Talk given at the 5th Internation Conference on Communities and Technologies (Workshop C: Making Sense of Twitter). Thanks to Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess who organized a great session!

1. Cornelius Puschmann
Katrin Weller
University of Düsseldorf
Doing a small-scale diachronic Twitter user study: concept and code
5th International Conference
Communities & Technologies
29th June, 2011 Workshop C:
Brisbane Making Sense of Twitter

2. Research questions
#2 - method
#1- content How can we combine
How can we describe the multiple methodologies, e.g.
behavior of ordinary* German - quant./computational
Twitter users over a period of - qual./close reading
time? - ethnography
...?

3. Rationale
thick analysis
rich, ambiguous data
small vs. BIG data

4. The study
Sample
10 German and Austrian Twitter users
age between 23 and 32
5 male, 5 female
different backgrounds (student, nurse, executive, journalist)
Content analysis
users‘ tweets tracked for one
month (with permission)
Email interview
users answered 10 open questions
about different aspects of their usage

5. The code

6. Content analysis

10. Link categories for two users
User 4
User 7

11. Word association graph

12. Email interview

13. Questions
1. When and how did you first become aware of Twitter?
2. How is Twitter integrated into your daily routine?
3. What devices do you use to access Twitter?
4. Has your use of Twitter changed over time?
5. What other social media services do you use?
6. Do you use them to communicate with t.s. people as on Twitter?
7. How important is publishing photos to you?
8. What prompts you to follow someone?
9. What prompts you to unfollow somone?
10. Who do you picture as your readers?
11. What wouldn‘t you tweet about and why?
12. Which advantages do you see in your use of Twitter?
13. Which disadvantages do you see in your use?

14. 10. Who do you picture as your readers?
That‘s a tough one[..] I think many of my followers have a sense of
humor similar to my own. Add to that a number who like something
about my tweets and just read them, without doing anything further with
them. (User 1)
Phew, I don‘t really picture anyone specific. Since reaching 2,000
followers I think more about what I tweet, but what I end up typing into
that text field just goes “out into the Internet“. (User 2)
I‘ve never really thought about that. I just wonder why anyone would
care, apart from people who know me personally. (User 7)
People like myself. But I‘m surprised sometimes when people reply to me
who come from entirely different areas of interest. (User 11)

15. 11. What wouldn‘t you tweet about and why?
I try to only tweet what I would also like to read [...] Even when my
tweets seem personal, that‘s often not true [..] I would never tweet
„I‘m having trouble with my parents“ or „my girlfriend is getting on
my nerves“. (User 1)
Recently I just try to shut up when I don‘t have anything nice to
say[..] I try to refrain from bitching, bad-mouthing, and complaints
without entertainment value. (User 2)
Body functions. I try not to tweet that I have a headache. (User 4)
Information about my workplace[..] I wouldn‘t post anything on
Twitter that I also wouldn‘t tell someone I had just met or was
briefly acquainted with. (User 7)

16. Summary

17. Content analysis
Usage patterns vary greatly from user to user and from one
usage episode to another.
Usage pattern of ordinary* users are likely to differ from
groups using Twitter professionally in a number of ways.
Interviews
The users we interviewed were aware of the publicness of
their tweets and balanced privacy concerns with the
opportunity to connect with friends.
Different user types and usage episodes can be discerned by
connecting CA and an ethnographic approach.

18. Tools
R (www.r-project.org)
Python /w Tweepy package
(www.python.org ; code.google.com/p/tweepy/ )
Gephi (www.gephi.org)

19. thanks for listening!
Cornelius Puschmann
cornelius.puschmann@uni-duesseldorf.de
@coffee001
Katrin Weller
weller@phil.uni-duesseldorf.de
@kwelle