getting granular on twitter

Getting Granular on Twitter:Tweets from a Conference and Their Limited Usefulness for

Non-participants

Martin Ebner, Herbert Mühlburger, Sandra Schaffert, Mandy Schiefner, Wolfgang Reinhardt, and Steve Wheeler

http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddhiestand/197704394/

Increase indevices

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sovietuk/141381675

Getting Granular on TwitterEbner, Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Mobile Learning?

http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/


“…. learning materials must be designed for easy access by the nomadic learners

during using mobile technology regardless of where they are located and which network

infrastructure they are using to access information”

Allen, 2007

Microblogging is a small-scale form of blogging, generally made up of short, succinct messages, used by both users and

business to share news, post status updates and carry on conversations Templeton, 2008

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418


Is microblogging a possibility for a specific community to exchange ideas,

interests and information?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividbreeze/480057824

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividbreeze/480057824


http://www.twitter.com

http://www.jaiku.com

http://www.pownce.com(down on December 15, 2008)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/1815164756/

http://www.plurk.comhttp://identi.ca/

http://www.twitter.com/





http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/1815164756/




http://www.twitter.com



http://www.slideshare.net/mweller/twitter-microblogging-and-living-in-the-stream-presentation?type=powerpoint


Daily Chatter

Templeton, 2008

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418

Communicator

Reporter

Exchanger

Different kind of people using microblogs

Java et al, 2007



http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle



http://www.flickr.com/photos/leapfrog_photo/2532068489

Twitter is fine for chat, but how can we use it for reporting at

scientific conferences?



Pre-studies – Use of Twitter at conferences

• ED-Media 2008

• Summer School 2008

• ED-Media 2009

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525


Twitter stream beside keynote (ED-Media 2008)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuagedenuit/276092250

“in the background we discussed things more

deeply than the guys on the stage”

“Twitter can be distracting - you pay less attention”

versus



Number of Tweets at ED-Media 2009


“... top trend makers show who is the heartbeat of this online

community and the key terms pointed out, what the community

was talking about”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/radekreks/316541927


• for communication amongst participants

• for communication amongst organizers /presenters and audience

• for reporting to non-participants about the conference

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525

Research outcomes – Twitter can be used in the context of conferences:

“Event Amplification”



Research Question:

Is Twitter useful to report from a conference in order to share the event with the

scientific community outside the conference?


Study:

• Educamp Hamburg 2010 (barcamp; unconference)

• Twitter was monitored from 5.2 – 4.3.2010 (used Hashtag #ec10hh)

• In summary 2110 tweets were examined

• Two stage analysis – automatically and manually


Four categories of Tweets:

• Irrelevant Tweets “Who found my drinking cup? #ec10hh”

• Administrative Tweets “Wifi is not available #ec10hh”

• Topical Discussions “nice idea of @estudyskills Aggregation of all student weblogs at Tumblelog gives overview”

• Topical Tweets “open-learning: initiative on OER usage for informal education: http://u.nu/4a7ya #ec10hh”

http://u.nu/4a7ya


Categories of Tweets (manual analysis)


Detailed Analysis of Tweets (manual analysis)


Discussion

• Keyword extraction (automatically analysis) did not show any interesting result – no direct correlation

• In average each user posted 6 tweets during the conference period

• High number of Retweets (18%) – often not useful without the necessary context


Main Outcome:

If we reduce the tweets to those occurring during the conference

period (5th and 6th February) only 120 posts are of interest at all,

which relates to about 6%


Interpretation – Twitter usage follows other logic:

• usage as backchannel with limited comprehension potential for outsiders

• usage of self promotion and profiling to generate attention for own profile

• documentation and illustrating connections

• usage as a public notepad

• usage as an evaluation tool


Outlook:

What must a web-based application that can also be used

offline (without Internet connection) for information retrieval and knowledge

discovery based on a micro-content system like Twitter look

like?


http://grabeeter.tugraz.at

http://grabeeter.tugraz.at/


Archive and

Searchoffline






• Micro-content (tweets) is achievable due to the fact that any tweet can be retrieved at anytime from a local hard-drive

• Micro-content is storable in a way that the user can distinguish between different events

• Micro-content is searchable along keywords, hashtags, time frames as well as different entities (URLs, @, ... )

Grabeeter allows ...


Microblogging has potential

for the future

http://www.flickr.com/photos/161/

- if we see it as a new

communication channel

http://www.flickr.com/photos/161/

SOCIAL LEARNINGComputer and Information Services

Graz University of Technology

Martin Ebner

http://elearning.tugraz.at

http://elearningblog.tugraz.at

Grab and Search your Tweetshttp://grabeeter.tugraz.at

Slides available at: http://elearningblog.tugraz.at

@mebner@timbuckteeth

[email protected]

http://elearning.tugraz.at/





getting granular on twitter

Education