twitter identity performance
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Who Do You Think You Are?: The Performance of Identity in Microblogging
Candidate Number: 62371
Supervisor: Leslie Haddon
Dissertation (MC499) submitted to the Department of Media and Communication,
London School of Economics, September 2008, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the MSc in Global Media and Communication.
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Abstract
This paper examines the performance of identity through short, deliberate messages on themicroblogging website Twitter. Informed by similar research conducted on SocialNetwork Sites (SNS) and Mobile Social Network Sites (MSNS), and drawing upon ErvingGoffmans study of symbolic interaction and Pierre Bourdieus notion of cultural capital,this study engages in a content analysis of microblog messages and attempts to establishwhether and how users employ microblogging as a means of identity performance andimpression management.
Introduction
In the performance of identity, an individuals choice of references to and
associations with established and recognized cultural goods or ideas play an important role
in demonstrating that identity to an audience that is observing them (Goffman 1959). This
is true across any number of circumstances and situations, from the creation and
maintenance of an imagined community (Anderson, 1983) that supports and sustains a
shared identity amongst globally dispersed diasporic groups, to the taste statements (Liu,
2007) that individuals make in everyday life (eg. their choice of wardrobe or their selection
of a morning newspaper).
In the context of computer-mediated communication (CMC), a new landscape of
possibility for identity construction has been developing, particularly within the field of
social network sites (SNS) which provide users a virtual space to express their interests and
taste to a community of users (normally real life friends, but also including online
acquaintances as well as, often, the general internet public). SNS use has been growing
over the past years according to marketing research (Nielsen, 2006), and this area of study
has provided rich fields of data for social scientists to examine, which they are doing with
increasing frequency (see boyd & Ellison, 2007, for a broad review of studies in this field).
Simultaneously, a parallel set of sites and services are developing that take
advantage of the increasing power and ubiquity of mobile telephony to provide hyper-local
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and location-based services within the overall context of SNS (Johnson, 2007). So-called
mobile social network sites (MSNS) often combine internet-based profiles and account
controls with mobile phone-based communication inputs to allow users to employ their
services to various ends while away from a computer. These appear to be especially prized
for their immediacy, a function of the state of perpetual contact described by Katz and
Aakhus (2002), as well as their emphasis on location-based services and ad hoc
collaborative functions, such as organizing a meeting between people who are in the same
area (Rheingold, 2002: 193)
While studies in this relatively nascent field of research are being published with
increasing rapidity, there remains ample unexplored territory to examine. Considerable
work has been done on the performance of taste on profile pages in SNSs (see, for
instance, Liu 2007, boyd 2006 and Donath & boyd, 2004), but less research has been
published on the use of MSNSs for the same purpose. This study is an effort to introduce
further evidence into the academic record, and it is focused on examining the performance
of identity through the microblogging MSNS Twitter1.
First, an explanation of the field of study will be presented, including definitions of
key terms and a brief history of microblogging. Next, a review of key literature in cultural
capital, impression management and taste performance will assess the ways in which these
theories have been applied to studies of SNS, and will provide important insight into
applying a similar framework to studying microblog messages. Finally, a content analysis
of microblog messages from the Twitter service will be described and analyzed in an effort
to answer the following research questions:
RQ1: Are users of microblogging services employing them for the purposes ofcreating and maintaining their public identity?RQ2: If users are employing microblogs for this purpose, how are they doing so?
1 Located online at: http://twitter.com
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Describing the Field: Explaining Microblogging
Microblogging as a distinct phenomenon is of relatively recent vintage, however its
roots are deep within the annals of CMC. According to Wikipedia, a microblog (sometimes
micro-blog) is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140
characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which
can be chosen by the user.2 In light of this definition, we can see that one of the essential
components of microblogs are their brevity, which is imposed as a constraint on the
amount of textual characters (including letters, symbols and spaces) allowed in each
message. In the case of Twitter, this constraint has an operative purpose: it ensures that the
messages are short enough to be compatible with distribution and syndication via text
messages (SMS) to mobile phones (Diaz, 2007). Additionally, we can see that microblogs
are defined by their communicative nature: they are intended to be viewed by an audience,
whether it is broad or restricted. Much like ordinary blogs, microblogs often reflect the
personality of the author3, and thereby provide the opportunity for their authors to perform
their identity through taste performances (Liu, 2007).
This combination of brevity and taste performance online does not find its origin in
microblogs, but in fact can be found throughout the history of CMC. From the signature
blocks of Usenet, E-mail and BBS systems which allowed users to append their messages
with additional information, to IRC auto-responders and instant messaging away
messages that display a customized message to users who attempt to contact another user
who is not immediately available to respond, the history of brief, informative
2 Wikipedia is a user-created encyclopedia, and thus subject to bias. Although it is notgenerally suitable for extensive citation, its definition of microblogging is useful and themost authoritative to be found in the absence of more legitimate work in this new area.3 Glossary of Internet & Web Jargon, Blog entry. University of California, Berkeley.See: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Glossary.html#Blog
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communications in CMC is long. Although originally signature blocks were intended to
act as mechanisms for providing contact information4, users often appropriated this
capability as a means to express themselves and their personal taste by including favored
quotes or aphorisms, photos and graphics, or links to personal or other websites (Rains &
Young, 2006). These messages acted as markers for the audience to assist in identifying the
kind of person the user is, or at any rate the kind of person that they would like others to
think that they are.
In the case of instant messaging away messages5, an analysis by Baron et al
(2005) found that users employed away messages for overt self-presentation purposes for
instance sharing a joke with friends or posting lyrics from a favorite song as a means of
telling other users something about themselves, their taste and their interests. A subsequent
study of speech acts in away messages by Nastri et al (2006) found that the content of
messages were primarily informational and expressive in nature. They concluded that
expressive messages fulfilled multiple purposes, from indicating the taste of a user through
their choice of cultural references and associations, to sharing the emotional state of mind
of the user through the choice of language and the content of messages.
