Presented by Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess at the ATN-DAAD workshop The World According to Twitter, Brisbane, 27 June 2011. Part of an ongoing collaboration between the Mapping Online Publics project (http://mappingonlinepublics.net/) at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT, Australia (http://cci.edu.au/), and the Nachwuchsforschergruppe Wissenschaft und Internet, Universität Düsseldorf, Germany (http://nfgwin.uni-duesseldorf.de/).

1. Twitter, Public Communication and the Media Ecology:The Case of the Queensland Floods Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns / Dr. Jean BurgessARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation Queensland University of Technology

2. Social Media Research in the CCI ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (national, based at QUT) Project: Media Ecologies & Methodological Innovation With Journalism & Media Research Centre (JMRC) @ UNSW Aims to implement new methods to understand the changing media environment; Focusing on the relationship between social media and traditional media and communication platforms; Combining large-scale computer-assisted techniques with qualitative social research and close textual analysis Focus on Crisis Communication Natural disasters Other ‘acute events’

3. New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks Bruns, Burgess, Kirchhoff & Nicolai http://mappingonlinepublics.net/ Australian Research Council (ARC): Discovery Project (2010-13) – $410,000 QUT (Brisbane), Sociomantic Labs (Berlin) First comprehensive study of Australian social media use. Computer-assisted cultural analysis: tracking, mapping, analysing blogs, twitter, flickr, youtube as ‘networked publics’ Builds on previous work of the research team (UCC, YouTube, blogosphere mapping) Advances beyond established approaches - beyond political blogospheres, beyond snapshots Addressing the problem of scale (‘Big Data’) and disciplinary change in media, cultural and communication studies.

6. topics of interest?

7. clusters and communities?

9. development of computer-assisted techniques for both broad and recursively focused analysis

10. identification of key events, clusters and communities

13. Analysis – Twapperkeeper (#hashtags)

14. Crisis Communication Research in the CCI Jan.-June 2011 Focus on uses of social media during the Qld Floods Archive of tweets using #qldfloodshashtag Analysis Volume of tweets over time @replies and retweets: key actors and their networks URLs: key media resources, user-uploaded images and videos Emergence and uptake of hashtags and other user conventions Content analysis: themes and purposes over time

15. Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods tweets 10 Jan. 2011 11 Jan. 2011 12 Jan. 2011 13 Jan. 2011 14 Jan. 2011 15 Jan. 2011

16. Local Focus: #qldfloods from Toowoomba to Brisbane Toowoomba vs. Lockyer/Grantham vs. Ipswich vs. Brisbane slide 10 Jan. 2011 11 Jan. 2011 12 Jan. 2011 13 Jan. 2011 14 Jan. 2011 15 Jan. 2011

17. Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods posters retweet feeds mainstream media Qld Police

18. Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods @replies authorities mainstream media

19. Twitter and the Christchurch Earthquake: #eqnz @replies mainstream media authorities utilities

20. Key Accounts over Time

21. @QPSmedia as Central #qldfloods Information Source

22. Case study: @QPSMedia

23. #qldfloods Network Map – Most Active Accounts Only(Degree >= 15 / Node size: indegree / node colour: outdegree)

24. Twitter and the Queensland Floods First lessons: #qldfloods as coordinating tool – one central hashtag Go where the users are – and help establish hashtag Plus inventive additions – e.g. @QPSmedia #Mythbuster tweets Most activity by individuals – but key official accounts cut through Enable easy retweeting and sharing of messages Respond and engage – value voluntary contributions from ‘average’ users Mainstream media are important in social media environments, too Twitter as an amplifier of key messages Twitter vs. Facebook – which works when?

25. Twitter and the Japanese Tsunami: Beyond the #Hashtag

26. Twitter Events in Perspective: Comparing the Main 24h

27. Next Steps in Crisis Communication Research More forensics: successes and failures, especially rumours and misinformation Further comparison with other recent natural disasters Comparing mainstream and social media coverage Social context: in-depth interviews with residents Direct engagement with emergency services, government and media

28. Beyond Crises Where to from here? Further applications: Identifying overall Twitter participation patterns – key themes, key users How does information travel across the Twittersphere? How can we ensure and enhance the distribution of important messages? What is the structure of the Twitter community? Mapping online publics: network structure, clusters, interconnections, themes Identifying key participants: opinion leaders, information hubs, connectors Change over time: fluidity of network structures, response to stimuli How does Twitter sit in the wider media ecology? Use of materials from elsewhere: distribution of attention through links Interconnections between Twitter and other media: tweets about TV, newspapers, ...

29. Understanding Australian Twitter Use What is the Australian Twitteruserbase? Large-scale snowballing project Starting from selected hashtag communities (e.g. #ausvotes, #qldfloods, #masterchef) Identifying participating users, testing for ‘Australianness’: Timezone setting, location information, profile information Retrieving follower/followee information for each account (very slow) Progress update: ~550,000 Australian users identified so far

31. Football (rugby) Sports Football (soccer) Twitter Celebrities South Australia Wine Media, Journalism, Politics Music Follower/followee network:~40,000 Australian Twitter users(of ~440,000 known accounts so far) in-degree 20+, dark lines = mutual,colour = indegree, size = outdegree

32. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/ Image by campoalto @snurb_dot_info @jeanburgess