Media Ecologies and Methodological Innovation: The Case of TwitterAssoc. Prof. Axel BrunsQueensland University of Technologya.bruns@qut.edu.au – http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_infohttp://mappingonlinepublics.net/

Background: Related Projects

• CCI Project:– Media Ecologies and Methodological Innovation

(Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Kate Crawford, Gerard Goggin, Terry Flew, John Hartley + RA Frances Shaw)

• ARC Discovery Project (2010-13):– New Media and Public Communication

(AB & JB + Sociomantic Labs, RAs: Caro Jende, Tim Highfield, Jen Lofgren, Mirka Streckhardt)

• ATN-DAAD Projects (2011-12):– Social Media Monitoring: Analysis of Social Networks for Enterprises’ Issue Management (AsNIM)

(AB & JB + Tanya Nitins, University of Münster: Stefan Stieglitz, Nina Krüger, Tobias Brockmann et al.)– Extending Computer-Aided Methods for the Analysis of Blogging and Microblogging Discourses and Publics

(AB & JB + Stephen Harrington, University of Düsseldorf: Katrin Weller, Cornelius Puschmann et al.)

• ASSA-ISL Project (2010-11):– Flood and Fire: Understanding the Structure and Process of Public Communication during Times of Crisis

(AB & JB + National Cheng Chi University, Taipei: Pai-Lin Chen, Tsai-Yen Li, Yu-Chung Cheng et al.)

• ARC Linkage Project (2012-14):– Social Media in Times of Crisis: Learning from Recent Natural Disasters to Improve Future Strategies

(AB, JB, KC, TF + Queensland Department of Community Safety, Eidos Institute, Sociomantic Labs)

• Website: http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

Focus on Twitter

• Real-time public communication:– Social media coverage as a first draft of the present– Especially Twitter: flat, open, self-organising network– First-hand, unfiltered, direct insights into Australians’ views– Rich data on specific events and on long-term trends

• Readily available data:– Access to rich data (and metadata) through standard APIs– Especially on Twitter, limited immediate ethical concerns– Ephemeral content which is lost to posterity unless archived– ‘Big data’, but far from unmanageable

Key Outcomes: Individual Event Publics

(follower/followee network – 140,000 most connected Australia users, of 550,000 processed so far)

Wine

Adelaide

Food

Fashion / Style / Parenting

Fashion / Magazines

Music / Triple J

Teens / TV Hits

Teens

Filipinos

Perth / PR

Marketing / PR

News / Business

Football (Soccer)

AFL

Sports

Journalism / Politics / News

Celebrities / Media

CricketNRL

Radio

Arts

Julia Gillard

Kevin Rudd

Malcolm Turnbull

Mumbrella

ABC News

Triple J

Mia Freedman

Sunrise on 7

Matt Preston

Wil Anderson

Annabel Crabb

Leigh Sales

Latika Bourke

Marie Claire

Hamish and Andy

Joe Hockey

Laurie Oakes

Tony Abbott

Crikey

TV

7pm Project

Australia on Twitter

Key Outcomes: Classifying Acute Events

Unforeseen Crises

Televised Events

Counterculture?

‘Big Data’ Challenges: Teamwork

• Team-based research approaches:– Interdisciplinary: media, communication and cultural studies; social science;

informatics; mathematics; statistics; journalism; crisis communication; communication design; computer science; data visualisation; …

– Exploratory: rapid prototyping of research methods and tools; use of emerging technology at the bleeding edge; following the data without a clear and specific research goal in mind (beyond ‘mapping online publics’ in general)

– Flexible: dealing with real-time data may mean ‘ambulance chasing’ (e.g. #eqnz, #tsunami, #qantas); rapid data analysis and online publication well ahead of journal publication turnarounds; application across wide range of thematic and research domains

– Collaborative: towards natural sciences-style lab-based research models; team research and multi-authored publications; individual sub-projects developed and driven by specific team members

‘Big Data’ Challenges: Graduate Training

• New postgraduate and postdoctoral skillsets:– Postgraduate and postdoctoral recruitment: need for high-level

undergraduate/honours project units to enthuse and encourage promising students; need to recruit well beyond standard media and communication fields means need to be visible in those fields (why would a computer scientist or statistician want to work with us?)

– Postgraduate training: need to be able to supervise highly multidisciplinary research projects means multidisciplinary supervision teams; lab-style collaborative research projects means exploration of collaborative postgraduate research and cohort supervision

– Risky research: changeable technological frameworks and reliance on third parties means whole PhD projects may be wiped out by a single Twitter API change; lack of university ethics guidelines means need to develop own research ethics and/or follow external standards (e.g. AoIR Ethics Guide)

‘Big Data’ Challenges: Infrastructure

• Tools and support for ‘big data’ research:– Data capture: some available (open source) tools; need for customisation and

further development; need for reliable, always-on capture infrastructure (and IT support); API changes likely to break existing frameworks; truly big, long term data access can be costly (may need industry partnerships?)

– Data processing: need for significant computing power to process and visualise large data corpora; need for computer scientists to help develop customised processing tools addressing specific research questions

– Data storage: even Twitter datasets can get very big; no standard solutions for short- and medium-term storage; what about long-term archiving of significant records of public communication (National Library)?

– Research Dissemination: publications on real-time events need to be faster than standard journal cycles; need to embrace rapid publication of results and analysis online; also need to share tools (e.g. as open source); but what about sharing datasets to enable independent verification of results?

‘Big Data’ Challenges: Collaborations

• Emerging field of research needs shared approaches:– International comparisons: parallel research projects to explore national

differences and overlaps – e.g. Twitter and elections; Twitter and crisis communication; …

– National consortia: shared infrastructure and datasets for particularly large-scale projects – e.g. comprehensive tracking and analysis of public communication by Australians on Twitter

– General sharing of methods and tools: natural sciences-style frameworks for sharing tools and methods (and datasets?) to enable independent verification of research results; development of shared standards for data formats; researcher exchanges and internships

– Industry collaborations: e.g. application partnerships with domain partners (media organisations, government departments, etc.); data capture, processing, and storage partnerships with major technology partners (Google, Microsoft, …); perhaps even partnerships with Twitter itself (?); but also need to consider research ethics implications of such partnerships

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess