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'Big Data'

Snurb — Friday 25 April 2014 13:00

Different Forms of Talk on Twitter

'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | Twitter | Conferences |

It’s been a little quiet again here, as I’ve taken February and March off on Long Service Leave. That’s all about to change, though, because two major new research projects are about to start now – more of these soon.

For the moment, here’s my first conference presentation for 2014, from the Media Talk symposium at Griffith University in Brisbane. I used this to work through the three layers of communication on Twitter which Hallvard Moe and I have identified in our chapter in Twitter and Society, and to provide some examples for how these layers operate in practice …

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Snurb — Friday 25 April 2014 12:58

Layers of Communication: Forms of Talk on Twitter (Media Talk 2014)

'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | Twitter | Conferences |

Media Talk Symposium 2014

Layers of Communication: Forms of Talk on Twitter

Axel Bruns

  • 24 Apr. 2014 – Media Talk Symposium, Brisbane

With some 2.5 million accounts, especially representing the influential 25-55 age range, Twitter has become an important social media platform in Australia. It has found key applications in areas ranging from politics and crisis communication to entertainment and sports, but also facilitates everyday communication between like-minded individuals and communities. In spite of the increased scholarly attention on the uses of Twitter across these practices, however, the question of what kind(s) of communication Twitter represents remains largely underexplored, and the forms of interaction that the platform enables have yet to be fully theorised.

Building on prior work by Bruns & Moe (2014), this paper explores the various layers of communication which exist on Twitter, from direct, dyadic @reply exchanges between clearly identified communication partners at the micro level through narrowcast message dissemination to the followers of an account at the meso level to many-to-many exchanges in ad hoc publics created by hashtags at the macro level. It outlines the different types and formats of talk which are able to occur at each of these levels, and shows the interweaving of the information and communication flows which take place on each of them. In doing so, it outlines the complexities of communication on Twitter, and points to new challenges in Twitter research.

References:

Axel Bruns and Hallvard Moe. (2014). “Structural Layers of Communication on Twitter.” In Twitter and Society, eds. Katrin Weller, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Merja Mahrt, and Cornelius Puschmann. New York: Peter Lang, 2014. 15-28.

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Snurb — Wednesday 13 November 2013 17:19

Presenting Our Social Media Work at the 2013 IBM Research Colloquium

'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media in Times of Crisis (ARC Linkage) | Social Media Network Mapping | New Media and Public Communication (ARC Discovery) | Crisis Communication | Twitter | Conferences |

Now that I’m back in Australia from my extended conference trip, I immediately got back on a plane to travel to a freezing Melbourne, to present our social media research in crisis communication and beyond at the 2013 IBM Research Colloquium. Below are my slides and audio – many thanks again to Jennifer Lai and her team at IBM Research Australia for the invitation!

Social Media Issue Publics in Australia from Axel Bruns
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Snurb — Wednesday 13 November 2013 17:13

Social Media Issue Publics in Australia (IBM Research Colloquium 2013)

'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media in Times of Crisis (ARC Linkage) | Social Media Network Mapping | New Media and Public Communication (ARC Discovery) | Crisis Communication | Twitter | Conferences |

IBM Research Colloquium 2013

Social Media Issue Publics in Australia

Axel Bruns

  • 12 Nov. 2013 – IBM Research Colloquium, Melbourne
Social Media Issue Publics in Australia from Axel Bruns

When important news breaks, social media facilitate the rapid formation of issue publics which come together to 'work the story' of the unfolding event. This is especially evident in the context of natural disasters and other crises. The close study of social media feeds during such crisis provides a valuable insight into the dynamics of the event, with participants acting as human sensors for new information and current trends. This paper outlines the crisis communication research conducted at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology, and outlines the need for further background research into the longer-term development of social media platforms.

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Snurb — Saturday 9 November 2013 08:13

How Julia Gillard's Misogyny Speech Went Viral

Politics | Journalism | 'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | Twitter | Digital Methods 2013 |

The next panel at the Digital Methods conference begins with a panel by Theresa Sauter and me, on the viral distribution of links to the video of Julia Gillard's "misogyny" speech in 2012 as it was posted in full on the ABC News site. Unfortunately the audio recording didn't work out, so below are the slides only - do make sure you click on the links to see the video and the animations of the emerging retweet network.

Anatomie eines Trending Topics: Retweet-Ketten als Verbreitungsmechanismus für aktuelle Ereignisse from Axel Bruns
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Snurb — Friday 8 November 2013 22:51

The Challenges of Understanding Content Dissemination on Facebook

Internet Technologies | 'Big Data' | Social Media | Digital Methods 2013 |

The final speakers in this Digital Methods plenary are Axel Maireder and Katrin Jungnickel, whose interest is in the uncertainties of the Facebook timeline. Facebook has continued to tinker with how the timeline is selected and presented for several years now, and this affects the flow of communication on the platform; what, then, are the factors which determine that flow?

This study combined content analysis and user surveys, but both these approaches have their drawbacks - it is impossible from the outside to track the content of users' timelines, for example, but surveys of users also suffer from self-reporting biases …

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Snurb — Friday 8 November 2013 22:51

Generating Representative Samples from Search Engine Results?

Internet Technologies | 'Big Data' | Digital Methods 2013 |

The next plenary speaker at Digital Methods is Martin Emmer, whose focus is on sampling methods in digital contexts. Online media are now important public fora, and conventional media are increasingly using digital channels to transmit their content as well; this also leads to a shift in media usage, of course, and some of that shift is also driven by generational change.

If we need to examine the digital space to understand current debates in the public sphere, then, how do we generate representative samples of online content and activities? With traditional mass media, it was possible to draw on …

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Snurb — Friday 8 November 2013 22:51

The Impact of Social Sharing on Google Search Results

Internet Technologies | 'Big Data' | Digital Methods 2013 |

The next session at Digital Methods is a plenary panel which begins with Christina Schumann, whose focus is on Google and other search engines as technological actors on the Internet. Search engines are especially important as they now serve as a kind of gatekeeper on the Net - but the criteria they use for ranking and structuring information are often far from transparent.

The basic approach of search engines is to crawl or otherwise gather Internet data which are then indexed and processed into a database; this database is queried as a search query is entered into the search engine …

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Snurb — Friday 8 November 2013 22:50

The Opportunities and Challenges of 'Big Data' Research

'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | Digital Methods 2013 |

At the end of an extended trip to a range of conferences and symposia I've made my way to Vienna, where I'm attending the DGPuK Digital Methods conference at the University of Vienna. The conference is in German, but I'll try to blog the presentations in English nonetheless - wish me luck... We begin with keynote by Jürgen Pfeffer, addressing - not surprisingly - the question of 'big data' in communications research.

Jürgen begins by asking what's different about 'big data' research. In our field, we're using 'big data' on communication and interaction to work towards a real-time analysis of …

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Snurb — Wednesday 30 October 2013 02:27

Distinguishing Chain and Name Networks in Social Network Analysis

'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | Compromised Data 2013 |

The final speaker in this "Compromised Data" session is Anatoliy Gruzd, whose interest is in the automated discovery and visualisation of communication networks from social media data. (He's also just launched a new journal in this field, Big Data and Society.) How can such networks be discovered and visualised, and how can we evaluate the sense of community which may exist in them?

Social network analysis enables us to investigate the connections between users in social networks. It reduces large quantities of messages to a smaller number of nodes exchanging communication; it can track longitudinal developments over …

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