutional chains – retweeting and sharing colleagues and fellow publications/
stations
• Socially mediated journalism
– Different media content within news production as novelty for sharing?
– Vine, Periscope/Meerkat, and their incorporation into other stories and
presentation on other platforms?
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 12

PUBLICS
• Issue publics
• Ad hoc
• Networked
• Personal
• Calculated
• Affective
• …
Overlapping publics apparent on social media, and their implications for news
consumption, topical framing, diversity of coverage…
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 13

Educa&on
Agriculture
Literature
Adelaide
/
SA
Food
Wine
Beer
Paren&ng
Mums
PR
Ne&zens
Marke&ng
Inves&ng
Real
Estate
Home
Business
Sole
Traders
Self-­‐Help
HR
/
Support
Followback
Urban
Media
U&li&es
Adver&sing
Business
Fashion
Beauty
Arts
Cinema
Journalists
Poli&cs
Hard
Right
LeMists
News
Cycling
Talkback
Music
TV
V8s
UFC
NRL
AFL
Football
Horse
Racing
Cricket
NRU
Celebri&es
Hillsong
Perth
Pop
Media
Teen
Idols
Cody
Simpson
THE AUSTRALIAN TWITTERSPHERE
~140k Australian accounts
with degree > 1000, as of
Sep. 2013
14

ABC NEWS (JUNE 2012 TO SEP. 2014)
15

DAILY TELEGRAPH
(JUNE 2012 TO SEP. 2014)
16

NEXT STEPS
• Further data points
– More detailed data on search patterns (Experian Hitwise)
– Readership patterns (Fairfax Digital sites)
– Facebook audience engagement patterns with news pages
• Further analytical approaches
– Activity patterns around key issues and events
(e.g. G20, AFC Asian Cup, ANZAC Day, Queensland state election)
– Correlation of activity patterns across datasets
– Computational modelling of patterns to identify cross-influence of activities on different
platforms on each other
– Users – bridges/influencers/opinion leaders…?
– Extending to Germany and Scandinavian news sharing practices on Twitter
• Further theory development
– Ad hoc publics, issue publics, public sphericules in the Australian public sphere
@timhighfield + @snurb_dot_info The quantified journalist
#ica15 22 May 2015 17

QUT Digital Media Research Centre
@qutdmrc – qut.edu.au/research/dmrc
@snurb_dot_info
@timhighfield
@stationsarzt
@dpwoodford
@katieprowd
@tsadkowsky
@jeanburgess
@socialmediaQUT – socialmedia.qut.edu.au
mappingonlinepublics.net
This research is funded by the Australian Research Council through Future Fellowship and
LIEF grants FT130100703 and LE140100148.