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Your Festival in 140 Characters or Less Exploring Festivals’ Use of Twitter
- 1. Kelly MacKay, Ph.D., Danielle Barbe, Ryerson University Your Festival in 140 Characters or Less*: Exploring Festivals’ Use of Twitter Christine Van Winkle, Ph.D., University of Manitoba Elizabeth Halpenny, Ph.D., University of Alberta This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
- 2. Introduction • In the increasingly crowded field of festivals, social media platforms offer new channels for attracting, communicating, and engaging festival attendees • 60% of Twitter’s 200 million active users log in using a mobile device at least once a month • This study will examine the nature and degree of Twitter use by three popular Canadian festivals, before, during, and after festival production/participation
- 3. Festival Backgrounds • Data reported in this study originate from three popular Canadian festivals that occurred in the summer of 2013: • Pride Toronto • Taste of the Danforth (Toronto) • Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival
- 4. Festival Twitter Profiles Festival Name Twitter Handle N Followers N Followin g Member Since Total N of Tweets Total N of Tweets in Study Period Pride Toronto @PrideToronto 14340 262 01/26/200 9 3032 199 Taste of the Danforth @Taste_Danforth 423 238 06/26/201 3 403 292 Edmonton Fringe @edmontonfring e 7616 1127 06/19/200 9 1924 226
- 5. Data Collection • Data (i.e., tweets) represent three time points: one week prior to the festival, during the festival, one week after the festival • Data on the profiles of the festival Twitter accounts were collected from www.twitter.com and www.followerwonk.com • Ncapture was used to collect a census of the tweets from each festival’s Twitter handle • The top Tweets that included the hashtag (#) associated with each festival were collected from www.twitter.com. • Tweets were transferred to IBM SPSS Statistics for coding and analysis. • Inter-coder agreement was calculated using Cohen’s kappa (k = .860) based on a reproducibility reliability sample of 125 units
- 6. Categories and Definitions for Twitter Content Analysis – Nature of Tweet Nature of Tweet Definition Example Sources Conversationa l A tweet that directly addresses another user(s) by asking/answering a question, involving them in the Tweet, or using @_________ "@GaryLevyOnline you should totally come by, hang out and tweet with me for a bit next weekend at #PrideTO!" Gibbs & Dancs (2013) Hays et al (2013) Dann (2010) Java et al (2007) Promotional A tweet marketing/promoting an event, activity, contest, website, artist, etc. that urges the user to partake in an action. "There are SO many #PrideTO Affiliate Events! Visit http://t.co/rRGWZ1LM a6 for more info" Gibbs & Dancs (2013) Hays et al (2013) Informational Any tweet that presents an update or live discussion of an event, reports news, or provides information, without "@PrideToronto Flag Raising today at noon on City Hall's green roof. Our special guest Gibbs & Dancs (2013) Dann (2010) Hays et al
- 7. Categories and Definitions for Twitter Content Analysis – Nature of Tweet Nature of Tweet Definition Example Sources Status Answers the Twitter question “What are you doing now?” "at the #PrideTO flag raising!" Gibbs & Dancs (2013) Dann (2010) Phatic Any tweet containing statements of greetings to the broader Twitter community, textual soliloquys/monologues, undirected statements of opinion, or establish sociability rather than communicating information or ideas “We wish everyone a Happy #PrideTO. We're proud to serve Canada's most diverse city.” Dann (2010) Merriam-Webster (2013) Unclassifiabl e Tweets that do not belong in any of the categories above “Dub step diggery do! #entertainment #PrideTO” Gibbs & Dancs (2013) Dann (2010)
- 8. Categories and Definitions for Twitter Content Analysis – Purpose of Tweet Purpose of Tweet Definition Example Sources Information Sharing Any tweet that provides information to followers about a particular event, subject, idea, etc. “Join us for @PrideToronto flag raising on Jun 24 at 12pm at City Hall. Lunch provided. All welcome.” Java et al (2007) Information Seeking Any tweet that asks/requests information from follower(s) “What are you most looking forward to this weekend at #PrideTO?!” Java et al (2007) Engagement/ Relationship Building Any tweet used to engage, build a relationship with, or express appreciation to a follower(s) Happy First Day of #Summer and #PrideTO! Are y'all ready for this? Java et al (2007) Other Tweets that do not belong in any of the categories above Today's DOMA ruling is a historic step forward for #MarriageEquality
