Twitter and the new regime of audience measurement

Düsseldorf, 14.9.2011

@JanSchmidt

Context & Agenda

• Work on social web and audience is part of…

• … research programme „Between reception, interaction, and production – changing users‘ roles in converging media“ at the Hans-Bredow-Institute• Upcoming 2.5-year-project „(Re-)Discovery of the audience“ (funded by DFG)• Short report „Audience metrics 2.0“ for ZDF• Various research & publication projects on the transformation of the public sphere

1. Perspectives on „audience“ and „audience measurement“

2. Twitter and audience measurement

3. An emerging regime?

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Three Perspectives on Audience

1. Audience as recipients• Audience as sum of all receivers of media content; • Considered to be more or less active (passive consumption vs. active selection and

engagement with media content)

2. Audience as product• „manufactured audience“ as main commodity produced by media industry (Smythe

1977)• „audience labor“ as dominant activity: media consumption as reproduction of

capitalist workforce and training to participate in capitalist consumption society

3. Audience as empowered networks• Produsage as new mode of media use (Bruns 2008)• Participative mediation is complementing technical and professional mediation in

networked public spheres (Neuberger/Nuernbergk/Rischke 2009)• Audience management as important part of self-disclosure and privacy in personal

public spheres (Schmidt 2011)

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Regimes of audience measurement

• Regime of audience measurement: relatively stable constellation of actors, technologies and practices which produce, with specific interests and within specific power relations, accepted data on size, composition and activities of media audience.

• Regime of audience measurement in TV has stabilized over 60+ years: Usually monopolized system of „joint industry committees“ where broadcasters and advertisers put out tenders to specialized research companies (big players: AGB-Nielsen, TNS, GfK Telecontrol)

• Trends in broadcast media audience measurement (following Bermejo 2009)• Automated, non-reactive „while you watch“-measuring• Individualized (instead of household-based) measuring• Measuring contact with smaller / shorter pieces of content• Near-live transfer and aggregation of measured data

Twitter (and other online media) is furthering these trends

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Articulating the audience on Twitter

Twitter’s communicative architecture is…

1. … organizing communication and information selection along articulated social connections (followers – followees)

• Structures of the networked audience (clustering; centrality-periphery-patterns, etc.) can be measured

2. … making visible communicative references (@-replies; Re-Tweets; Fav’s; common hashtags; …)

• Reach, fluidity and viral spread of de-bundled „microcontent“ as well as of particular issues can be assessed

• Follow-up communication“ can be monitored

3. … making these information available via API’s

• Both structure and communication (content & dynamic) within audience is accessible to others

Twitter is affording extended metrics for audience measurement

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Metrics 2.0

Assessing the quality of indicators

• For media companies (as for others interested in twitter metrics), various aspects of data quality are important, but yet unanswered

1. Manipulation: e.g. Fake-Accounts & Astroturfing; buying followers & retweets; Twitter Spam

2. 2nd order reactivity: real users give incorrect personal information because they don‘t trust the intermediary

3. Opening the „black box“: How is data constructed by twitter or other services? What algorithms are used to measure influence, popularity, centrality, etc.?

4. Putting metrics into context: e.g. over time; compared to other activities; compared to indicators from different platforms

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Emerging regime?

• Regime of audience measurement: relatively stable constellation of actors, technologies and practices which produce, with specific interests and within specific power relations, accepted data on size, composition and activities of media audience.• Twitter is not only affording communication, but also aggregating and providing data

– control over code and data provides powerful position• Additional actors include (media) companies, market researchers, academic

researchers, consulting agencies, … who develop and establish their own methods and reports (e.g. Deutsche Twittercharts; Social Media Ranking; …)

• Rapid technological innovation in terms of procedures and algorithms to automate the monitoring, aggregation, analysis, display etc. of audience data

• No stable constellation… yet? • Twitter - for monetarization - as well as (media) companies – for evaluation of their

activities on Twitter - have interest in establishing agreed-upon indicators and procedures• Technological dynamic, possibly also the transnational and transculturual nature of Twitter

might prohibit stabilization of measurement regimes• Combination of science, control, consensus on procedure and trust has allowed previous

regimes to emerge (Bourdon/Méadel 2011) – will the same happen with Twitter?Audience Measurement 8 of 10

Reflecting the implications

• Changing regime of audience measurement is bringing about new questions• How to compensate the working audience, when audience measurement is

becoming „a process of appropriation – commercialization or commodification – of interactivity“ (Bermejo 2009, 149)

• Are the „people formerly known as the audience“ also becoming self-aware as an audience? Might this even lead to strategic action (e.g. collectively exerting power to influence indicators)?

• How is privacy and data protection maintained when all personal and interaction data is stored and monitored? Can informed consent to data-mining be pre-supposed?

• … [probably many many more.. ]

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Thank you!

Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt

Hans-Bredow-InstitutWarburgstr. 8-10, 20354 Hamburg

j.schmidt@hans-bredow-institut.dewww.hans-bredow-institut.de

www.schmidtmitdete.dewww.dasneuenetz.de

Literature

Bermejo, F. (2009): Audience manufacture in historical perspective: from broadcasting to Google. In: New Media & Society, 11(1/2): 133-154.

Bourdon, J.; Méadel, C. (2011): Inside television audience measurement: Deconstructing the ratings machine. In: Media, Culture & Society, 33(5): 791-800.

Bruns, A. (2008): Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond. From production to produsage. New York u.a.: Peter Lang.

Neuberger, C.; Nuernbergk, C.; Rischke, M. (2009): Journalismus im Internet: Profession, Partizipation, Technisierung. Wiesbaden: VS.

Schiffers, O. (2010): Tools und Kennzahlen für das Social Web. In: Brauckmann, P. (Hg.): Web-Monitoring. Konstanz: UVK. 267-286.

Schmidt, J. (2011): (Micro)Blogs: Practices of Privacy Management. In: Trepte, S.; Reinecke, L. (Eds.): Privacy Online. Heidelberg: Springer.

Smythe, D. (1977): Communications: blindspot of Western Marxism. In: Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 2(2): 1-27.