Twitter in Germany: A Big Data PerspectiveProf. Axel BrunsARC Future FellowDigital Media Research CentreQueensland University of TechnologyBrisbane, Australiaa.bruns@qut.edu.au – @snurb_dot_info – http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

SOME BACKGROUND

• QUT Digital Media Research Centre:– Australia’s leading centre in the field– Strong focus on innovation in digital research methods– Significant expertise in ‘big social data’ analytics

• Social media research at the DMRC:– Cutting-edge, large-scale data gathering infrastructure– Established frameworks for in-depth data analytics– Significant research projects on social media and crisis communication,

politics and elections, news and journalism, entertainment and everyday life

– Strategic partnerships with leading research institutes

TWITTER IN GERMANY (AND BEYOND)

• Identifying the German-language Twittersphere:– Crawl of entire global Twittersphere, as at September 2013

(~870 million accounts)– Filtering for German(-language) users:

• Location / Description fields of account profiles:– City and state names in Germany, Austria, Switzerland

(false positives excluded)– Generic country terms– Uniquely German words (“und”, “ich”, “nicht”, …)

• German set as user interface language at Twitter.com– Repeat crawl planned later in 2015– Collaboration with the Centre for Digital Humanities at

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

• Results:– ~9.2 million unique accounts identified– 2.481 billion statuses posted (until Sep. 2013)

SLOW START, STEADY(ISH) GROWTH

COMPARISON: TWITTER IN AUSTRALIA

COUNTRY DISTRIBUTION (IF KNOWN)

STATE DISTRIBUTION (IF KNOWN)

CITY DISTRIBUTION (IF KNOWN)

ACTIVITY PATTERNS: TWEETS POSTED

ACTIVITY PATTERNS: TWEETS/DAY

1+ tweet/day: ~350,000 accounts

1+ tweet/week: ~900,000 accounts

1+ tweet/hour: ~21,000 accounts

EARLY USERS TALK, RECENT USERS LISTEN?

NEXT STEPS

• Twitter adoption drivers:– Correlation between uptake spikes and local/global events– Comparison with other national Twitterspheres

• Mapping the German-language Twittersphere:– Identification and mapping of follower/followee networks– Analysis of network clustering patterns– Exploration of thematic and geographic factors– Analysis of networking repertoires

• Tracing and modelling information dissemination:– Impact of network structures on information flows– Observation of existing cases and computational modelling

Education

Agriculture

Literature

Adelaide / SA

FoodWine

Beer

Parenting

Mums PR

Netizens

Marketing

InvestingReal Estate

Home BusinessSole Traders

Self-Help

HR / Support

Followback

Urban MediaUtilities

Advertising

Business

Fashion

Beauty

ArtsCinema

Journalists

Politics

Hard RightLeftists

News

CyclingTalkback

Music

TVV8s UFC

NRL

AFL

Football

Horse Racing

CricketNRU

Celebrities

Hillsong

Perth

PopMedia

Teen Idols

Cody Simpson

THE AUSTRALIAN TWITTERSPHERE

DETNIX: GERMAN TWITTER NEWS INDEX

DETNIX

• Collaborative project:– QUT Digital Media Research Centre and Hans-Bredow-Institut

• Data gathering:– All tweets containing links to one of several hundred German news sites– Includes tweets with shortened links (t.co, bit.ly, etc.)– Continuous data gathering since August 2012 (with some outages)

• Analysis:– Overall development of sharing patterns– Marketshare of specific news organisations– In-depth analysis of day-to-day trends in sharing activity– Correlation with local, regional, and global events

• Similar projects in place for Australia (ATNIX), and Nordic countries

DATA INTAKE / WEEK

TWEETS / WEEK

NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS

DEUTSCHE WELLE: SUCCESS FACTORS

DEUTSCHE WELLE: SUCCESS FACTORS

MARKETSHARE DEVELOPMENTS

NEXT STEPS

• Streamlining and enhancing DETNIX analytics:– Direct Twitter API to datastore pipeline– Live dashboard to DETNIX data– Real-time detection of trending URLs / themes– Free and freemium monitoring services

• In-depth analyses:– Twitter response to specific topics and stories– Performance comparisons between news organisations– User loyalty and userbase structures– Information dissemination across the Twittersphere

ABC NEWS

DAILY TELEGRAPH

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/@snurb_dot_info@petamitchell@flxvctr

@socialmediaQUT – http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/ @qutdmrc – https://www.qut.edu.au/research/dmrc

This research is funded by the Australian Research Council through Future Fellowship and LIEF grants FT130100703 and LE140100148.