Paper presented at the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Conference, Brisbane, 23 Apr. 2012.

1. Twitter and the Queensland Floods
Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns, Dr. Jean Burgess
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns@qut.edu.au / je.burgess@qut.edu.au
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

2. Crisis Communication Research at QUT
o ARC Centre of Excellence for
Creative Industries &
Innovation (national, based at
QUT)
o Project: Media Ecologies &
Methodological Innovation
o New methods to understand
the changing media
environment;
o Role of social media, especially
Twitter
o Focus on Crisis Communication
eg #qldfloods
o Partnerships with government,
media orgs
http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

3. Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods tweets
10 Jan. 2011 11 Jan. 2011 12 Jan. 2011 13 Jan. 2011 14 Jan. 2011 15 Jan. 2011
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

4. Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods @mentions
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

5. Message Amplification on Twitter (manual retweets only)
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

6. Most-Shared URLs by Category
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

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

8. Real Estate
Jobs
Property
HR
Business
Parenting
Thematic Clusters
Design
Business
Property
Mums Craft
Arts
Web Social Media
Creative Tech Food
Perth PR Wine
Marketing / PR Advertising
IT
Beer
Tech
Creative
Social
Design
ICTs
NGOs Fashion
Utilities
Farming Social Policy Beauty
Services
Agriculture Net Culture
Adelaide
Opinion Books Theatre
Greens News Literature Film Arts
Publishing
ALP
Hardline Progressives
News @KRuddMP
Conservatives
@JuliaGillard Radio
Conservatives TV Music
Journalists Triple J
Talkback
Dance
Breakfast TV
Hip Hop
Cycling Celebrities
Union
Evangelicals Swimming
NRL V8s
Football Teens
Christians
Cricket Teaching Hillsong
AFL e-Learning
Schools Jonas Bros.
Beliebers

9. #qldfloods
Follower/followee network:
~120,000 Australian Twitter users
(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012)
colour = #qldfloods tweets, size = indegree

10. abc.net.au URLs
Follower/followee network:
~120,000 Australian Twitter users
(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012)
colour = tweets with URLs, size = indegree

11. ABC accounts
Follower/followee network:
~120,000 Australian Twitter users
(of ~950,000 known accounts by early 2012)
blue: official, red: personal ABC accounts

12. Beyond the Queensland Floods
o Further outlook:
o Need to build on #qldfloods experience
o Maintain momentum of @QPSMedia and other lead accounts
o Review what did/didn’t work, improve communication strategies
o Analyse and work with community communication patterns
o Cultivate potential lead users:
o Who (institutions / individuals) was most active / influential?
o How can they be identified as crises unfold?
o Are they the usual suspects (e.g. community leaders), or not?
o How stable are such communication structures?
 Will social media use look similar next time around?
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

13. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess
@_StephenH
@DrTNitins
@timhighfield
@cdtavijit
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/