Why Study Microblogging?
While microblogging appears to be simply the latest iteration in a trend of terse
message-leaving technologies, it is important to study for several reasons. First of all, while
signature blocks generally remain static from one message to the next (that is, the
statement(s) contained in the signature block do not generally change frequently),
microblogs are characterized by their dynamic nature. Properly employed, a microblog is
4 RFC1855, sec. 2.1.1 see http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html5 See http://www.aim.com/help_faq/starting_out/getstarted.adp#five
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meant to emphasize the sense of immediacy that the medium enables, providing a glimpse
of the status of an individual that is only minutes or hours old. This is best expressed
through the prompting question (Mischaud 2007) of Twitter - What Are You Doing?
which in its very construction as a sentence suggests a constantly changing account of
continuing actions into the future (as well as a record of previous actions in the past).
Secondly, microblogs are distinct from away messages because they have the capacity to
be active. While an away message can be as simple as I am away from my computer or
as meaningful as a passage from a classic text, it is not normally the case that it is active in
its engagement with its audience. Away messages can be customized and changed,
however the norms of microblogs result in a more rapid flow of new messages and it is not
uncommon for users to change their microblog message more than a dozen times each
day6. Additionally, while away messages tend to be limited to one particular purpose
explaining the users absence from their keyboard microblog messages have many more
potential meanings. Consequently, the corpus of microblogs potentially contain far more
breadth of message types, cataloged for any number of different purposes. These discrete,
deliberate and active messages are rich for study and analysis in ways that previous forms
of such messages (away messages, signature blocks) are not.
As a practical matter, microblogs are maintained by users who update them with
short messages as frequently as they choose. In the case of Twitter, this can be
accomplished through a number of means, including via SMS text messages and entries
composed through web-based applications (Twitter, which is privately owned by San
Francisco-based Obvious Corp., encourages third-party developers to build and distribute
applications for users to update their Twitter messages, known as tweets). The kind and
6 As will be seen in the results from the content analysis, different types of users can beidentified among whom the key differentiator is the frequency of message updates.
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frequency of messages varies according to the user, but conventions within the user
community suggest that frequent updates (on the order of at least one a day) are the norm7.
The type of messages varies from the plainly informative (including messages that share
with the audience the physical location of a user) to the obscure (seemingly random
messages, inside jokes and utter nonsense), however in each case the user is undertaking a
deliberate performance to the audience about themselves.
Identity Construction and Performance
This study is primarily concerned with identifying whether and how users
appropriate the microblog services of Twitter as a means of expressing and performing
their identity. While Twitter provides a prompting question that asks what users are
doing, it has been observed that users have adopted the technology for a number of other
uses beyond answering this question. In his study of Twitter messages, Mischaud (2007)
found that while users did indeed answer the prompting question, they were far more likely
to send messages to Twitter that had some other purpose. Only one third of the messages
analyzed by Mischaud were found to be answering the prompting question, with the
remainder consisting of numerous other types of messages from sharing links to engaging
in conversations with other users. In discussing his findings, Mischaud states: The
majority of Twitter users observed in this study posted messages reflecting whatever kind
of communication they wanted to disseminate. (ibid: 30)
Of particular interest to this study was Mischauds observation that users appeared
to be aware of an audience for their messages, and appeared to develop stylistic strategies
to reach out to that audience (ibid: 32). This awareness of an audience, and the subsequent
7 See http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9697867-2.htmlfor a primer on using Twitterand the norms of the Twitter community.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9697867-2.htmlhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9697867-2.htmlhttp://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9697867-2.html -
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effort to play to that audience, is a crucial component of Canadian sociologist Erving
Goffmans analysis of symbolic interaction in his seminal The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life (1959). In this work, Goffman identified two kinds of expressive behavior:
the expressions that an individual gives (communication in the traditional and narrow
sense), and the expressions that an individual gives off(a wide range of actions that
others can treat as symptomatic of the actor)(both ibid: 2). The first kind of expressive
behavior is conscious and deliberate these are the things that individuals intentionally do
and say to contribute to an impression of themselves in the eyes of others. Equally
important, Goffman argues, are the seemingly unintentional actions individuals take which
provide cues for others to determine what kind of person they are.
While Goffmans work was focused on face-to-face interactions between
individuals, it provides a useful starting point for creating a framework of analysis for
expressive gestures in microblogging. Indeed, Goffmans work has provided a backbone
for many studies of the performance of identity in CMC (see, for example, Liu 2007 in a
study of MySpace profile pages and Humphreys 2007s analysis of shouts on a MSNS
called Dodgeball) and no doubt will continue to be applied to studies of users efforts to
type oneself into being (Sundn 2003, quoted in boyd & Ellison 2007). As the nature of
the internet makes it difficult to be certain of the true identity of the user, cultural cues and
expressive actions become increasingly important both for users to tell others about
themselves as well as for others to infer characteristics about users based on their taste
statements. On interactive websites users are typically given multiple opportunities for
these displays of taste, and what now is the SNS profile page was once the selection of a
screen name in chat rooms or the choice of an avatar on bulletin boards or MUDs. In each
of these interactions the user is invited to explain themselves, and one of the ways users
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accomplish this is by making associations and references to their taste.
The role of Cultural Capital
Discussions of taste owe much to the works of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,
particularly in his workDistinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984).
