I think the amount of Twitter spam in one's dataset probably varies based on how it was drawn. In analyzing American political hashtags, our research team is finding very few tweets that appear commercial in nature. What we've found more of is "bot" accounts that auto-tweet aggregated—but still on-topic—content, which I wouldn't consider spam. And based on my own non-systematic observations, the major MENA hashtags (#jan25, #libya, #bahrain, etc.) appear to be mostly on-topic as well. ~DEEN On 3/4/11 3:09 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
As an object of study, its hard to do quant analysis of Twitter now because so much of it is spam (unless you're studying spam, that is).
And even qualitative analyses will have to be careful.
Our 2 Twitterology papers got into the sweet spot when Twitter was an appreciable size but before spam dominated (about 80% of my new would-be Followers)
OTOH, I find Twitter useful for research leads -- such as the Atlantic article a tweep broadcast today about how the Internet almost fractured -- or Zeynep et al's (@techsoc) discussion of social media and MENA revolutions. Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388 University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _______________________________________________________________________
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-- Deen Freelon Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Communication University of Washington dfreelon@uw.edu http://dfreelon.org/