potential of twitter archives
DESCRIPTION
Master defense at Graz University of Technology 2014TRANSCRIPT
TU Graz - IICM
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Potential of Twitter Archives
Thomas Altmann
TU Graz - IICM
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
“Twitter helps you create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” (Twitter 2014)
Source: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/266031293945503744
TU Graz - IICM
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Table of Contents
• Overview
• TweetCollector
• TwitterStat
• Demo
• Conclusion
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
• Tweets
• Mentions
• Retweets
• Hashtags
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Twitter Research
• Existing scientific research
– JAVA 2007, BOYD 2010
• Social network analysis
• Wealth of data
• Limited access
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Research Questions
• What value can tweet archives provide?
• What value can the context of a tweet analysis provide?
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Problems
• Retrieving old tweets
– Search: no older than six to nine days
– Users: no older than 3200 tweets
• Search does not find all tweets
– Only most popular
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Twitter APIs
• REST API– Individual requests– Rate limited– Used for search and user timelines
• Streaming API– Single persistent connection– Set parameters– Constant real-time stream
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TweetCollector - Purpose
• Collect tweets– Containing certain words/hashtags– From certain users
• Provide access to stored tweets– Basic web interface– Archives accessible through API
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TweetCollector - Implementation
• Server-side– PHP/MySQL– Uses Twitter Streaming API and REST API– Provides API to access stored tweets
• Client-side– HTML/CSS/JavaScript– Create and delete archives– Start and stop archiving
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Structure of Tools
Source: Own depiction
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TwitterStat - Purpose
• Twitter Analysis Tool
• Analyze TweetCollector archives
• Show most active users, most used words/hashtags, …
• Provide context by linking original tweets
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TwitterStat - Questions
Source: Own depiction
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TwitterStat - Answers
• Possible Answer
• Ordered List of results• Every result is a link
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TwitterStat - Context
• Back to tweets
• Check original tweets responsible for results• Provide context for analysis
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TwitterStat - API
• Access to analysis results
• Machine-readable format
• Possibility of further usage, e.g. visualization
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
TwitterStat - Visualization
Source: Own depiction
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
LIVE DEMO
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Results
• What value can tweet archives provide?– Access to tweets too old to be found by Twitter– Analysis needs large corpus of tweets– API to build applications using tweet archives
• What value can the context of a tweet analysis provide?– Determine content and sentiment of original tweets– Check if insights gained from analysis correspond with original
tweets– See tweets as part of a larger conversation
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Conclusion
• Goal: Show potential of Twitter archives
• Developed: TweetCollector for archiving
• Developed: TwitterStat for analysis
• Showed: Value in tweet archives and analysis
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
Thank You!
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Thomas Altmann Graz, 3.7.2014 Potential of Twitter Archives
References
A. JAVA, X. SONG, T. FININ, B. TSENG. Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities. Presented at the Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 workshop on Web mining and social network analysis (2007), 56–65.
D. BOYD, S. GOLDER, G. LOTAN. Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter. Presented at the Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2010), Hawaii.