For Bourdieu, the cultivation of taste (which he defines as manifested preference) in
cultural goods is a vital component of the construction of identity, and he suggests that an
individuals taste is heavily influenced by their economic class. Different classes have
varying amounts of cultural capital, which is accrued by a number of methods, especially
inheritance and education. Bourdieu observed that individuals could gain social prestige
through their taste, as performed in front of others, in cultural institutions such as the
theater or the opera. The material boundaries imposed by the costs associated with
prestigious cultural venues or exclusive restaurants allow individuals to distinguish
themselves through their ability to afford such luxuries. The role of luxury, or the
perception of it, is central to the methods of distinction: it represents not only an
individuals economic and social fitness through their ability to procure and retain goods
above and beyond the bare necessities of life, but also their superior taste in rare or
privileged cultural and material goods. Bourdieu, who situates this analysis within the
context of power relations and the domination of economic elites over the working classes,
writes: This affirmation of power over a dominated necessity always implies a claim to a
legitimate superiority over those who, because they cannot assert the same contempt for the
contingencies in gratuitous luxury and conspicuous consumption, remain dominated by
ordinary interests and urgencies. (Bourdieu, 1984: 56)
In other words, according to Bourdieu, when individuals signal their relative
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cultural capital through taste statements, they are attempting to express their superior
fitness and dominant social position. What might at first glance appear to be the simple act
of purchasing shaving cream now becomes a highly symbolic assertion of status and taste.
Does the individual select the cheapest cream? Do they prefer to choose a branded can? Or
are they instead buying the boutique artisanal product that costs more and yields fewer
ounces of cream? In each case, the choice reflects a number of revelations about the
individuals cultural capital and position within the class structure. Seen within this
context, then, few of the seemingly innocent choices (ibid: 269) of daily life can in fact
be seen as being mundane, or stripped of social and political meaning.
These notions of cultural capital have an important impact on the study of taste
statements in microblogs. Of course, the first taste statement that would need to be
examined through Bourdieus lens would be the use of a microblog in the first place, which
comes with its own attendant assumptions of cultural and economic capital. For an
individual to participate in microblogging, they must fulfill a number of criteria that
exclude large proportions of the potential user-base, and so the mere act of posting a
microblog could be considered to be a taste statement that indicates the users
technological savvy, economic resources (through their ability to ensure access to the
internet and mobile phone service) and the similar resourcefulness of their peer group,
among other possible signals. Investigations of class issues on SNS are relatively few,
however boyd (2007) has published one of the first comparing class status on the SNSs
Facebook and MySpace. Although this observation is not terribly useful in itself for the
purposes of this study of taste performance on Twitter, it does nevertheless provide a
valuable (and necessary) reality check on efforts to attempt to extend the findings of this
study to a broader audience whose difficulty in providing daily necessities prevents them
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from having the luxury of maintaining a microblog.
When analyzing taste statements on microblogs, notwithstanding the various
limitations mentioned above, Bourdieus explanation of the means of appropriating
distinction through association with cultural goods is very relevant for this study.
Describing the motivation of intellectuals in attending cultural performances and art shows,
Bourdieu writes: They expect the symbolic profit of their practice from the work itself,
from its rarity and from their discourse about it (after the show, over a drink, or in their
lectures, their articles or their books), through which they will endeavor to appropriate part
of its distinctive value. (Bourdieu, 1984) Brought to the present-day, the components of
the discourse about a work could include their blogs, microblogs and SNS profile pages.
Additionally, while he was describing the means used to appropriate cultural capital from
works of art by intellectuals, the same procedure can be applied to different classes in their
discourses regarding sport, music, television or other aspects of popular culture. As a
practical matter for this study, efforts of appropriation can be observed in the conscious
references to cultural products such as films or television programs, as well as more
obscure allusions to the same through recitations of lyrics from a song or memorable lines
in a film (the latter may be seen as an effort to establish still further distinction in relation
to those cultural goods by demonstrating mastery over their contents to others who are
similarly well-informed on the same products).
Bourdieus work was centered on the premise that socio-economic conditions
determined taste according to class lines. This is instructive and was a revelatory theory at
the time it was introduced. However, in the context of this study it is difficult to implement.
Users on Twitter are not prompted to provide any information that might suggest their
economic class, and so it is not possible to objectively apply Bourdieus theories to the
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sample data. However, notions of cultural capital appear to be an essential component of
taste performance in microblogging. Indeed, as a result of a lack of true data on the
economic class of users, the analysis of cultural cues and references can indicate both the
possible realities of a users class, as well as their aspirations towards class mobility. Future
study could benefit by combining an analysis of messages with interviews or
questionnaires that establish a users class status for the purposes of comparison across class
and other boundaries. Still, analysis of taste statements benefit immensely from the work
of Bourdieu on cultural capital and distinctions of taste.
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Methodology
Selecting the Method
In seeking to discover whether and how users of microblogging services such as
Twitter employ them for the purpose of performing their identity, it was necessary to create
a method of measuring and classifying microblog messages. Several methods were
considered, including surveys and interviews with microblog users as well as a discourse
analysis of microblog messages, but a content analysis was deemed to be the most useful
method to accomplish the research goals. Surveys and interviews would be interesting for
determining some of the conscious choices that microblog users make when they compose
and send status updates. However, the performance of identity is as often accomplished in
the unconscious choices of individuals as in the considered and deliberate ones (Goffman,
1959), and there was a risk of interviewees internal perceptions of their taste statements
differing from what can be observed externally. Critical discourse analysis would provide
rich depth of analysis, and should be considered a useful method for future study of the
various discourses at work in microblog networks, however I was interested in developing
greater breadth of research in the field, and found that the quantitative nature of content
analysis would provide more valuable results and help establish a body of data for future
study.
Still, content analysis was not without its own drawbacks. Twitter has grown over
the years (the service launched publicly in 20068) and is reported to have millions of
registered users (Arrington, 2008), although the privately-funded company refuses to
publicly state how many users have signed up for the service. As a result of the increasing
awareness of microblogging, the volume of messages that it receives has multiplied and
8 See http://twitter.com/help/aboutus
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averages in the hundreds per second (Payne, 2007). As a practical consequence on the
sampling for this study, the flow of messages on Twitters Public Timeline9 are generated
on this researchers computer according to the settings of Twitters server and are beyond
my control. Additionally, although the default setting for Twitter profiles is to have all
messages publicly displayed, an option exists for a user to make their messages private and
only viewable by other users to whom they grant access. The percentage of private Twitter
accounts is not publicly available, but it can be assumed to be statistically significant.
