JOUR206 Storify: Twitter Analysis

As part of a group assignment in my Journalism class, I was to collaborate with students in my class plus a student from Sweden at a partner university doing a similar subject. Our outcome was to be a Storify, online resources (pictures, blogs, tweets, news items, our own research) and collate these into a news story. Our group chose to look at international news coverage comparing Sweden and Australia.

My role was to analyse tweets from news broadcasters in both Australia and Sweden who predominantly report on international news. Our Swedish comrade Madde chose SVT Nyheter (SVT News) from Sweden and my classmates and I in Australia chose SBS News for Australia. As a control I also analysed tweets from the Al Jazeera English account, Al Jazeera (based in Qatar) being considered by our group the world leader in international news.

Method:

Using TwimeMachine, I collected tweets made by SVT, SBS and Al Jazeera for the week between 21 Oct 2013 – 27 Oct 2013. I copied these tweets into a spreadsheet on Google Drive. Each news organisation was given their own spreadsheet, with a separate spreadsheet presenting the data. Each tweet was sorted under a theme and given a code: 

(Note: Codes were deliberately misspelled so as to easier count these when using the “Find” function in Google Drive e.g. searching “helth” would present me with an exact number of tweets filed under health)

DX: Death, destruction, natural disasters, war and conflict, injury or danger.

Envmnt: Environmental issues, renewable energies, agricultural issues, animal welfare.

Current Affairs: Self explanatory, anything not particularly related to any code.

Spart: Sports coverage. 

Politix: Movements of government, government officials and law enforcement.

Human Interest: Related to more than one code, features and information on people rather than any particular event in an emotional way. Brings about interest, sympathy or motivation.

Biz: Business and Economics. 

Helth: Stories on health and well being.

All Tweets analysed are enclosed in the spreadsheets for each news organisation below:

Al Jazeera (@AJEnglish)
SVT Nyheter (@SVTNyheter)
SBS News (@SBSNews)

Results

Tweets in each category were counted and data was placed in a spreadsheet on Google Drive, linked below. These were then represented in pie graphs. 

News Organisation Twitter Analysis Data

Total Tweets in Time Frame 

Al Jazeera: 610

SVT Nyeter: 157 
(Note: All tweets were in Swedish and were translated by Google Translate) 

SBS News: 287

International Agenda

This graph shows the total number of tweets and the world news tweets within those. Al Jazeera’s English Twitter was almost entirely about international affairs. One tweet was about Qatar.

Themes

Not all tweets used in time frame were used when analysing themes. I cut out all local news tweets and instead looked at the themes of the tweets that were not based in the news agency’s country of origin. These tweets were cut down again and I only looked at those tweets deemed actual news. Non-news items included opinion and comment pieces, Retweets, weather, announcements etc. 

(Hover over pie sections for more info) 

Al Jazeera

Of the 610 tweets, 405 of them were deemed usable for this analysis.

SVT Nyheter

157 tweets were used

SBS News

287 tweets were used

On the whole, from these results, it can be said that both SVT and SBS value world news items to the same degree, both tweeting international news items a little less than 25% over the week selected.

From what I have collected over the weekly period mentioned, it shows that international politics and any instance where people are in danger or hurt are deemed more interesting and news worthy than other subject. The fact that "Current Affairs" items are one of the biggest is not surprising, as a news organisations primary responsibility is to keep citizens informed about such things.

Things of Internet

First of all: Thanks for the beer Ted! T’was awesome! Had a great time with everybody, debating and what not.

Anyway, Internet of Things eh?

"The Internet of Things brings many vectors together — pervasive networks, the miniaturization of networked devices, mobile communication, the refashioning of physical space as we cohabit and co-occupy space with Things. When the network that has facilitated a profound, unprecedented knitting together of complex, multi-valent social formations seeps into a space — the physical, geospatial world — which was previously void of such, what does it all mean?"(Bleeker, 2006, p9-10)

Yes, whoop de doo basil, but what does it all mean?"

I’m one of those people who believe that an iRobot sort of world is in store for us in the future. A future where we advanced things as far as they could go and we are eventually controlled by networking devices, all humanity woll be gone.

Too morbid? Sorry...
If we got this sort of tech out into third world countries and remote communities, we wouldn’t need volunteers and mercenaries to go back and forth I suppose. There could be regular shipment with exactly what these people need, with realtime updates with algorithms that could calculate disaster.

This sort of tech would have been awesome for the Japanese Tsunami that happened recently. There is definitely potential. But will it get there.

I feel like it will the Upper class move further away from the middle and lower classes, and the gap that it’s also quite large will become even larger. I feel like it will become the lazy alternative, no-one will want to go out anymore, just order in thai via a website and watch a movie through foxtel box office or something.

