Paper presented at the Media Talk Symposium, Brisbane, 24 Apr. 2014.

1. Layers of Communication:
Forms of Talk on Twitter
Associate Professor Axel Bruns
ARC Future Fellow
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
@snurb_dot_info | http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

2. WHY TWITTER?
• Researching Twitter:
– Significant world-wide social network
– ~700 million accounts (but how many active?)
• Australia: 2.5 to 3 million accounts (Twitter, Inc. claims 4 million)
– Varied range of uses:
from phatic communication to emergency coordination
– Strong history of user innovation: @replies, #hashtags
– Flat and open network structure:
non-reciprocal following, public profiles by default
– Good API for gathering (big) data for research
– Ethical concerns comparatively limited

3. TWITTER AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE(S)
• New methodologies:
– Empirical, large-scale, real-time investigation: ‘big (social) data’
– Data-led, comprehensive evaluation rather than small-scale
sampling of public communication
– But also: combined quantitative/qualitative approaches
– Not studying the Internet, but studying society with the Internet
(Richard Rogers)
• New(ish) frameworks:
– Public spherules, issue publics, personal publics (Jan Schmidt):
multiple interlinked spaces in a complex media ecology

4. TWITTER AND SOCIETY
• Twitter and Society
(New York: Peter Lang, 2014)
– Jan Schmidt: Twitter followers as the
personal public around each account
– Axel Bruns and Hallvard Moe: three
layers of communication on Twitter
– Alex Halavais: structural evolution of
Twitter as a platform for communication

5. LAYERS OF TALK ON TWITTER
• Key needs in Twitter research:
– Understand how hashtags are situated in a wider communicative ecology on Twitter
– Document the day-to-day uses of Twitter, beyond and outside hashtags
– Trace the dynamics of Twitter as a platform for everyday quasi-private, interpersonal,
and/or public communication
– Track the impact of social and technological changes on these uses
• ad hoc publics,
often rapidly forming
and dissolving
macro:
#hashtags
• personal publics,
accumulating slowly
and relatively stable
meso:
follower networks
• interpersonal
communication,
ephemeral
micro:
@replies
(Bruns & Moe, 2014)

6. MACRO: #ROYALWEDDING (29 APR. 2011)

7. MESO: FOLLOWER NETWORKS
Perth
Marketing / PR
Design
Web
Creative
Farming
Agriculture
Hardline
Conservatives
Conservatives
Journalists
ALP
Progressives
Greens
News
Opinion
News
NGOs
Social Policy
IT
Tech
Social Media
Tech
PR
Advertising
Real Estate
Property
Jobs
HR
Business
Business
Property
Parenting
Mums Craft
Arts
Food
Wine
Beer
Adelaide
Social
ICTs
Creative
Design
Fashion
Beauty
Utilities
Services
Net Culture
Books
Literature
Publishing
Film
Theatre
Arts
Radio
TV Music
Dance
Hip Hop
Triple J
Talkback
Breakfast TV
CelebritiesCycling
Union
NRL
Football
Cricket
AFL
Swimming
V8s
Evangelicals
Teaching
e-Learning
Schools
Christians
Hillsong
Teens
Jonas Bros.
Beliebers
@KRuddMP
@JuliaGillard
Follower/followee network:
~120,000 Australian Twitter users
(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012)
colour = outdegree, size = indegree

8. MICRO: @MENTIONS (2013 ELECTION)

9. INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN THE LAYERS
• Micro + Meso + Macro:
– Layers of communication do not exist in isolation
– Information is transitioned from one layer to another
– Key mechanism: retweets
• Retweeting an @mention: micro  meso
• Retweeting a hashtagged tweet: macro  meso
• Retweeting (just by itself): meso1  meso2
• Retweeting while adding a hashtag: meso  macro
• Retweeting while adding an @mention: meso  micro
– These create intersections between different publics:
• Between personal publics and issue publics (vertical)
• Between different users’ personal publics (horizontal)

10. #AUSPOL
Follower/followee network:
~120,000 Australian Twitter users
(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012)
colour = #auspol tweets, size = indegree

11. #ROYALWEDDING
Follower/followee network:
~120,000 Australian Twitter users
(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012)
colour = #royalwedding tweets, size = indeg.

12. 7.5 mins. elapsed
@abcnews
DISSEMINATION OF THE JULIA GILLARD ‘MISOGYNY SPEECH’ VIDEO, 9 OCT. 2012

13. 30 mins. elapsed
Journalists
DISSEMINATION OF THE JULIA GILLARD ‘MISOGYNY SPEECH’ VIDEO, 9 OCT. 2012

14. 1 hour elapsed
Feminists
DISSEMINATION OF THE JULIA GILLARD ‘MISOGYNY SPEECH’ VIDEO, 9 OCT. 2012

15. 5 hours elapsed
DISSEMINATION OF THE JULIA GILLARD ‘MISOGYNY SPEECH’ VIDEO, 9 OCT. 2012

16. RESEARCH ON TALK IN TWITTER PUBLICS
• #hashtags (macro):
– Useful coordinating mechanism for discussion around key events
– Relatively easy to capture and analyse
– Fails to capture non-hashtagged tweets about the topic
– Good case studies, but very little comparative work to date
• @mentions (micro):
– Backbone of everyday interpersonal communication on Twitter
– Easy to track within a pre-defined population of accounts (e.g. politicians)
– Studies on selected populations usually fail to examine everyday uses
– Potential for significantly larger-scale studies yet to be realised
• Follower/followee relations (meso):
– Crucial contextual baseline for macro/micro-level studies
– Slow and laborious data gathering process, never complete
– Very long-term perspective, beyond the reach of most funded projects
– But indispensable for study of Twitter as a public space

17. NONE OF THIS IS NEW (BUT…)
• Beyond ‘the’ public sphere:
– Need to revisit and refashion existing theories for a post-mass media
media ecology
– Multiple overlapping publics at different levels, driven by network logics
• Publics on Twitter:
– What drives their formation and dissipation?
– How do they interact and interweave?
– How are they interleaved with the wider media ecology?
– Twitter doesn’t contain publics: publics transcend Twitter
• Twitter and society:
– To what extent does Twitter mirror broader communicative patterns?
– Can we apply ‘big social data’ research methods beyond Twitter itself?

18. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess
@timhighfield
@dpwoodford
@tsadkowsky