Indeed, as an anecdotal observation, one of the one hundred users in the sample activated
their privacy settings after sampling began, perhaps because they had been notified that
users such as this researcher were following them.
Although these factors mean that the sample of Twitter users collected for this
research project cannot be called truly statistically random, they nevertheless were
collected through a deliberate and structured method and can be considered useful as a
convenience sample. According to Riffe et al (2005: 99), convenience samples, although
not favored, can be justified under certain circumstances and in this case proved necessary
given the lack of access to pure data held by Twitter itself (Obvious Corp. declined to
respond to emails in July requesting an opportunity to access their database). The criteria
for justifying the use of a convenience sample are identified by Riffe et al as being: (1) the
difficulty in obtaining a random sample, (2) the prohibitive cost of generating a random
sample or (3) the necessity for research in an underresearched area (ibid 99). In the case of
this study, the first criteria applies because of the technical challenges presented by the role
of Twitters server in delivering data and by the presence of private user accounts that were
not a part of the available data. Additionally, as noted by Mischaud (2007: 7) the field of
study is not yet well developed and there is little published material on microblogging, so
9 See http://twitter.com/public_timeline
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the third criteria can be applied as well, with the justification of providing a basis for
further study in the future (Riffe et al: 100).
Developing the Coding Framework
Because the goal of the study was to investigate the ways that users employed
microblogs to perform their identity for others, a coding framework had to be developed
that would allow the sample messages to be categorized by their content. Informed by
Mischauds methods, which included the classification of each messages content into
categories like personal or work (Mischaud 2007: 19), as well as a pilot study that had
been conducted on a sample of users on the competing microblogging platform of
Facebook10, a revised coding framework was constructed to allow the classification of
messages into the following categories: Sharing Links, News/Politics, Sharing Location,
Answering the Prompting Question, Asking a Question, Work, Taste Performance,
Personal, Future Plans, Conversations and Other a catch-all category for messages that fit
no other classification (see Appendix A).
Although an effort was made to rely on previous researchers practices in fashioning
the structure so as to allow better comparison between the results, some changes were
deemed necessary, as does some explanation of the interpretations of meaning of the
categories and how they were applied feel required. Twitter status updates are short,
typically discrete messages with a maximum length of 140 characters. Even so, the brevity
of the message does not necessarily have a bearing on the complexity of its meaning, and
individual messages are capable of satisfying the terms of classification for more than one
category at a time. In response to one of the challenges discovered during the pilot study on
10 Facebook, as well as other large social networking sites like MySpace, began supportingmicroblogging on their sites shortly after Twitters popularity rose in 2007 (Slee: 2007)
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Facebook microblog messages, the coding schedule was revised to include guidelines for
the prioritization of categories under certain conditions in an effort to establish rules to
govern the classification of messages.
For instance, a convention exists on Twitter to allow users to signal that a given
message is intended for a specific user. The notation - @username publicly directs the
message to the named user. In coding the sample, the guidelines instructed that any
message that began with the @username notation was to be coded in the Conversation
category, without regard for the content of the conversation. Similarly, any message that
contained a URL in the http:// format was to be coded as Sharing Links, even if it could
have potentially been interpreted as News/Politics because the link led to an article about
the American presidential election. This system was adopted (see Appendix D for the order
of priority), although it was ultimately found to be dissatisfying future study would be
better served by attempting to code each of multiple potential classifications in a message
instead of attempting to determine which of the meanings was most significant, a
dangerously subjective choice. Indeed, a specific study of the content of @username
messages could be warranted as they represent an interesting adoption of technology
beyond its originally intended use (see Mischaud 2007).
In order to generate the full sample of 100 users, a systematic sampling of every
fifth user with a suitable message (messages in languages other than English were
discarded) was done on July 14th, 2008 in which ten users were chosen from the Public
Timeline, a feature provided by Twitter that lists the most recent public messages in
chronological order (see Appendix C). Using a timer, further samples were taken, ten at a
time each hour for ten hours, resulting in a total of 100 users whose messages would be
recorded for seven days. These efforts were made in an attempt to broaden the possibility
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that a given user would be able to be a part of the sample, instead of limiting it to a
particular period of time that could bias the sample towards particular time zones or
regions.
Once the sample was completed, the first round of coding was done to encode
various descriptive attributes of each user, including their gender and location if provided
by the user, the number of total messages that the user has posted since creating their
account, and whether or not they included a personal link on their profile. This information
was taken from the users profile page, where users can elect to share their location (88%
of users did), as well as a short biography (see Appendix B). In the case of encoding
gender, a policy of not making assumptions but allowing for common sense was employed,
as users do not in fact have a response field to positively identify their gender. However,
presuming that users were not being intentionally deceptive for the purposes of this study, a
common-sense appraisal of the users photograph and/or username was employed to
determine the gender for coding. In the event of any ambiguity, the user was coded as
Unknown Gender (12% of the sample had an unknown gender). While there are of course
valid concerns about whether or not the true gender of the users was ascertained by this
methodology, in practical terms there was little ambiguity.
After this round of coding had been done, the encoding of the content of individual
messages began. After seven days of sampling, the 100 users had posted a total of more
than 7,800 messages, which was determined to be a larger sample than necessary. Using a
random number generator11 the sample was reduced to 33 users with a total of 1,505
microblog messages, and the encoding of message content could begin. After encoding all
of the messages, a second coder was trained to employ the coding framework and
conducted a second coding on 619 messages from 11 users selected by systematic
11 Random numbers were selected by a sequence generator at http://www.random.org
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sampling. These messages were compared with each other and achieved an overall inter-
coder reliability (ICR) of .75, which is comfortably above the lower bound of .70
established by Lombard et al (2005) as an appropriate level of ICR in content analysis (see
Appendix E for selected ICR findings).
