![]() ![]() Some people occupy rare positions in the network that suggest that they have special importance and power in the conversation. Each person who contributes to a Twitter conversation is located in a specific position in the web of relationships among all participants in the conversation. Our approach combines analysis of the size and structure of the network and its sub-groups with analysis of the words, hashtags and URLs people use. And to the extent that these online conversations are followed by a broader audience, their impact may reach well beyond the participants themselves. Social networking maps of these conversations provide new insights because they combine analysis of the opinions people express on Twitter, the information sources they cite in their tweets, analysis of who is in the networks of the tweeters, and how big those networks are. Still, the structure of these Twitter conversations says something meaningful about political discourse these days and the tendency of politically active citizens to sort themselves into distinct partisan camps. Finally, forthcoming survey findings from Pew Research will explore the relatively modest size of the social networking population who exchange political content in their network. Additionally, other work by the Pew Research Center has shown that tweeters’ reactions to events are often at odds with overall public opinion- sometimes being more liberal, but not always. Their demographic profile is not reflective of the full population. Moreover, Twitter users are only 18% of internet users and 14% of the overall adult population. Unlike many other Twitter members, they pay attention to issues, politicians, and political news, so their conversations are not representative of the views of the full Twitterverse. While these polarized crowds are common in political conversations on Twitter, it is important to remember that the people who take the time to post and talk about political issues on Twitter are a special group. In polarized discussions, each group links to a different set of influential people or organizations that can be found at the center of each conversation cluster. ![]() At the center of each group are discussion leaders, the prominent people who are widely replied to or mentioned in the discussion. The split is clearly evident in many highly controversial discussions: people in clusters that we identified as liberal used URLs for mainstream news websites, while groups we identified as conservative used links to conservative news websites and commentary sources. The participants within each separate group commonly mention very different collections of website URLs and use distinct hashtags and words. Frequently these are recognizably liberal or conservative groups. They form two distinct discussion groups that mostly do not interact with each other. If a topic is political, it is common to see two separate, polarized crowds take shape. These are created as individuals choose whom to reply to or mention in their Twitter messages and the structures tell a story about the nature of the conversation. Six structures are regularly observed: divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, and inward and outward hub and spoke structures. These conversational structures differ, depending on the subject and the people driving the conversation. Summary of Findings Polarized Crowds: Political conversations on TwitterĬonversations on Twitter create networks with identifiable contours as people reply to and mention one another in their tweets. ![]()
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