Getting Granular on Twitter Tweets from a Conference and their Limited Usefulness for Non-Participants

Getting Granular on Twitter:
Tweets from a Conference and
Their Limited Usefulness for
Non-participants

Martin Ebner, Herbert Mühlburger, Sandra Schaffert, Mandy Schiefner,
Wolfgang Reinhardt, Steve Wheeler

Increase of
devices

http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddhiestand/197704394/

Mobile Learning?

http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

„Hence, learning materials must be designed
for easy access by the nomadic learners
during using mobile technology regardless
of where they are located and which network
infrastructure they are using to access
information“
Allen, 2007


Is microblogging a possibility for a specific
community to exchange ideas, interests and
information?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividbreeze/480057824

Microblogging is a small-scale form of blogging, generally
made up of short, succinct messages, used by both users and
business to share news, post status updates and carry on
conversations Templeton, 2008

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418

http://www.jaiku.com

http://www.pownce.com(do
wn on December 15, 2008)

http://www.twitter.com

http://identi.ca/ http://www.plurk.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/1815164756/

http://www.twitter.com


What the hell is twitter?

- 140 character
- from mobile, client or web interface
- Followers
- Direct messages
- @Replies and Retweets
- #Hashtags
- Open API

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195

btw, thanks for the last
slide to ...


http://www.slideshare.net/mweller/twitter-microblogging-and-living-in-the-stream-presentation?type=powerpoint

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_ways_to_have_fun_with_twitter.php


Different kind of people
using microblogs
Templeton, 2007
Java et al, 2008

Exchanger

Communicator
Daily Chatter Reporter

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418

http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle


Twitter ok, but
how can we use it
for scientific
conferences?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leapfrog_photo/2532068489

Pre-studies – Use of Twitter at conferences

• ED-Media 2008
• Summer School 2008
• ED-Media 2009

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525

Twitter stream beside
keynote(ED-Media 2008)


„in the background we
discussed things more
deeply than the guys on the
stage“

versus

„Twitter can be distracting -
you pay less attention“

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuagedenuit/276092250

Number of Tweets at ED-Media 2009


„... top trend makers show who is the
heartbeat of this online community and
the key terms pointed out, what the
community was talking about“

http://www.flickr.com/photos/radekreks/316541927

Research outcomes –
Twitter can be used in the context of conferences:

• for communication amongst participants
• for communication amongst organizers
/presenters and audience

• for reporting to non-participants about the
conference

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525

Research Question:

Is Twitter proper to report from a
conference in order to share the event
with the scientific community from
outside the conference?


Study:

•Educamp Hamburg 2010 (barcamp; unconference)
• Twitter was monitored from 5.2 – 4.3.2010 (used
Hashtag #ec10hh)

• In summary 2110 tweets were examined
• Two stage analysis – automatically and manually


Four categories of Tweets:

•Irrelevant Tweets
“Who found my drinking cup? #ec10hh”

• Administrative Tweets
“Wifi is not available #ec10hh”

• Topical Discussions
“nice idea of @estudyskills Aggregation of all
student weblogs at Tumblelog gives overview”

• Topical Tweets
“open-learning: initiative on OER usage for informal
education: http://u.nu/4a7ya #ec10hh”


Analyses of participants


Categories of Tweets (manual analysis)


Detailed Analysis of Tweets (manual analysis)


Discussion

•Keyword extraction (automatically analysis) did
not show any interesting result – no direct
correlation

• In average each user posted 6 tweets during
the conference period

• High number of Retweets (18%) – often not
useful without the necessary context


Main Outcome:

If we reduce the tweets to those
occurring during the conference period
(5th and 6th February) only 120 posts
are of interest at all, which relates to
about 6%


Practically, the obviously limited
usefulness of the tweets of the
EduCamp participants for interested
external participants evokes new
ideas for practical and effective
alternative usage of the tweets as well
as the need for appropriate tools.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/minaartwork/3695954155

Interpretation – Twitter usage follows other logic:

• usage as backchannel with limited comprehension
potential for outsiders

•usage of self promotion and profiling to generate
attention for own profile

• documentation and illustrating connections
• usage as a public notepad
• usage as an evaluation tool


Outlook:

How must a web-based application
that can also be used offline (without
Internet connection) for information
retrieval and knowledge discovery
based on a micro-content system like
Twitter look like?


http://grabeeter.tugraz.at


Archive
and
Search
offline


Grabeeter allows ...

• Micro-content (tweets) is achievable
due to the fact that any tweet can be
retrieved at anytime from a local hard-
drive

• Micro-content is storable in a way that
the user can distinguish between
different events

• Micro-content is searchable along
keywords, hashtags, time frames as well
as different entities (URLs, @, ... )


Microblogging as
potential
for the future
- if we see it as a new
communication channel

http://www.flickr.com/photos/161/

Grab and Search your Tweets
http://grabeeter.tugraz.at
martin.ebner@tugraz.at
Slides available at: http://elearningblog.tugraz.at

SOCIAL LEARNING
Computer and Information Services
Graz University of Technology

Martin Ebner
http://elearningblog.tugraz.at
mebner http://elearning.tugraz.at

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