May 3, 2012 • blog.ouseful.info
April 30, 2012 • public.tableausoftware.com
April 6, 2012 • futurejournalismproject
futurejournalismproject: Darwin’s Theory Pervades Twitter Too  via The Atlantic: In a new paper entitled Competition Among Memes in a World With Limited Attention, Indiana University researchers Lillian Weng, Alessando Flammini, Alessando Vespignani, and Filippo Menczer analyzed 120 million retweets connected to 12.5 million users and 1.3 million hashtags in order to model how information (as discrete units, or memes) disperses on the social network. What did they find? According to co-author Vespignani, having millions of followers does not denote an important message. Rather, the messages with the most immediate relevance tend to have a higher probability of resonating within a certain network than others. Think of it as “survival of the fittest” for information: those tweets that capture the most attention, whether related to a major geopolitical or news event or a particular interest, are likely to persist longer. This competition sounds bad, but it’s generally good for messages in general: thousands of tweets about Japan’s 2011 earthquake or the ongoing conflict in Syria don’t cancel each other out, but help refocus the attention of the wider Twitter audience on those issues, which in turn provides an added lift to individual messages over other off-topic ones. The study reinforces what most journalists and marketers have known intuitively for some time now: that piggybacking on the trending ideas that constitute “the conversation” online maximizes the ability to spread tweet-sized ideas. Where people fit into preexisting networks certainly matters: Ashton Kutcher’s millions of followers represent a powerful hub of connections. But could Mr. Kutcher’s messages about Nikon’s new camera overwhelm hundreds of tweets about Trayvon Martin from hundreds of smaller, less-connected individuals? The research suggests that it doesn’t fully matter who you are or how many connections you have, but what you’re saying relative to the existing conversation is what really matters in spreading knowledge online. FJP: Though not a shocking revelation, it does feel nice to see research support the power of Twitter.

futurejournalismproject:

Darwin’s Theory Pervades Twitter Too 

via The Atlantic:

In a new paper entitled Competition Among Memes in a World With Limited Attention, Indiana University researchers Lillian Weng, Alessando Flammini, Alessando Vespignani, and Filippo Menczer analyzed 120 million retweets connected to 12.5 million users and 1.3 million hashtags in order to model how information (as discrete units, or memes) disperses on the social network.

What did they find? According to co-author Vespignani, having millions of followers does not denote an important message. Rather, the messages with the most immediate relevance tend to have a higher probability of resonating within a certain network than others. Think of it as “survival of the fittest” for information: those tweets that capture the most attention, whether related to a major geopolitical or news event or a particular interest, are likely to persist longer. This competition sounds bad, but it’s generally good for messages in general: thousands of tweets about Japan’s 2011 earthquake or the ongoing conflict in Syria don’t cancel each other out, but help refocus the attention of the wider Twitter audience on those issues, which in turn provides an added lift to individual messages over other off-topic ones.

The study reinforces what most journalists and marketers have known intuitively for some time now: that piggybacking on the trending ideas that constitute “the conversation” online maximizes the ability to spread tweet-sized ideas. Where people fit into preexisting networks certainly matters: Ashton Kutcher’s millions of followers represent a powerful hub of connections. But could Mr. Kutcher’s messages about Nikon’s new camera overwhelm hundreds of tweets about Trayvon Martin from hundreds of smaller, less-connected individuals? The research suggests that it doesn’t fully matter who you are or how many connections you have, but what you’re saying relative to the existing conversation is what really matters in spreading knowledge online.

FJP: Though not a shocking revelation, it does feel nice to see research support the power of Twitter.

March 22, 2012 •
February 8, 2012 • thinkspatially.net
January 25, 2012 • dcdecoder
January 23, 2012 • Flickr / walkingsf
January 18, 2012 • flowingdata.com
December 7, 2011 • Guardian
December 1, 2011 • infosthetics.com
November 17, 2011 • Flickr / marc_smith
Occupywallstreet Twitter network mentions and reply edges highlighted with labels These are the connections among the Twitter users who recently tweeted the word occupywallstreet when queried on November 15, 2011, scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another. Relies and mentions edges are highlighted in blue, follows connections are grey. The data set starts on 11/15/2011 23:08 and ends on 11/15/2011 23:34 UTC, a total of 26 minutes of traffic.

Occupywallstreet Twitter network mentions and reply edges highlighted with labels

These are the connections among the Twitter users who recently tweeted the word occupywallstreet when queried on November 15, 2011, scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another. Relies and mentions edges are highlighted in blue, follows connections are grey. The data set starts on 11/15/2011 23:08 and ends on 11/15/2011 23:34 UTC, a total of 26 minutes of traffic.

November 11, 2011 • sunlightfoundation.com

Digging Into the Relationships in Sunlight’s Twitter Lobbyist List

On Wednesday Sunlight released a list of lobbyists tweeting online, allowing for collective insight into their world; who they follow; what they’re promoting; and a view of how they operate through the prism of Twitter.

Yesterday Tony Hirst, lecturer in the Department of Communication and Systems at The Open University and author of ouseful.info created a series of visualizations delving deeper into our Twitter lobbyist list.

November 10, 2011 • Flickr / psychemedia
October 25, 2011 • nationalpost
October 18, 2011 • infosthetics.com