Social Media in Australia: The Case of TwitterAssoc. Prof. Axel Bruns

ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation

Queensland University of Technology@snurb_dot_info

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

WHY TWITTER?

• Researching Twitter:– Significant world-wide social network– ~600+ million accounts (but how many active?)

• 2-2.5m accounts in Australia, predominant age range 25-55 years

– Varied range of uses: from phatic communication to emergency coordination– Especially important as a real-time communication medium– Healthy third-party ecosystem (for now)– Strong history of user innovation:

@replies, #hashtags– Flat and open network structure:

non-reciprocal following, public profiles by default– Good API for gathering (big) data for research

#SPILL

Gillard announces

ballot

Shorten supports

Rudd

Rudd wins ballot

Gillard press

conference

Rudd press conference

#SPILL

(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2013/06/27/spill-how-twitter-reacted-to-the-labor-leadership-challenge/)

AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS ON TWITTER

AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS ON TWITTER

(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/?p=2408)

REPORTING SOCIAL MEDIA IN POLITICS

(http://cci.edu.au/socialmediainthemedia.pdf)

SOCIAL MEDIA, POLITICS, AND TEACHING

• Teaching social media:– Social media are now well-established in the media ecology– Debates of mainstream vs. social media are passé– For some media professions, tools such as Twitter are now essential– Few students going into media professions will find jobs without having

strong social media knowledge

• Social media and the wider media ecology:– Key roles especially around breaking news and unfolding crises– Also important backchannel to television and mainstream news– Mainstream journalism vs. citizen journalism debate is over– But: significant digital divides remain – demographics, skills, devices

THE AUSTRALIAN TWITTERSPHERE?

Follower/followee network:~120,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012) colour = outdegree, size = indegree

THEMATIC CLUSTERS

PerthMarketing / PR

DesignWeb

Creative

FarmingAgriculture

HardlineConservatives

ConservativesJournalists

ALPProgressives

Greens

News

OpinionNews

NGOsSocial Policy

ITTech

Social MediaTechPR

Advertising

Real EstateProperty

JobsHR

Business

BusinessProperty

Parenting

Mums CraftArts

FoodWine

Beer

Adelaide

SocialICTs

CreativeDesign

FashionBeauty

UtilitiesServices

Net Culture

BooksLiteraturePublishing

Film

TheatreArts

RadioTV Music

DanceHip Hop

Triple J

TalkbackBreakfast TVCelebritiesCycling

Union

NRL

Football

CricketAFL

SwimmingV8s

Evangelicals

Teachinge-Learning

Schools

ChristiansHillsong

Teens

Jonas Bros.Beliebers

Australian Bands

@KRuddMP

@JuliaGillard

(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2012/04/01/many-maps-of-the-australian-twittersphere/)

TWITTER AND/IN THE MEDIA ECOLOGY

(total volume: 2.2m tweets)

TWITTER AND/IN THE MEDIA ECOLOGY

(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/tag/atnix/)

SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIETY

• The public sphere on / of / and social media:– Social media are now a key space for publics to form:

– How do these publics relate to the wider public sphere?• Do they represent it (or parts of it)? • Do they influence it? Are they influenced by it?

• ad hoc publics, often rapidly forming

and dissolving

macro: #hashtags

• personal publics, accumulating slowly and relatively stable

meso: follower networks

• interpersonalcommunication,

ephemeral

micro:@replies

(Bruns & Moe, 2013)

BIG BIG DATA: THE FIRST MILLION TWITTER IDS

Twitter IDs 1-1,000,000 (48,000 accounts still in existence)

(see http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2013/04/08/the-first-million-ids-on-twitter/)

TWITTER AS A SOURCE OF DATA

Geographical distribution of 1 million new account IDs (~ 422.000 existing accounts), newly registered on 18/19 Mar. 2013, 16:00-01:00 UTC ( 1-1.5m new users/day)

SOCIAL MEDIA AND / AS BIG DATA

• ‘Big Data’:– Increasingly important field of research and development– Significant applications from science to public services– Social media are a key source of big data on society– Many important questions about ethics and privacy yet to be addressed

• ‘Big Data’ jobs in the media industries:– Data journalists to support complex investigative reporting– Data analysts for market research, policy development, …– Data scientists to build ‘big data’ tools and applications

‘BIG DATA’ AND RESEARCH SKILLS

• Researchers need interdisciplinary skill sets:– Media & communication to understand the media environment– Maths and statistics to deal with ‘big data’– Computer science to develop tools to process social media data– Communication design to develop effective visualisations– Writing and communication skills to communicate the results– …

– Where do we find them?(few people have such a diverse range of skills)

– How do we support their work? (we’re only just developing our methods and tools)

– What is our strategy for dealing with precarity?(sudden API changes, changing fortunes of platforms, …)

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/@snurb_dot_info

@jeanburgess

@dpwoodford

@tsadkowsky

@lena_sauter

@timhighfield

@cdtavijit

@socialmediaQUT