Social Media Issue Publics in AustraliaAxel Bruns

ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation

Queensland University of Technology

a.bruns@qut.edu.au

@snurb_dot_info

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

SOCIAL MEDIA RESEARCH AT QUT

• ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (national, based at QUT)

– Project: Media Ecologies & Methodological Innovation

• New methods to understand the changing media environment

• Role of social media, especially Twitter

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

– Project: Social Media in Times of Crisis

• Focus on crisis communication

• Partnerships with Queensland Department of Community Safety, Eidos Institute

http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf

CRISIS COMMUNICATION

KEY CHALLENGES IN CRISIS COMMUNICATION

• Information dissemination:– Crisis communication strategies of emergency services /

emergency media organisations– Evaluating effectiveness and resonance– Maintaining public visibility of social media accounts outside of

acute crisis situations

• Information discovery:– (Early) detection of crisis events in social media feeds– Identification and evaluation of crisis-relevant information– Correlation of crowdsourced information with other crisis data

THE QUEENSLAND FLOODS COMMUNITY

• Self-organisation:– Rapid establishment of #qldfloods hashtag– Ad hoc development of community structures– Highlighting of leading accounts, vigilant against disruption– Suspension of petty squabbles (e.g. state politics)

• Innovation and rapid prototyping:– Adjunct hashtags (#Mythbuster, #bakedrelief)– Sharing and gathering of online resources– Additional tools (Google Maps, Ushahidi Maps)– Emergency services rapidly adopting social media tools

(despite lack of established strategies)

‘Go where they are’ rather than ‘build it and they will come’

See CCI Report: #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods (http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf)

#QLDFLOODS 2011: MOST VISIBLE USERS

#QLDFLOOD(S) 2013: MOST VISIBLE USERS

#EQNZ: VISIBILITY OF LEADING ACCOUNTS IN EACH EVENT

JUST THE FACTS: SELECTIVE RETWEETING

CRISIS EVENT COMPARISON

● #qldfloods 2011

● #qldfloods 2013

● #eqnz 2011

● #eqnz 2013

INFORMATION DISCOVERY

KEY CHALLENGES

• Identification:– Unforeseen events: need to track more than keywords (‘big data’)– Potential to identify emerging events from overall activity patterns

• Evaluation:– Real? Hoax? Metaphor (“the bank has collapsed”)?– May need semantic analysis, user profiling, independent verification

• Incorporation:– Correlation and integration with standard emergency data sources– Timeframes: how long until crowdsourced information expires?

10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011

#QLDFLOODS FROM TOOWOOMBA TO BRISBANE

#EQNZ: KEY THEMES

#EQNZ: MENTIONS OF THE CTV BUILDING

Graph: Avijit Paul(@cdtavijit); see Paul & Bruns (2013)

SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION

• Social media research:– Develop better tools and metrics for evaluating social media communication– In-depth analysis of communication patterns reveals how social media are used– Real-time analytics: highlight key current issues, identify weak signals of crisis– Monitor and improve effectiveness of social media communication strategies by

emergency services

• Social media uses:– Inform, share, amplify, support, reassure, organise– Need to track and work with user community: follow their conventions

(e.g. #eqnz hashtag)– Two-way communication where feasible – more than broadcast messages– Provide community with tools to self-organise for resilience

SOCIAL MEDIA AND / IN SOCIETY

UNDERSTANDING TWITTER PUBLICS

• #hashtags:– Useful coordinating mechanism for core discussion– Relatively easy to capture and analyse– Fails to capture non-hashtagged tweets about the topic– Good case studies, but very little comparative work to date

• National / global Twittersphere maps– Crucial contextual baseline for #hashtag case studies– Slow and laborious data gathering process, never complete– Very long-term perspective, beyond most funded projects– Indispensable for study of Twitter as a public space

TWITTER AND SOCIETY

• Richard Rogers:– From “studying the Internet” to “studying society

with the Internet”– Social media as a global / national / local sensor

network– Social media issue publics as indicators of

current concerns, topics, trends

• Needs:– More comprehensive theories of social media

communication– More flexible and powerful research methods,

beyond the Twitter hashtag– More interdisciplinary research teams and

approaches– Better research infrastructure for accessing,

processing, analysing, visualising ‘big data’

• Katrin Weller, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Merja Mahrt, and Cornelius Puschmann, eds. Twitter and Society. New York: Peter Lang, 2014. @twitsocbook

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

#HASHTAG PARTICIPATION

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

#QLDFLOODS

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

#EQNZ

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

#AUSPOL

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

#AUSVOTES (2010)

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

THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU URLS

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

ABC.NET.AU URLS

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

@abcnews

HOW GILLARD’S MISOGYNY SPEECH WENT VIRAL

15 mins. elapsed

30 mins. elapsed

Journalists

1 hour elapsed

Feminists

2 hours elapsed

3 hours elapsed

4 hours elapsed

5 hours elapsed

complete network (75 hours elapsed)

LONGITUDINAL STUDIES

AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS ON TWITTER

(data to June 2013)

@TONYABBOTTMHR’S FAKE FOLLOWERS

(11/12 Aug. 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/)

NEW ACCOUNT CREATION AROUND CRISES

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/@snurb_dot_info

@jeanburgess

@dpwoodford

@timhighfield

@lena_sauter

@_StephenH

@quods

@socialmediaQUT – http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/