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 _______________________________________________________________________
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/
I don't think it's useless to study in terms of *how* people communicate digitally. Lots of linguistic cues and language changes have begun in sms and then parlayed over to Twitter, where they're being solidified into standard language usage. Not getting the full subset of data doesn't matter if one is just studying the medium itself, and less the message(s). Cheers, @SharonG On Mar 4, 2011, at 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
I think Twitter is a useful profiling tool. If you are following Barry Wellman *and* Lady Gaga, what does it mean? ;) @arcticpenguin On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 8:49 PM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it's useless to study in terms of *how* people communicate digitally. Lots of linguistic cues and language changes have begun in sms and then parlayed over to Twitter, where they're being solidified into standard language usage. Not getting the full subset of data doesn't matter if one is just studying the medium itself, and less the message(s).
Cheers, @SharonG
On Mar 4, 2011, at 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
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I agree that Twitter has an increasing amount of spam accounts, though my research has recently focused around the use of hash tags, and I have not seen much spam there yet. Alas, once that happens, then I can envision a decrease in researchability (or even use) of Twitter. Regardless, I do think that Twitter's recent restrictions of accessing some of the very things that Google itself indexes is problematic. ----- Jeffrey Keefer j.keefer@lancaster.ac.uk Blog: http://silenceandvoice.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeffreyKeefer Website: http://www.jeffreykeefer.com On Mar 4, 2011, at 9:56 PM, D.Yvette Wohn wrote:
I think Twitter is a useful profiling tool. If you are following Barry Wellman *and* Lady Gaga, what does it mean? ;)
@arcticpenguin
On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 8:49 PM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it's useless to study in terms of *how* people communicate digitally. Lots of linguistic cues and language changes have begun in sms and then parlayed over to Twitter, where they're being solidified into standard language usage. Not getting the full subset of data doesn't matter if one is just studying the medium itself, and less the message(s).
Cheers, @SharonG
On Mar 4, 2011, at 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
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Hey, I agree that filtering Twitter datasets by hashtags or other means removes a lot of junk, spam, etc. (unless you are looking at junk that is). A key event like the #iranelection, for instance, provides for a pretty focused collection particularly when compared to a random sample of the public timeline. It is disappointing then that Twitter themselves are becoming the major obstruction, thanks to their recent and explicit commercial intent. Andrew _________________________________________________________________ http://andrew-long.name | Department of Information Science | School of Business University of Otago | NZ | +64 3 479 8319 | mailto:andrew.long@otago.ac.nz ________________________________________ From: Jeffrey Keefer [j.keefer@lancaster.ac.uk] Sent: Sunday, 6 March 2011 12:45 To: AoIR-L Aoir Subject: Re: [Air-L] twitter useless to study? I agree that Twitter has an increasing amount of spam accounts, though my research has recently focused around the use of hash tags, and I have not seen much spam there yet. Alas, once that happens, then I can envision a decrease in researchability (or even use) of Twitter. Regardless, I do think that Twitter's recent restrictions of accessing some of the very things that Google itself indexes is problematic. ----- Jeffrey Keefer j.keefer@lancaster.ac.uk Blog: http://silenceandvoice.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeffreyKeefer Website: http://www.jeffreykeefer.com On Mar 4, 2011, at 9:56 PM, D.Yvette Wohn wrote:
I think Twitter is a useful profiling tool. If you are following Barry Wellman *and* Lady Gaga, what does it mean? ;)
@arcticpenguin
On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 8:49 PM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it's useless to study in terms of *how* people communicate digitally. Lots of linguistic cues and language changes have begun in sms and then parlayed over to Twitter, where they're being solidified into standard language usage. Not getting the full subset of data doesn't matter if one is just studying the medium itself, and less the message(s).
Cheers, @SharonG
On Mar 4, 2011, at 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
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Doesn't everyone follow Barry Wellman AND Lady Gaga? That just means you're normal! I don't see much spam on Twitter at all - I mean, there are the spam accounts that follow you but I never see any actual spam because I don't follow back. It comes up sometimes when you search for a key word, but it's not something I see a lot - I guess it depends how you are monitoring Twitter and what search terms you're using, but compared to my home email where 2/3 of the mail is spam, Twitter is relatively quiet. The denial of large data sets is a curious one given how big they were not that long ago on the Library of Congress having a Twitter archive. I can't see how enforceable it's going to be, either. Ruth ________________________________________ From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of D.Yvette Wohn [yvettewohn@gmail.com] Sent: 05 March 2011 02:56 To: live Cc: AoIR-L Aoir Subject: Re: [Air-L] twitter useless to study? I think Twitter is a useful profiling tool. If you are following Barry Wellman *and* Lady Gaga, what does it mean? ;) @arcticpenguin On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 8:49 PM, live <human.factor.one@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it's useless to study in terms of *how* people communicate digitally. Lots of linguistic cues and language changes have begun in sms and then parlayed over to Twitter, where they're being solidified into standard language usage. Not getting the full subset of data doesn't matter if one is just studying the medium itself, and less the message(s).
Cheers, @SharonG
On Mar 4, 2011, at 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
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I'm wrapping up a quantitative content analysis of Twitter, looking at levels of self-disclosure among professional and parent bloggers. Spam hasn't been an issue with the 300 public users in the study. On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 3:09 PM, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca>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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-- Best Regards, S. Courtney Walton scw@umail.ucsb.edu MA/PhD Student Department of Communication 4309 Social Sciences & Media Studies Bldg University of California, Santa Barbara 93106
I'm studying academic uses of Twitter (e.g. at conferences) and haven't really encountered spam in that context. I think increasingly the question is what specific kind of discourse or group of communicators you want to study inside a social media channel like Twitter or FB, rather than taking the fire hose approach. Cornelius On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 3:44 AM, S. Courtney Walton <scw@umail.ucsb.edu>wrote:
I'm wrapping up a quantitative content analysis of Twitter, looking at levels of self-disclosure among professional and parent bloggers.
Spam hasn't been an issue with the 300 public users in the study.
On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 3:09 PM, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca
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 _______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Best Regards,
S. Courtney Walton scw@umail.ucsb.edu
MA/PhD Student Department of Communication 4309 Social Sciences & Media Studies Bldg University of California, Santa Barbara 93106 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Dr. Cornelius Puschmann, M.A. Department for English Language and Linguistics Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Building 23.11, Level 1, Room 21 Universitätsstrasse 1 40225 Düsseldorf Germany +49 211 81 15927 (office) Nachwuchsforschergruppe "Wissenschaft und Internet" / Junior Researchers Group "Science and the Internet" http://nfgwin.uni-duesseldorf.de
participants (9)
-
Andrew Long -
Barry Wellman -
Cornelius Puschmann -
D.Yvette Wohn -
Deen Freelon -
Deller, Ruth A -
Jeffrey Keefer -
live -
S. Courtney Walton