A closer examination of the ICR data found that for certain categories a perfect ICR
was recorded. This is likely as a result of the prioritization schedule which prescribed strict
protocol for interpretation of messages and left little room for interpretation. As stated
previously, @username messages were expected to always be coded as Conversations,
regardless of their content as a message. Not surprisingly, then, an examination of ICR
values for Conversation categories was without any variance. The restrictive protocol of
the prioritization schedule is noticeable in several categories, however there were also
observed instances of disagreement even within categories that were governed by its strict
rules. This revealed errors in the coding schedule that allowed for an unfortunate level of
ambiguity in interpreting the type of message. According to the prioritization schedule,
messages that contain hyperlinks were meant to be coded as Sharing Links regardless of
their content. However, ICR revealed a major disconnect between coders with a poor ICR
of .48, which is well below the desired agreement. Closer examination of the data found
that the categories failed to be mutually exclusive, as messages that should have been
coded as Sharing Links became instead News (often sharing a link to a news story),
Prompting Question (normally sharing a link as a way of answering the question) and
Work (posting a link that is directly related to the users work). Having examined other
categories, notably the Taste Performance category, one can at least take some solace in the
strong ICR figures for the demonstration of cultural capital, the measurement of which was
after all the purpose of the study. In messages that were coded as being taste statements,
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ICR showed a comfortable .77 agreement.
Nevertheless, the shortcomings of the coding schedule, and the failure of the
remedy of the prioritization schedule, loom over the findings of the study. Obviously when
constructing a coding framework the goal is to create categories that are not ambiguous.
Although there are a number of valuable results to be gleaned from this undertaking, the
weaknesses of the coding schedule have become readily apparent under close examination,
and function to limit the extent to which the study can be said to have accomplished its
goals. Future studies can, at the very least, take notice of the errors made here in an effort
to avoid similar pitfalls.
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Results and Interpretation
The principle goal of this study was to determine whether and how users employed
microblogging for the purposes of expressing their identity. As a result, the coding variable
of most interest for the study is the seventh, the classification of message type. If
microblogging services like Twitter are useful for performing and expressing a personal
identity, then we would expect to find that a large proportion of the messages in the sample
would be categorized as Taste Performance.
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Chart 1 - Message Type
Links5%
News
16%
Location
1%
Prompting Q6%
Asking Q
1%
Work
6%Taste
Performance
21%
Personal
13%
Future Plans1%
Conversation26%
Other4%
Representing 21% of the total messages in the sample, taste performances were indeed a
high proportion of all of the messages in the same, however they were less frequent than
the actual top category of microblog message: conversation. 26% of all messages were
coded as being conversations that is messages that began with the notation @username
and were intended to be directed at an individual user, although they were public for all to
see.
The Role of @Conversations
It was not surprising to find conversations to be the most common message type, as
Mischaud (2007: 30) found in his study a slightly higher percentage (32%) of messages
directed at or about a person or people within the users network. Additionally the role of
prioritization that was developed to deal with messages that might have multiple meanings
was biased towards interpretation as Conversations over all others. In reality the
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@username notation is less of a message type than a message attribute. Messages that were
encoded as conversations had a specific content type but, under the coding framework
adopted, that content type was not interpreted. While the content of a conversation could
have been of a particular type (a conversational message by user tzaddi, for instance,
reads @reese, not sure, but maybe the DFN tag is what youre looking for.
http://www.htmlquick.com/reference/tags/dfn.html which would be categorized as
Sharing Links), due to limitations in the coding framework that message was simply
encoded as a conversation. Improvements in the coding framework could allow messages
to be encoded for multiple categories that can be discerned in it, or, due to the apparent
prevalence of @username messages, the nature of a message as either conversation or
not conversation could be encoded as a separate variable, which would allow for closer
examination of the nature of conversation messages, as well as the segregation of their
conversational component from other components of the message type.
The emergence of the conversation notation on Twitter has been the subject of
some discussion, as interpersonal conversations seem at odds with the broadcast medium of
microblogging akin to reflexively saying hi, Mom! when a person unexpectedly finds
themselves standing in front of a television camera. Indeed, the role of conversation
messages on Twitter is not without controversy among some users in regards to etiquette
(see Popkin, 2007 or Gartenberg, 2008), especially considering the fact that Twitter
features a private, interpersonal Direct Message feature. Although Direct Messages are
both private and beyond the scope of this study, it is interesting to note that many users
appear to be happy for the public at large to be capable of seeing both who they are
interacting with (@username posts include hyperlinks that allow readers to click through to
the profile of the person named in the message) and what they are saying to them. Happily,
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this has relevant consequences for the performance of identity, as any user is able to engage
with another, including the more high profile user accounts12. Indeed, the role of naming
the intended recipient with the @username notation enables microbloggers to engage in
taste statements in the in the mere choice of their conversation partners.
In the following message user FarFromSubtle writes in response to a blog post by
Internet entrepreneur and Silicon Valley figure Jason Calacanis13: @JasonCalacanis Little
slow to the draw there Calacanis. Thus, while this message is clearly classified as a
conversation due to the use of the @username notation, it also serves to identify
FarFromSubtle as someone who is familiar with Jason Calacanis and the subject of Mr.
