Twitter Adoption and Use in Mass Convergence and Emergency Events
If we want
to have a look at the influence of micro-blogging services like Twitter on the
traditional media, it is interesting to know how twitter is used in situations
of mass collaboration. Because it is in these situations that people want to
collect and spread information through traditional and social media. Therefore
I summarized the article Twitter Adoption and Use is Mass Convergence and
Emergency Events:
The
researchers have collected information on the usage of Twitter during four
imported mass convergence events in the US: two hurricanes (Ike and Gustav) and
two political conventions (the Democratic and Republic national convention). They
compared tweets dedicated to the 4 mass convergence events to general tweets
posted during the same period. They wanted to find out if users behave
different on twitter in times of crisis and mass convergence. The first
conclusion they draw is that the number of tweets sent increases during the
event(to reach a peak at the top of the event), but that at the same time the
number of tweet senders decreases. This suggests that people are using twitter
to collect information and participate passively more than to interact actively
with others. Secondly the researchers found out that the number of reply tweets
(@) was lower (relatively as well as absolutely) during these four events. This
could be explained by the fact that during mass convergence events we want to
share information with as much people as possible instead of one individual. On
the contrary the number of URLs used in tweets was significant higher, this
supports the idea that people use twitter in non-routine situations to spread
information through URLs, because this gives the opportunity to transfer more
information. The last conclusion the researchers draw is that people are more
active on twitter (for example a raising number of new users) when they have
more need for information. In these circumstances people are more likely to
adapt new technologies.
This
research learns us that the traditional media must pay attention to the usage
of Twitter during mass convergence events (planned or emergency). Because
especially during these events micro-blogging services are a great media to spread
information to as many people as possible. Tom Servranckx
Source: Lee Hughes, A. & Palen, L. ,2010. Twitter Adoption and Use in Mass Convergence and Emergency Events. International Journal of Emergency Managment,6,248-260.
Tweetgeist: Can the Twitter Timeline Reveal the Structure of Broadcast Events
Thanks to
micro-blogging services like Twitter people get the opportunity to interact and
discuss in real-time with followers of the same event. These tweets contain a
lot of information about the structure and content of media events. The
researchers investigated the activity on twitter during 2 of the most important
television broadcasts in 2008: the US presidential debate and the inauguration
of Barack Obama.
The
researchers traced down two types of cues: usage cues and content cues. Usages
cues use the structural component of tweets (length, use of special symbols, ) to
explore the interest in the on-going media event. The total volume of tweets
dedicate to an event is a first usage indicator for the attention to the event.
It is especially interesting to have a closer look to the peaks and valleys in
volume of tweets and link these observations to changes in topic (for example
during the US presidential debate more people posted a tweet when the debate
was focused on the economy then when the debate stressed on immigration). A
second usage indicator, indicating the importance of an event, was the length
of the tweets. When people are interested in a certain topic, they have less
time to tweet and so did the researchers encountered more short tweets. During
moments of interest people have less time to chat so the number of @ used in
tweets decreased, this is the third usage indicator chattiness. The previous three indicators only minded
information from the structure of tweets, thanks to the content cues it is
possible to gather information about what people are saying in their tweets.
The technique used, is based on the salience(=how many times is a term used in
all the tweets at that moment) of a word. The usage of some terms has one peak
linked to a specific moment in the media-event. Other words have a salience
that sustains for a longer period.
All this
information can be used to improve the usage of Twitter in real time or for
post-event consumption.
Tom
Servranckx Source: Shamma, D. & Kennedy, L. & Churchill, E., 2010. Tweetgeist: Can the Twitter Timeline Reveal the Structure of Broadcast Events. CSCW Horizons.
I thought
it would be interesting to focus on the influence of micro-blogging services
(like twitter) on the media. Because it is the aspect of macrowikinomics we are
most confronted with. For example, I noticed that a lot of news programs and
talk shows give their viewers the opportunity to comment on the program through
twitter (something that blew over from Great-Britain, where the BBC gives a
hashtag to almost all their problems). So maybe it is interesting to search
some information on this new phenomenon and focus on the broadcast companies.
Do you think that is a good idea?
I think it might be effective if we post the links of the scientific articles
we find in this blog, so we can select the best ones and make sure we dont
summarize the same articles. I have already done some research (I have no VPN
so I could not consult the articles on the universiteitsbibliotheek,
maybe one of you can have a look there):
