Presented at the Australian Teachers of Media 2013 conference masterclass on Social Media, 4 July 2013.

1. Social Media in Australia:
The Case of Twitter
Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
@snurb_dot_info
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

2. WHY TWITTER?
• Researching Twitter:
– Significant world-wide social network
– ~600+ million accounts (but how many active?)
• 2-2.5m accounts in Australia, predominant age range 25-55 years
– Varied range of uses: from phatic communication to emergency coordination
– Especially important as a real-time communication medium
– Healthy third-party ecosystem (for now)
– 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

3. #SPILL
Gillard
announces
ballot
Shorten
supports
Rudd
Rudd wins
ballot
Gillard
press
conference
Rudd press
conference

4. #SPILL
(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2013/06/27/spill-how-twitter-reacted-to-the-labor-leadership-challenge/)

5. AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS ON TWITTER

6. AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS ON TWITTER
(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/?p=2408)

7. REPORTING SOCIAL MEDIA IN POLITICS
(http://cci.edu.au/socialmediainthemedia.pdf)

8. SOCIAL MEDIA, POLITICS, AND TEACHING
• Teaching social media:
– Social media are now well-established in the media ecology
– Debates of mainstream vs. social media are passé
– For some media professions, tools such as Twitter are now essential
– Few students going into media professions will find jobs without having
strong social media knowledge
• Social media and the wider media ecology:
– Key roles especially around breaking news and unfolding crises
– Also important backchannel to television and mainstream news
– Mainstream journalism vs. citizen journalism debate is over
– But: significant digital divides remain – demographics, skills, devices

9. THE AUSTRALIAN TWITTERSPHERE?
Follower/followee network:
~120,000 Australian Twitter users
(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012)
colour = outdegree, size = indegree

10. THEMATIC CLUSTERS
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
(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2012/04/01/many-maps-of-the-australian-twittersphere/)

11. TWITTER AND/IN THE MEDIA ECOLOGY
(total volume: 2.2m tweets)

12. TWITTER AND/IN THE MEDIA ECOLOGY
(http://mappingonlinepublics.net/tag/atnix/)

13. SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIETY
• The public sphere on / of / and social media:
– Social media are now a key space for publics to form:
– How do these publics relate to the wider public sphere?
• Do they represent it (or parts of it)?
• Do they influence it? Are they influenced by it?
• 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, 2013)

14. BIG BIG DATA: THE FIRST MILLION TWITTER IDS
Twitter IDs 1-1,000,000 (48,000 accounts still in existence)
(see http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2013/04/08/the-first-million-ids-on-twitter/)

15. TWITTER AS A SOURCE OF DATA
Geographical distribution of 1 million new account IDs (~ 422.000 existing accounts),
newly registered on 18/19 Mar. 2013, 16:00-01:00 UTC ( 1-1.5m new users/day)

16. SOCIAL MEDIA AND / AS BIG DATA
• ‘Big Data’:
– Increasingly important field of research and development
– Significant applications from science to public services
– Social media are a key source of big data on society
– Many important questions about ethics and privacy yet to be addressed
• ‘Big Data’ jobs in the media industries:
– Data journalists to support complex investigative reporting
– Data analysts for market research, policy development, …
– Data scientists to build ‘big data’ tools and applications

17. ‘BIG DATA’ AND RESEARCH SKILLS
• Researchers need interdisciplinary skill sets:
– Media & communication to understand the media environment
– Maths and statistics to deal with ‘big data’
– Computer science to develop tools to process social media data
– Communication design to develop effective visualisations
– Writing and communication skills to communicate the results
– …
– Where do we find them?
(few people have such a diverse range of skills)
– How do we support their work?
(we’re only just developing our methods and tools)
– What is our strategy for dealing with precarity?
(sudden API changes, changing fortunes of platforms, …)

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