In a live demonstration of globe-straddling communication technologies like Skype, this forum connects to citizen journalists and activists around the world, some of whom frequently test the limits of governmental authority. Moderator Ethan Zuckerman wonders if these new digital forms are fundamentally liberating, providing users access to public spaces they might otherwise be denied. He pursues this line of inquiry in a series of internet conversations with correspondents covering some of the world’s most ravaged or oppressed regions.
Twitter, a microblogging service less than three years old, commands more than 41 million users as of July 2009 and is growing fast. Twitter users tweet about any topic within the 140-character limit and follow others to receive their tweets. The goal of this paper is to study the topological characteristics of Twitter and its power as a new medium of information sharing.
We have crawled the entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations, 4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets. In its follower-following topology analysis we have found a non-power-law follower distribution, a short effective diameter, and low reciprocity, which all mark a deviation from known characteristics of human social networks~\cite{Newman03}. In order to identify influentials on Twitter, we have ranked users by the number of followers and by PageRank and found two rankings to be similar. Ranking by retweets differs from the previous two rankings, indicating a gap in influence inferred from the number of followers and that from the popularity of one’s tweets. We have analyzed the tweets of top trending topics and reported on their temporal behavior and user participation. We have classified the trending topics based on the active period and the tweets and show that the majority (over 85%) of topics are headline news or persistent news in nature. A closer look at retweets reveals that any retweeted tweet is to reach an average of 1,000 users no matter what the number of followers is of the original tweet. Once retweeted, a tweet gets retweeted almost instantly on next hops, signifying fast diffusion of information after the 1st retweet.
To the best of our knowledge this work is the first quantitative study on the entire Twittersphere and information diffusion on it.
Download the PDF (4.8MB) and here’s quick summary from slideshare.
A panel of journalists at Logan Symposium by Berkley Graduate School of Journalism discusses the benefits of collaboration in investigative journalism. They discuss their experiences collaborating with other news organizations, and explore what makes a partnership work, and what can potentially kill a working relationship.
SmartMob reports : A study from the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA) at the University of Maryland, concludes that most college students are not just unwilling, but functionally unable to be without their media links to the world.
Researchers asked 200 students at the College Park campus to give up all media for 24 hours. After their 24 hours of abstinence, the students were then asked to blog on private class websites about their experiences: to report their successes and admit to any failures. The 200 students wrote more than 110,000 words: in aggregate, about the same number of words as a 400-page novel. “Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.”
Mobile Active informs about AudienceScapes.org (@AudienceScapes) which is an online tool and research program providing essential media use and communication information on developing countries from a bottom-up perspective, based on in-depth analysis by the AudienceScapes research team.
From their website:
With initial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we are making InterMedia’s knowledge and experience in the field readily available to those who conceive, design, implement and evaluate development programs as well as to other stakeholders in the development process. We are also offering custom added-value analysis and reports to commercial companies in media, telecommunications and other fields in order to create a revenue stream to help support the project’s development goals.
Many development practitioners, particularly those working for locally-based agencies and NGOs, have limited access to empirical research that could help them better target and deliver communication, information and education efforts in a range of activities. These could be anything from HIV-AIDS prevention campaigns to gender equality programs to dissemination of better agricultural techniques, to supporting media development. We aim to fill this knowledge gap.
In addition, the AudienceScapes project hopes to facilitate healthier two-way communication in the development process by making the practitioners more aware of the information assets and needs of citizens and policymakers in developing countries.
As we learn more about both web economics and consumer behavior, the unbundling of news seems increasingly central to journalism’s future.
The future of New and Old Media are more tied together than some may think
The notion that the news media are shrinking is mistaken.
Technology is further shifting power to newsmakers, and the newest way is through their ability to control the initial accounts of events
The ranks of self-interested information providers are now growing rapidly and news organizations must define their relationship to them
When it comes to audience numbers online, traditional media content still prevails, which means the cutbacks in old media heavily impact what the public is learning through the new.
Lee Rainie, who is the Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project provides his own thoughts on journalism’s future. He seems to be optimistic. In an interview with Leonard Witt, he says:
"News organizations are trying to adapt to the new realities that will allow them to provide [high quality journalism], and there will always be a portion of the population who deeply cares about public life and civic life and the way that public institutions perform."
Here’s the video of the interview and the full transcript .