Calacanis blog post that he is responding to. He also demonstrates himself to be the kind
of person who is willing to publicly criticize him, perhaps suggesting an effort to establish
an air of intellectual competence as someone who is well-informed or even snarky. The
presence of a message directed at a celebrity is as meaningful an expression of cultural
competency and taste as is the content of the message itself, particularly in the way that it is
presented publicly to an audience of peers. Although the data to confirm it is not a part of
this study, the chances are that Mr. Calacanis did not receive this particular message among
the flood of others (Calacanis has more than 30,000 followers, any number of whom might
direct conversation messages at him daily), and that wasnt even necessarily the point.
FarFromSubtle may well have hoped that Mr. Calacanis read his comment, but more
important to him may have been that his friends and colleagues saw it and added that
association to the constellation of cultural cues and connections that inform their regard for
FarFromSubtles character.
12 Until very recently, the user with the most followers was Kevin Rose, a well-knownfigure in the so-called web 2.0 community. He was recently passed by Barack Obama.13 Mr. Calacanis was a successful early blogger who sold the blog network Weblogs, Inc. toAmerica Online and continues to be an influential technology business blogger.
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As noted, an improvement to the coding framework would have broken out
messages that had the attributes of a conversation from other messages to be more closely
investigated, but some additional analysis of the category was possible under the
framework employed. When controlling for gender, women used the conversation notation
more frequently than men did, with 42% of all messages sent by women being coded as
conversations, compared to 25% for men. The finding that a plurality of messages sent by
women was conversational is notable, and indicates that interaction is an important
attraction to microblogging for those users. This could suggest a direction for future study,
one that is concerned with looking closely at what the content of these conversations is.
Marketers and advertisers have begun with experiments in monitoring microblog services
like Twitter for rapid-response public relations activity (Lashinsky, 2008), and even within
the confines of the sample there were interesting patterns that could be observed among the
subject of discussion throughout the body of Twitter as a whole, as well as within distinct
groupings within it.
There appeared to be a regional difference in terms of the prevalence of
conversation messages, with conversational message accounting for 53% of all messages
from the South, as compared to six, sixteen and seven percent for the West, Midwest and
Alaska/Hawaii respectively, and forty-two percent of messages from the Northeast. The
number of total updates, a rough approximation of seniority14, also showed a positive
relationship with conversational messages. The more total microblog messages a user had
sent, the more likely he was to send conversational messages, with the exception of the
most productive microbloggers who, for reasons that will be explained shortly, are less apt
to engage in conversations. Nevertheless, users with fewer than 100 total updates posted
14 No data is available to ascertain the date a user account was created, but a running tallyof a users total messages is provided and can, when cross-referenced with the frequency oftheir updates, distinguish veteran or early-adopter user accounts from new ones.
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conversational messages 20% of the time, followed by moderate users (100-499 total
updates) at 26%, heavy users (500-999 total updates) at 30% and heavier users (1000-4999
total updates) at 32%.
The Performance of Taste: The Case of Dr. Horrible
While some of the conversational messages might have contained assertions of
cultural capital, as described in the case of FarFromSubtle and Jason Calacanis, other
messages were more directly and unambiguously assigned to the category of taste
statements. These messages typically came in the form of an expression of affinity or
association with some form of cultural production, such as a film, place, product or idea
(At Caesars Palace. Had a great steak at The Palm, Finally testing out the new Firefox.
Like it so far). These messages, meant consciously or unconsciously as a statement of
taste, are important to study and have both theoretical significance and practical
applications. Firstly, they provide a useful mechanism for examining how individuals
manage their identities in a social space, making efforts to impress their peers as well as
express their interests and desires to others. Secondly, it provides an (imperfect) means of
observing the impact of individual cultural products on a public.
For the marketer or producer of a cultural product, there is little they can take more
professional pride in than seeing a campaign theme, slogan or website being repeated by
users on a microblog service effectively extending the marketing message to their peers
for them. This method of seeding marketing messages within user communications is often
described as viral marketing, whereby marketing messages are passed among consumers
through their social networks. Even in the one week of sampling for this study, several
cultural products could be observed going viral - making their way through the
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Twittersphere by passing from user to user.
One, a web video series entitled Dr. Horribles Sing Along Blog could be
observed in the messages of several of the users in the sample. The messages carrying the
films name ranged from simple notifications (watching dr horrible) to supportive
endorsements (just finished watching the last act of Dr. Horribles Sing Along Blog.
Everybody needs to go to www.drhorrible.com and watch all 3 acts) and through to the
critical (Am I right in assuming Dr. Horrible will only be watchable via American IP
addresses?). Twitter users deftly employed references to Dr. Horrible in their microblogs,
associating themselves with the cultural product and expressing their taste in a performance
before the community. In a complimentary relationship, the user who included a link to the
films website might have gained in cultural capital among his peers by sharing his find
with them, while the producers of the film gained in free exposure and viral promotion of
their product by a valuably authentic.
As noted before, taste statements were the second most common kind of message
in the study, consisting of just over 20% of all messages. Compared across gender, men
were found to be much more likely to express their taste in a microblog message, with 29%
of all of their messages including references to cultural products or demonstrations of
cultural knowledge, as compared to just 10% of womens messages. More senior users,
those with between 500 and 999 total updates, had the highest percentage of messages
being taste statements, 31%. At other levels of seniority, both higher and lower, the
percentage of messages in that category fluctuated between 18 and 23 per cent.
Geographically, users from the Western region of the United States were much more likely
to post taste statements, with 38% of their messages falling into the category as compared
with percentages as low as seven and eight in the South and Alaska/Hawaii, respectively.
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Outside the United States, 25% of posts were concerned with references to cultural
products or ideas and 18% in the Northeast of the US.
A Bestiary of Microblogger Types
In order to better understand these figures, it is necessary to take a closer look at the
users themselves and establish a few types that can be observed in the body of Twitter. One
of the first differentiators to consider is the number of messages from a user in the sample,
and in this sample there were 9 users (representing 27% of the 33 total users) who posted
more than 100 messages in the sample period. Among these 9 users, they averaged 22
messages a day, compared to the overall average of 9.7 messages a day for all users (the
overall average, when controlled for the nine biggest users, further reduced to 3.4 messages
a day). This disproportionately busy group of microbloggers can be further broken up into
three categories: heavy users, promotional users and bots.