- 9. Findings - General • A total of 870 tweets were captured • 82.9% of tweets originated from festivals and 17.1% from patrons using the “#festivalname” • 21.4% were retweets • The majority (60.3%) of tweets were retweeted 3 times or fewer • The three festivals produced 65.8% of the tweets • 55% of all tweets contained links • 53.4% of links were to photos • 27.4% of links were to websites • Less frequent links were to videos (8.6%), Facebook (7.4%), and contests (2.3%)
- 10. Findings - General • Nature of the tweet content • 28.5% was promotional • 26.2% was informational • 24.9% was conversational • 13.7% was phatic • 6% was status • Less than 1% was not classifiable • Purpose of the tweet • 69.8% was for information sharing • 22.2% was for friendship/relationship building • 4% was for information seeking • 4% was for “other”
- 11. Frequency of Festival Related @ Mentions Mention Type Frequency % Festival Partner/Promoter 217 43.1 Attendee/General Public 154 30.6 Festival + Partner 57 11.3 Festival + Attendee 23 4.6 Partner + Attendee 23 4.6 Festival 17 3.4 Other 13 2.6 Total 504 100
- 12. Findings • There was no significant relationship found between the nature of the tweet and the stage of the festival • Differences across the festival stages were evident in other variables: • Retweets • User Mentions (@________) • Links • Purpose Pre During Post 28.7% of tweets 68.3% of tweets 3% of tweets
- 13. Patterns Pre-Festival • Retweets were more likely to occur pre-festival than in any other stages (52.2%) • Festival + attendee mentioned together was twice as likely to occur before (68.2%) vs. during (31.8%) the festival • “RT @darrylwolk Looking forward to @Taste_Danforth! • The inclusion of links in the tweet was lower than expected before the festivals (23.6%) • Links to websites were higher than expected pre-festival (38.5%) • Information seeking purposes were more likely to occur before the festivals (45.7%) • Relationship building purposes more likely to occur before the festival (55.5%) Pre During Post
- 14. Patterns During Festival • The majority (68.3%) of tweets took place during the festival • Retweets were less than expected during the festival (45.2%) • Links to photos were most likely to occur during the festival (84.1%) • Information-sharing purpose was more likely to occur during the festival (69.4%) Pre During Post
- 15. Patterns Post Festival • 3% of tweets were post-festival • The inclusion of links were more likely to occur after the festival (4.6%) • Friendship/Relationship building purposes were less likely after the festival (1%) • “Other” purposes, tweets that did not belong in any of the categories, were more likely post festival (5.7%) Pre During Post
- 16. Conclusion • Consistent with the “in the here and now” essence of Twitter • There was no significant relationship found between the nature of the tweet and the stage of the festival, however other aspects did vary • Pre-festival tweets reflect some anticipatory content: • “@kerryrwerry: YAY!! The Pride Parade is next Saturday!! I'm so pumped! It's gonna be awesome! @PrideToronto” • Differential use of links across festival periods • Website links pre-festival: Twitter used to promote and direct people to the festival and related events • Higher photo links during festival: In the moment happenings to promote specific events or actions at
- 17. Conclusion • Festivals are not taking advantage of the unique opportunity to communicate with attendees via social media post festival • Post visit communication has been noted as a valuable opportunity to maintain contact and encourage visitors to continue processing their on-site experience • Festivals could consider information seeking and relationship building tweets after the festival to evaluate and encourage repeat attendance • Further research should explore why this is not occurring and examine these and other marketing implications
Editor's Notes
- Information Communication Technology is increasingly integrated into our everyday lives and while much research has examined user acceptance and diffusion in various workplace settings, research on technology adoption in leisure settings is limited. ICT has been the subject of user experience research in some tourism and recreation contexts; however ICT use has received little attention in festival research and research that examines attendee’s use of mobile devices at festivals. The research study “Your Festival in 140 Characters or Less” is part of the first stage in a multi-stage, exploratory, mixed methods study. The purpose of this stage is to gain an in depth understanding of how and why festival attendees are using mobile devices.