Also, if you don’t have time to do your groceries then you’re working too hard, simple as. Chillax hombre, sit down and have a cold beer...actually your fridge ordering beers to your house would be awesome.

But that’s not my point. I’m sort of apprehensive as to where this tech will lead us.

I think the only way I’d participate is if all my ‘things’ could have the voice of C3PO, and his humour :D.

Later dudes

Bleecker, J. (2006) 'Why Things Matter: A Manifesto for networked objects' [URL: http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf]

Week 12 - VERSUS... KayOh!

Ha! The age old debate! You're either an iPhone or an Android.

First of all, I'm not a fan of Apple. I hate their stupid phones, I hate their stupid "tablet", I hate their stupid laptops (although, they are extremely light), I hate their stupid software. I hate their stupid rainbow wheel of death. HATE IT!!!

And yes I'm quite biased, I grew up with Windows machines, but I've had my fair share of Apple products.

I first started using Mac's in highschool, and I wasn't so keen.

Then, of course, who could forget the iPod? those "Jerk it out" ads had everyone hooked. I had an iPod Mini and was absolutely devastated when one day it wouldnt work. It showed a little dead iPod with a url for apple support. THAT DIDN'T REALLY HELP ME!!

Another thing I hate about Apple products, forced obsolescence. Not only is it terrible for the environment, it is extrememly expensive.

So I got a new iPod around the same time my family's computer crashed and Dad got us a Mac desktop. This was also around the same time as the "Hi, I'm a Mac" ads with Justin Long were out. Still wasn't so kee, but I guess I was thankful because I was forced to know how to use one. A few things I discovered while doing this:

NO PRINSTCREEN BUTTON

NO DELETE BUTTON

AND NO RIGHT CLICK!!!

Fast forward a few years and my parents go over to America and bring me back an iPhone. I wasn't so happy, but it was a present, so I took. Most of my friends laughed, they knew my disdain for the thing. 

Eventually I wanted to get rid of it so much I used my boyfriends old Nokia E63. I wanted buttons, I wanted to make my own rigntones, I didn't want to have to sync my phone with iTunes and lose most of what I had downloaded elsewhere. I wanted the simplicity, and while Apple's main grab is that it is simple, it's waaaaay too complicated!

The only product I actually appreciate is iTunes and Genius. iTunes is funky, and it is easy to use, and Genius is exactly what I was looking for in a music player. I have all my music and if I feel like listening to a particular type I can just click the nucleus and I have an entire playlist.

I think it's funny how there is this Apple vs everyone culture, you're either with them or against them. You're with Apple because it's cool, or you;re a designer, or you're with the others because you like having something that works.

If I were to go with a Smartphone it would be a Samsung Galaxy, because it allows for more changable interaface.

I like this quote from Larry Page "That phone you're carrying around, we think of it as a phone, but it's really a computer, right?[...]We've learned from computers that it's really nice to have complete connectivity, to be able to connect anything in a kind of open way...the phone is your main computing platform. We look at those technologies and say, wow, we could do a whole lot more."(quoted in Roth, 2008)

Page's quote really gets users, it shws what a consumer wants from their device. I find that mostly people buy iPhone's because it's the most popular, they don't really know much about it. If they did any kind of research they would know that an Android platform is a clear winner.

Mainly I hate Apple's because everyone has them, and the paranoid geek inside me envisages a future where we are all controlled through our Apple devices!

I'll leave you with how Family Guy creators feel about Macs

Roth, D. (2008) 'Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web'. Wired, June 23. [URL: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android]

Week 11 - Social networks know no boundaries.

The use of social networking in #MENA and #arabspring is, in effect, what we were talking about in the first couple of weeks with the declaration of internet dependence by Barlow:

“We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks.”

The internet, and moreover social networks know no bias, they are tools for users to do just that, use as they wish. Whether it be to declare we are in a relationship with our cat or to overthrow a government, or to highlight that the %99 are not happy with the 1% we can do that.

There could be an adverse affect of this, mobilising the mob to do bad things, like the London riots. Although they were mostly communicating through the Blackberry chat, (unable to be infiltrated by outside forces) they were notified and inspired by social media. Although it started out as a protest about England’s unhappiness with their current law enforcement situation it became an anarchists playground. Social media did not allow this to be contained.

On the other hand, most of the time you don’t it to be contained. You want it to be as widespread as possible to get the most coverage as possible. Social media can do that.

Barlow, J.P. (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace [URL: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html]

Week 9 - e-democracy, man

Last week I talked about how the internet allowed for a rise in citizen journalism. This is about a rise in citizen activism.

