Is Twitter a Medium of Social Mobilization?

: An Exploratory Study of the Use of Twitaddons.com in South Korea

Sujin ChoiDept. of Radio-Television-Film

University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A.

Ji-Young ParkMaster’s degree candidate

Han Woo Park (corresponding author) Associate Professor, Dept. of Media & Communication

Yeungnam University, South Korea

Sunbelt XXXI, Florida, February 11, 2011

Why Twitter?

Brevity in messages / Mobility / Pervasive access / Broadcast

nature (Zhao & Rosson, 2009)

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Retweeting to spread Tweets to new audiences, publicly agree

with someone, and validate others’ thoughts (boyd et al.,

2010). More focus on personal status update or interpersonal

relationship

Recent use for social mobilization

Twitaddons.com

Launched on Mar. 4, 2010

Added social gathering feature to Twitter

create and organize a party (“dang”)

108,876 tweets generated in Twitaddons.com, while 313,992 in the original Korean Twitter.com (July – Oct. 2010)

Automatically insert hashtags for effective communicationo Inconvenience of using hashtags, particularly in terms of Twitter

use in Korea

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Main Web page of Twitaddons.com

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Literature Review

Twitter

Relational / Conversational useo Java et al. (2007), Krishnamurthy et al. (2008), Huberman

et al. (2008) , Honeycutt and Herring (2009), Zhao and Rosson (2009), boyd et al. (2010)

Informational useo Jansen et al. (2009), Hughes and Palen (2010)

Social use (for social movement) ?

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Literature Review

Social Mobilization and the Internet

Positive impact on social mobilization for information and organizational functions (Klein, 1999; Van Aelst & Walgrave, 2002)

Online deliberations of opinions?oNegative: Wilhelm (1998) , Sunstein (2007)o Positive: Kellner (2004), Langman (2005), Bennett & Iyengar (2008)

Phases of social mobilization

i) Distribution of information

ii) Organization of movements

iii) Formation of shared values

iv) Implementation of collective action (Porta and Diani, 2006; Van Aelst and Walgrave, 2002; Shirky, 2008)

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Research Questions

RQ 1: What attributes do party organizers on Twitaddons.com have?

RQ 2: In what ways is the activity of a party organizer against members different from that against followers in terms of information distribution and organization?

RQ 3: Do party members form shared values in accordance with the mission statement of the party?

RQ4: Does the online activity of a party extend to its offline collective action?

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Method: Cases

12 parties selected among 2,200 civic advocacy parties

Membership ( > 100), Activeness (recent Tweets), Missions statements (political, commercial, social)

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Political Commercial Social

Cho-pae-gong-sa 730 Blackberry Users 824 Fair Tourism 144

Support MBC119 Info Repository for

Android Phone702

Social Innovation Community

186

Make Common-sense Prevail

299Official Party of

HTC Users 678

Party for Social Welfare

176

Korean HTC Users Party

501Party for

Volunteer Activity359

Food Car of Love 119

Result 1: Attributes of party organizers

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Followers vs. Following Conversation vs. Content Spread

Data period: Mar. – Sept. 2010

Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members

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More conversation and more content-sharing with party members than followers 70 % of activities allotted to their relation with members

*p < 0.1, df = 20Note: i) ‘Chopae’ is excluded from the analysis as an outlier. ii) Actions of reply, mention, retweet, and attribution are counted based on the number of ‘unique tweets’ generated. For instance, if a tweet denotes three members (or followers), it is regarded as one tweet, instead of three tweets. iii) Followers include both members and non-members.

Meant 

Member Follower

Conversation per 100 Twitterer

216.1 58 1.842* 0.091

Content Spreading Actions per 100 Twitterer

38.0 11.2 2.068* 0.060

Data period: Mar. – Sept. 2010

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Political Conversation Content Spreading

Chopae

MBC

CommonSense

Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members

NodeXL two-mode network visualizationData period: Mar. – Sept. 2010,

party organizers

party members

followers of the

party organizer

party organizers

party members

followers of the

party organizer

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Commercial Conversation Content Spreading

Blackberry

Android

Official HTC

Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members

Korean HTC

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Social Conversation Content Spreading

Tourism

Innovation

Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members

Welfare

Volunteer

Food Car

party organizers

party members

followers of the

party organizer

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Political Conversation Content Spreading

Chopae

Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members

NodeXL two-mode network visualizationData period: Mar. – Sept. 2010,

Semantic Network Analysis

Case: Chopae, Blackberry, and Volunteer

Data gathering period: Nov. 5 to 25, 2010

CONCOR conducted during the analysis

Top 20 words of each party

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Result 3: Formation of shared values among members

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Result 3: Formation of shared values among members

Chopae(Political)

Blackberry(Commercial)

Volunteer(Social)

1,618 tweets 3,690 tweets 893 tweets

7 clusters

2 large clusters

Engaged in criticizing G-20 and conservative newspapers

7clusters

2 main clusters

Shared product information and tweeted lost-and-found notifications

6 clusters

2 large clusters

Gathering volunteers and notifying schedules of volunteer activities

Hierarchy among memberso 9 executives, 41 directors, 3 heads of a labor union

Forms of online movemento Retweeting: mode of social actions against vested rights

G-20 (109 out of 683tweets)

Conservative dailies and conglomerates (68 out of 683tweets) (at the 1st week of Nov. 2010)

o Online caricature parody, 140-character novels about the President, Newspaper monitoring

Forms of offline actiono Gatherings on a monthly basiso Workshop, lecture, casual party, coalition with other parties

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Result 4: Extension of online activity to offline collective action (Case study of ‘Chopae’)

Shared action plan

o Encourage ‘retweets’ through the participation of at least 10% of total members

o Designate a day for ‘Chopae’ to implement a barrage of ‘mentions’ against ‘Chosunilbo’ in Twitter sphere

o Make leaflets, stickers, and cellular phone accessories

o Arrange offline lectures and interviews with public figures

o Open nationwide events to publicize its argument and recruit human resources as a long-term plan

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Result 4: Extension of online activity to offline collective action

Conclusion

“Small change: why the revolution will not be tweeted” ??

(Gladwell, Oct. 4, 2010)

Not for true activism (lacking strong ties and a hierarchical org.)

Party organizers (acquaintances & broadcasters, conversation > content spreading) invest more organizational effort to party members.Party members form shared values.Online movements increase the feasibility of offline, daily, collective activism.

“Technology-mediated social participation” with increased usability and sociability of technologies to foster vital communities (Pirolli et al., 2010).

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THANK YOU !