- In the increasingly crowded field of festivals, social media platforms offer new channels for attracting, communicating, and engaging festival attendees. By reviewing Twitter use, with 60% of its 200 million active users logging in using a mobile device, additional evidence is provided on the ways individuals are engaging with the festival through mobile technology. This study will address the nature and degree of Twitter use by three popular Canadian festivals, before, during, and after festival production/participation.
- Pride Toronto is an arts and cultural festival that celebrates diverse sexual and gender identities. Receives more than 1,000,000 attendees over the 3 day course of the festival. Taste of the Danforth is a celebration of Greek food and culture. Receives more than 1,000,000 attendees over the 3 day course of the festival. Edmonton Fringe Festival is a theater festival with an accompanying outdoor festival space that hosts more than 700,000 visitors. In 2013, 117,000 tickets were sold over the 11 days
- This table provides the basic Twitter background by each festival. Pride Toronto, established their presence on Twitter first of all the festivals, capturing over 14,000 followers and Tweeting over 3000 times, however their total tweets during the study period was the lowest. Taste of the Danforth became a Twitter user in June of last summer, just two months prior to the study period. Although Pride Toronto and Edmonton Fringe established Twitter accounts in 2009 and Taste of the Danforth only did so in 2013, its Twitter activity during the study period was slighter higher.
- To be consistent with the multi-phase experience model and acknowledge the salience of real-time data when studying information technology in such settings, the data collected represents three time points: one week prior to the festival, during the festival, and one week after the festival. Data on the profiles of the festival Twitter accounts were collected from www.twitter.com and www.followerwork.com. The tweets collected for content analysis included a census of the tweets from each festival’s Twitter handle (@PrideToronto, @Taste_Danforth, @edmontonfringe), and a collection of the top Tweets that included the hashtag (#) associated with each festival (#PrideTO, #TasteoftheDanforth #yegfringe) NCapture, a web browser extension of the qualitative data analysis software NVivo, was used to collect the tweets from each festival’s Twitter handle and the tweets that includes the festivals’ associated hashtag were collected from www.twitter.com. The collection of tweets were then transferred to IBM SPSS Statistics for coding and analysis. Inter-coder agreement was calculated using Cohen’s kappa (k = .860) based on a reproducibility reliability sample of 125 units
- In developing the categories for coding the tweets, multiple sources of literature were reviewed. The sources listed on the far right of the table assisted in defining the categories for the nature of each tweet: Conversational, Promotional, Informational, Status, Phatic, and Unclassifiable
- In developing the categories for coding the tweets, multiple sources of literature were reviewed. The sources listed on the far right of the table assisted in defining the categories for the nature of each tweet: Conversational, Promotional, Informational, Status, Phatic, and Unclassifiable
- Also determined through content analysis was the purpose of each tweet. Java et al (2007) provided a guideline for developing the categories information-sharing, information-seeking, friendship/relationship, other.
- In total. 870 tweets were captured 270 tweets were associated with Pride Toronto 328 tweets were associated with Taste of the Danforth 272 tweets were associated with Edmonton Fringe Festival 82.9% (721) of these tweets originated from the festivals twitter page and 17.1% (149) came from patrons using the festival’s associated hashtag. Retweets were also included in data collection, accounting for 21.4% of tweets The majority of tweets were retweeted 3 times or fewer The user/twitter handle of the writer of each tweet was also analyzed, showing that the festivals produced 65.8% of the tweets @PrideToronto = 179 (20.6%) @Taste_Danforth = 202 (23.3%) @edmontonfringe = 191 (22%) (One of the categories that was analyzed was the user/handle of the tweet that was collected Tweets from the twitter user @Pridetoronto, @Taste_Danforth and @yegfringe As retweets were also collected, the number of tweets that each festival’s twitter handle produced (65.8%) is not the same as the number of tweets collected from their twitter page (82.9%)) Reviewing the inclusion of links indicated that that over half – 55% - of all tweets contained links The majority of links were to photos (53.4%) 27.4% of links were the websites, Less frequent links include links to videos (8.6%), Facebook (7.4%), and contests (2.3%)
- Using the definitions shown previously for determining the nature of the tweet content, Promotional, informational, and conversational were fairly evenly distributed. The nature of the tweet helped to determine the inherent meaning of each tweet, answering the question of “How are festivals and attendees engaging on Twitter?” whether its to promote something, inform their attendees, engage in conversation, or to just answer the question “what are you doing right now? The purpose of the tweet was mainly information-sharing, with some focus on friendship/relationship building. Very few were classified as information-seeking or other. - The purpose of the tweet answers “Why are festivals and attendees engaging on Twitter” to build a deeper understanding of the festival-attendee relationship through social media platforms. Tweets with an information-sharing purpose provide the least opportunity for engagement, whereas information seeking and friendship/relationship building tweets offer a direct opportunity to engage with the festival using Twitter
- When considering who/what (i.e., @___) was mentioned in the tweets, the festival alone occurred only 3.4% of the time. In connection with a festival partner, this rose slightly to 11.3%. The most frequent category of mention was a festival partner/promoter (e.g., sponsor, entertainer) at 43.1%, followed by attendees/general public 30.6%.