WikiLeaks is a massive grey area when it comes to ethics. What did they want to achieve? Did they want worldwide revolt/anarchy? The New Yorker articlehighlights one of the WikiLeaks personnel as being somewhat in favour of it: “[Birgitta] Jonsdottir has been in parliament for about a year, but considers herself a poet, artist, writer, and activist. Her political views are mostly anarchist.” (2010)

And the article also mentions he’s not so gracious or mature when dealing with “prospective” enemies, not proven ones: “‘WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.’ In his writing online, especially on Twitter, Assange is quick to lash out at perceived enemies.”(2010)

I’m all for what WikiLeaks is doing, which is forcing society to acknowledge that there is corruption and that’s it’s not just in those third world African countries far away that we don’t have to deal with; it’s closer than we think.

While it is the a leader in bottom-up activism there are others. We should take their lead, but not their example.

I admire the work of all these people.

Khatchadourian, R. (2010) 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency' The New Yorker, June 7. [URL: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian]

Week 8 - New Practices of Journalism and News

Ted asks us the question “what do new forms of information gathering and dissemination such as citizen journalism mean for new media audiences, and the practices of traditional news media?”

Rule #1 of the internet should be “You should not believe the crap you read on the internet; however convincing it is”

Perfect example: I was in a Politcs tutorial and it was our last lesson so our tutor said we could ask her anything. One guy put is hands up and asked her opinion the alternate theory on the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. He said he’d read a conspiracy theory online that had said that 9/11 was a fake, that the World Trade Center would take too much to repair and so the attacks were to claim insurance. He also stated the theory had said that the American Government (more Bush than anyone else) was chummy with the Bin Laden family and therefore had planned the whole thing.

The same sentiment had been displayed in Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11, where he questioned why the Bin Laden family had been flown out of the USA just after the attacks happened, and why had Bush done nothing when he heard about the attacks.

You should have seen our tutor’s face. She was very gracious (she could have bit his head off) but she simply stated that the theories were exactly that, theories.

The students argument was that they were rather convincing. I couldn’t help but cringe as an academic who had probably spent most of her life studying politics and media was being questioned by a second year student.

But my story shows that people will believe anything, and while the internet is a powerful tool for getting the truth out there, it’s also just as powerful for getting bullcrap out, too.

There’s heaps out there, I did a Google search “September 11 was a fake” and got about 97,100,000 results, here’s one of them: http://bit.ly/deCrgL

Sometimes the irony or joke is lost on the user, and is used out of context.

Speaking as a journalism major, I feel I’m on a great position to be able to report the truth. You no longer have to pay your dues getting coffee for the editor before your story gets published. All one has to do is create a blog, or a free peer reviewed citizen journalist site and it’s up.
Of course, one good thing about major news outlets is that they don't usually print useless information (I said usually) and avoids kicking up too much of a fuss (less revolutions you see).

Is the internet a modern example of the Christian Bible? Years of reads, interpretations and rereads has created an entire religion that millions live and die by; the same affect could be said for the internet, many swear by what they read on the Internet too, but I don’t want to get into a religion discussion.

My personal advice is we have to take everything we see on the internet with a grain of salt, especially Wikipedia. Although, I heard the university was thinking of permitting Wikipedia as a verified source?

Week 7 - The Long Tail

As I still don’t fully understand the long tail, but as Chris Anderson describes it: “You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre”

So as I see it, you are better off selling a lot of singular niche or unique titles, rather than a few of the more “popular” titles like Britney Spears. It’s sort of ironic I guess, Britney Spears is popular, but then again, so are the niche items, according to sales. I’m still a little confused...

Wait, more people are into niche than they are into popular?

“Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits.” (Anderson, 2004)

Oooooh! so I was sort of on the right track!

Moving right along... I get a little nostalgic when it comes to the tech and commerce of the 90’s. I tried finding a cassestte recorder so I could make actual mixtapes, and I never pass the record section in op shops (yes, I’m an opshopper). My behviour reflects the trend that as we are given more and more options, more ways to buy the popular, we find our tastes are in the niche and the vintage.

The rise of the hipster, which I think I have mentioned on this blog, is nurturing the Long Tail. A hipster loves everything old/“vintage” and ironic. Today’s hipster listens to his Walkman rather than his iPhone (which is in his pocket) wears tweed he bought not from the opshop, but from American Apparel, and rides a fixie that he spent thousands refurbishing to make it look older.

(click here for the evolution of the hipster, and see how they nurture the Long Tail market)

I’m saying that it’s now fashionable to have old and unique things. The eigthies saw “Freaks” (weeds smoking, army jacket toting rebellious types on the fringe of society) revelling in the niche of unique stylings, as did the 90’s. Now it’s everybody with a little quirky obsession that they bought from etsy.com. I’m saying there’s money in it.

While there is money in selling copious amounts of popular crap you could get in hot dollar, you can just as much, even more in marketing to the wide publics taste for the underground.

Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired, 12.10 [URL: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html]