Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, Belle Tseng. “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”. http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/369.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug. 2017.
Naaman, Mor, Jeffrey Boase, Chih-Hui Lai. “Is it really about me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams.” ACM Digital Library, ACM, dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1718953. Accessed 30 Aug. 2017.
Summary
In the paper “Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities”, the authors observe the microblogging phenomena by studying the topological and geographical properties of Twitter to analyze the user intentions at a community level and show how relationships are formed over similar intentions. From their analysis, the authors found that there were 4 main types of user intentions; daily chatter, conversations, sharing information, and reporting news. Daily chatter was the most common type of user intention. Furthermore, they found that users play different roles in different communities. Additionally, 3 main categories of users were found: Information Source, Friends, and Information Seeker. Friends was the largest category. The paper concludes that a single user could have various roles depending on the community he or she is in; with most users using Twitter to discuss about their daily lives with others they have a relationship with.
In the paper “Is it Really About Me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams”, the authors wanted to see what could be learned about user behavior on Twitter based off analysis of message content from Twitter users. To accomplish this, the authors gathered Twitter messages posted by a random sample of Twitter users and categorized the messages based off message content. There were 9 categories for the messages to fall under. Due to the short format and lack of context, messages were often assigned to more than just 1 category. The messages were also categorized based of the gender of the user and the type of application used to post the messages. From their coding, the authors split the studied users into two groups; “Informers” and “Meformers”. Informers are users, who post mainly information sharing based content, while Meformers are users, who post mainly about their current emotional state and recent activities. The authors suggest that Informers are more conversational than Meformers due to Informers posting more mentions and replies to other users as well as having more social contacts and social interaction.
Reflection
I do not have a Twitter account; however, I have been on the site before and am aware of the popularity of the site and the type of environment that is prevalent there. Both articles analyzed Twitter, although from different perspectives, they both found that most of users used Twitter to gain information, share information, or talk about themselves. Unsurprisingly, the largest category was users talking about themselves, whether it was about their day or how they are currently feeling. It was interesting how the second article, “Is it Really About Me?”, states that despite most users being Meformers, the Informers were more conversational. Usually, people post about themselves to get feedback or even validation from others, especially from people they would have relations with. However, it is possible that since Meformers are sharing personal information, they may be pickier about who can view this information while Informers are sharing more impersonal information and thus, may not care who views it as long as it’s being viewed. This also ties in with the results found in the first article, “Why We Twitter”, about how a single user may have multiple intentions or different roles in different communities.
Questions
- What aspects of Twitter makes it such a popular choice in comparison to other microblogging platforms?
- With the rise of digital journalism, would these information sharing Twitter accounts be considered reputable and would that be why information sharing and seeking are main user intentions?
- If users serve different roles depending on the community they are in, isn’t it possible that users would create multiple accounts for the various roles? If so, are those accounts seen as the same user or is each account is its own unique entity?
- Where public figures included in these experiments? Would they be considered as Informers or Meformers?
- What aspects does an Informer need to gain followers? Does frequency of posts and how active the account is affect the number of followers?