Heavy users are maintaining personal microblogs, just like the light users, but
happen to post messages much more frequently. Sometimes the content of heavy users
messages have a strong work component, where microblogging is used as a log of tasks or
events. User majornelson is a heavy user (with an average frequency of 28 messages a
day) with a professional streak to his microblog (29% of his messages were coded as Work
he appears to be a journalist covering the video game industry). An example message:
Just did a Todd Howard interview about Fallout 3 for Inside Xbox.
Promotional users are accounts operated by individuals working in the name of an
organization, for instance in the sample there is user TCU, which is operated by Texas
Christian University and disseminates information of interest to students there (Athletics:
Four Frogs Named to Preseason All-Conference Team). Promotional users are interested
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in using microblogs to gain traffic to their websites, and so their postings often include
hyperlinks (88% of TCUs postings were coded as Sharing Links). Organizational
microblogs sometimes develop a character to their postings (such as the British Prime
Ministers Twitter account15), while others are impersonal, handing out information with
no-nonsense style.
Bots are automated applications that use microblogs as a means of distribution for
content often a blog or other website. One of the highest volume users in the sample,
celebritypaycut, is a bot operating for the website celebritypaycut.com and provides links
to new blog posts on the site (a close inspection of the users 203 sample messages finds
that 86% of them are classified as Sharing Links). Although bots and promotional users
appear to have similar attributes, it is important to note the difference. Promotional users
are operated by human actors, often to be used for purposes of gaining web traffic or
providing information. Bots are automated scripts, software that operates simply to
distribute links to external websites when they are updated. The methodological framework
of this study was not sophisticated enough to distinguish between human operators posting
links and automated bots posting links, and would benefit from more flexible application in
the future.
Having identified these high volume users, it appears that future study might
benefit from constructing a methodological framework for identifying and isolating them
from other kinds of users, perhaps using a threshold percentage of diversity of message
type within each user to screen out bots that simply post links devoid of meaning or human
agency. The interest of this study is primarily in personal user accounts, however a study of
promotional accounts could also be valuable, with a possible goal of examining what types
of messages organizations relied on, whether they preferred to mostly post links to external
15 http://twitter.com/DowningStreet
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content or attempted to adopt a personality and drive traffic to external sites more
indirectly. Informal studies have shown that there is a danger of over-promotion through
frequent or irrelevant postings (Driver, 2008), and a more carefully controlled study could
attempt to corroborate those tentative findings.
Unfulfilled Promise: Accounting for Limits in the Coding Framework
Two message category types that had been presumed to be promising turned out to
return poor results, signifying either their importance was less than expected or that their
nature was more liable to fall afoul of limitations of the coding framework and
prioritization schedule. Messages informing of a users location, as well as ones referring to
future plans, consisted of only a combined 2.1% of all messages. This contrasted with
expectations and anecdotal observation, where messages consisting of a declarative
statement of the users present location are commonly seen. This type of message is seen to
be especially common when users are traveling to announce their departures and arrivals.
One probable reason for this disparity is the limitation in the coding framework imposed by
the prioritization of certain categories over others might have disproportionate effect on
location and future-plan type messages. Often when users announce their location, there is
an implicit cultural cue imbued in the naming. For instance, a user announcing their arrival
to Las Vegas may be priming their audience to expect a string up microblog messages
consistent with the Sin City image of the place. In such a situation the announcement of
their present location is subordinated to the taste statement of the cultural reference, and
subsequently fewer messages will be coded as sharing a location than actually do in fact
share the present location of the user.
Nevertheless, there are some kernels of information to be extracted from the data
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related to these figures. Firstly, the Sharing Location category demonstrated a noticeable
bump when it was cross-referenced with the method of input: it hopped up to 5% of all
messages from 1% when looking at messages inputted via text message. Twitter has a
versatile platform, and can receive messages from users in various forms: inputs via the
website, inputs via SMS messages (text messages), and inputs from various third-party
software applications. Each message is encoded with metadata that reveals the method of
input used, and the results do show that the messages change depending on the method of
input employed. For users who are on the move, it appears that they are more liable to send
an update via their mobile phone to record their location (In Palo Alto, At the science
center) for the benefit of any of their friends who might need or want to know where they
are.
Users who send their messages through the website were much more likely to
discuss news and current events than other forms of input (35% of web inputs were news
related, as compared to 13% in third party applications and 0% of SMS inputs although
one should note that the web input figure includes messages from news bots). More than
half of all SMS messages were conversations, which suggests that some SMS users employ
Twitter as a means to coordinate with friends (user KatyLinda posted the following
message by SMS: @MichMaybeNot it should be fun! let me know if you need
directions.). This follows an observed trend in the use of ICTs, with social gatherings
being coordinate and planned on an ad hoc basis via mobile phones (Ling & Yttri, 2002),
and now perhaps microblogging.
Users who posted messages through third part software applications16 had a much
more varied distribution of message types. Taste statements were the most common kind
16 Programs like Twitterific and Twhirl are popular third party software applications forTwitter they allow users to update their microblogs, as well as collect, organize and trackthe microblogs they subscribe to. See: http://twitter.com/downloads
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of message, with a total of 23% of message falling in this category. Following that,
however, Personal Messages and Conversations each consisted of 16% of the messages,
while Sharing Links and Discussing News were each 13%, showing a quite diverse blend
of message types.