- There was no significant relationship found between the nature of the tweet (informational, conversational, promotional, phatic, status, unclassifiable) and the stage of the festival However, differences across the festival stages did exist for other variables: Retweets User Mentions (@________) Links Purpose
- 250 tweets occurred pre-festival Pride Toronto = 89 (35.6%) Taste of the Danforth = 125 (50%) Edmonton Fringe Festival = 36 (14.4%) Retweets were more likely to occur before the festival than other stages (X2 = 63.722, df = 2, p = 0.000) The festival and attendee mentioned together was twice as likely to occur before vs. during the festival (X2 = 11.981, df = 6, p = 0.062) Percentages show the % within type of mention Example: RT @darrylwolk Looking forward to @Taste_Danforth! Pre-Festival Links Links to photos were lower than expected, however links to websites were higher than expected pre-festival (X2 = 37.646, df = 8, p = 0.000). Pre-Festival Purpose of Tweets Information seeking (n=16 pre-festival, 1.8% of total tweets, 45.7% within purpose of tweet) and friendship/relationship building (n=60 pre festival, 6.9% of total, 55.5% within purpose of tweet) tweets were higher than expected before the festival (X2 = 10.851, df = 6, p = 0.09)
- 68.3% (594) tweets occurred during the festival Pride Toronto = 171 (28.8%) Taste of the Danforth = 202 (34%) Edmonton Fringe = 221 (37.2%) There were less retweets that expected during this stage (45.2%) (X2 = 63.722, df = 2, p = 0.000) 71.8% of all links were in tweets that occurred during the festival Links to photos were most likely to occur during the festival (84.1% of links to photos and 44.2% of all links) Information-sharing purpose was more likely to occur during the festival (69.4%) (X2 = 10.851, df = 6, p = 0.09)
- 3% of tweets were post festival Pride Toronto = 10 (38.5%) Taste of the Danforth = 1 (3.8%) Edmonton Fringe = 15 (57.7%) The inclusion of links was higher than expected after the festival (4.6%) “Other” purposes, tweets that did not belong in any of the categories were more likely post festival
- Findings show that the data is consistent with the “in the here and now” essence of Twitter, with most of the posts happened during the festivals and very little Twitter activity after the festivals ended. The same was true for RTs. There was no significant relationship found between the nature of the tweet and the stage of the festival, however other aspects did vary Pre-festival tweets did reflect some anticipatory content with festival and attendee mentioned together being twice as likely to occur before vs. during the festival with tweets such as “@kerryrwerry: YAY!! The Pride Parade is next Saturday!! I'm so pumped! It's gonna be awesome! @PrideToronto”. There is some indication of differential use of links. The prevalence of website links pre-festival demonstrates use of Twitter to promote and direct people to the festival and related events Higher occurrence of photo links during the festival draws on the in the moment happenings to promote specific events or actions at the festivals (e.g., “Tweet us your parade photos! #PrideTO”).
- The research presented here shows that the festivals are not taking advantage of the unique opportunity to communicating with attendees post visit, using social media. Post-Festival communication has been noted as a valuable opportunity for organizations to maintain contact and to encourage visitors to continue processing their on-site experience cognitively and affectively Festivals could consider information seeking and relationship building tweets after the festival to evaluate experience and encourage repeat attendance. Further research should explore why this is not occurring and examine these and other possible marketing implications of engaging with attendees post festival. These early findings highlight patterns of Twitter use in the festival context and provide initial directions for research and practice in social media marketing and participant/tourist engagement at festivals.