1) The document discusses research analyzing Twitter usage in Germany from a big data perspective. It identifies approximately 9.2 million unique German-language Twitter accounts and over 2.4 billion tweets posted between September 2013 and 2015.
2) Various statistics and patterns are analyzed regarding German Twitter users, including distributions by country, state, and city. Activity patterns like number of tweets posted per day are also examined.
3) The research aims to better understand factors driving Twitter adoption in Germany, map the German-language Twitter network, and analyze how information spreads. A collaborative news index of German tweets (DETNIX) tracing sharing of news links is also described.
Gatewatching 9: ‘Real’ News and ‘Fake’ News: Fact-Checking and Media Literacy
Twitter in Germany: A Big Data Perspective
1. Twitter in Germany:
A Big Data Perspective
Prof. Axel Bruns
ARC Future Fellow
Digital Media Research Centre
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns@qut.edu.au – @snurb_dot_info – http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
2. 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
3. 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)
12. 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
13. Education
Agriculture
Literature
Adelaide / SA
Food
Wine
Beer
Parenting
Mums PR
Netizens
Marketing
Investing
Real Estate
Home Business
Sole Traders
Self-Help
HR / Support
Followback
Urban Media
Utilities
Advertising
Business
Fashion
Beauty
Arts
Cinema
Journalists
Politics
Hard RightLeftists
News
CyclingTalkback
Music
TV
V8s
UFC
NRL
AFL
Football
Horse Racing
Cricket
NRU
Celebrities
Hillsong
Perth
Pop
Media
Teen Idols
Cody Simpson
THE AUSTRALIAN TWITTERSPHERE
15. 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
22. 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