Examining Twitter Profile Pages
As described before, Twitter profiles are very spare by the standards of social
networking sites (see Appendix B for an example). There is room for one photograph, a
username, a biography entry of 140 characters or less and one hyperlink. The coding
schedule included encoding whether the user had posted a link to a personal website or
blog or not, or whether they posted a link to non-personal site. 66% of users posted a link
to a personal site or blog, and 27% posted a link to a non-personal site (often a mainstream
news or business site). Only 6% posted no link at all. These links have potential roles to
play in identity performance, and the presence of a link to a personal website or blog
suggests some level of invitation from the user to the audience to learn more about them.
User kathysart, for instance, provides a link to her own website (kathysart.com) which
includes a blog, examples of her paintings (including opportunities to purchase her work)
and entreaties to users to sign up for an email newsletter about upcoming art shows.
The role of Twitter and other microblogging platforms is in fact connected to other
arenas of identity performance such as blogs or social networking sites, and a cursory
examination of sample users personal blogs found that they often used blogging software
plugins that allowed their Twitter status to be displayed on their blogs main page. User
inko9nito includes a link to her personal blog (inko9nito.wordpress.com) which contains
posts about technical issues related to her work as a web designer, as well as posts related
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to her personal life and taste expressions. The page also features a Real Simple Syndication
(RSS) display of her latest Twitter posts for users to see. The practice of embedding a
Twitter display on a personal blog suggests that users feel like it expresses their identity in
a way that is complimentary to the purposes of a personal blog. Investigations of the
relationship between the content of microblog messages and lengthier blog posts could
potentially offer interesting results of the thought process of the user, in both short and long
interval messages.
Suggestions for improving the coding framework
Having conducted a rudimentary examination of the Twitter ecosystem, it becomes
clear that the accurate study of this field requires knowledge of and accounting for these
various constituent elements from bots to promotional users to high volume personal
users and more. As the field is still fledgling, it is hoped that some of the findings of this
survey, as well as some of its errors, will be able to inform future studies which can benefit
from these efforts. With both the depth and breadth of the field waiting to be further
explored, ample room exists for studies of both ambitious and narrow focus to come.
As demonstrated by some of the shortcomings of this study, a methodological
framework that is interested in categorizing different types of messages needs to be flexible
enough to account for complex messages. Unfortunately, in the case of this study there was
a level of ambiguity that thwarted the design of the coding schedule. Efforts to create rules
for precedence of different types of messages did result in somewhat less ambiguity in the
classification of messages, but at the expense of their depth and complexity. In the case of
identity performance, the broadness of the research question also provides a handicap for
this study. Ultimately it became difficult to concretely determine which messages were not
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able to be categorized as taste statements, as each one was deliberately constructed and
contained both conscious and unconscious cues to the audience, as described by Goffman
(1959). A better method would be to very narrowly and specifically define what
constitutes that type of message. For instance, one could restrict the categorization of taste
statements to messages that contain a brand name or trademark, as a means of measuring
user appropriation of cultural goods (as suggested by Bourdieu) instead of a measure of
identity performance.
Theoretical Relevance of Findings
In regards to the research goals, the data, even if flawed, does show that users
express aspects of their identity through microblogs. One in five messages coded included
a positive message by a user making a statement about their taste, and as a consequence a
performance of their identity for the benefit of the audience. Although it was determined
that @username messages intended for conversations were more commonly recorded in the
analysis than messages that were recorded as taste statements, limitations of the coding
schedule prevented complete analysis of the content of those and other types of messages
from being recorded. As described, in many cases it could be observed that conversational
messages contained other types of messages as well.
Indeed, as alluded to earlier, depending on how broadly one interprets a taste
statement to be, all microblog messages could be construed as being deliberate
announcements of relative cultural capital as a means of performing identity to an audience
of readers. Using such a broad definition introduces difficulties in subsequently drawing
conclusions about the meaning of such a state of affairs, but does contribute to a general
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agreement that users do in fact make use of microblogging for the purpose of taste
performance and identity management.
Regarding the second question ofhow users employ microblogs to this end, the data
does allow us to make some conclusions, however more importantly it indicates a direction
to take improved research methods in the future. Users were observed to engage in taste
performances through direct appropriation of cultural goods in the content of their
messages. Often this was achieved by naming a specific good (Dr. Horribles Sing Along
Blog, for instance) as a way of making the audience aware of the users familiarity with the
product. These messages could be more complex, with the user providing an opinion or
criticism of a work as a means of demonstrating how the product conformed with or
deviated from the users tastes. This more complex performance allows the user to both
name check a cultural product as well as establish themselves as a tastemaker, one whose
opinions or suggestions can influence the tastes of others.
Additionally, users employed the conversational notation of @username to allow
themselves to create associations between themselves and other users (both famous and
obscure) which serves the purpose of creating their identity as one in relation with others,
introducing the opportunity for greater social capital promotion. In conversations, users
both identified themselves as actors within the social space of the MSNS as well as
demonstrated their identity through the choice of which users they elected to direct their
conversations towards. While one might think that at times this choice is innocent and
simply in reaction to events, and this can certainly be true, it also lends itself to yet another
opportunity for taste statements, as described in the analysis of a users conversation
message directed at public figures of the web 2.0 community who are heavily invested in
microblogging.
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Further research could create a framework for identifying these tastemakers and
examine the extent to which their pronouncements on various cultural goods had a
noticeable affect on their followers. Or, a focus on @username conversational messages
could be fruitful in examining more closely the interactions between users in the social
space of microblogging. While some users might engage in conversations only with
established friends, others may have a predilection towards efforts to engage public or
notorious characters in conversation. These, among other options, suggest that microblogs
as a field of study have a rich future ahead of them.
Conclusion
This study endeavored to examine the short messages of an emerging
communication medium known as microblogging for evidence of the active performance
of identity and taste. Although the content analysis of messages from the Twitter microblog
network utilized a flawed coding schedule that resulted in severe limitations in the scope of
the application of its findings, the overall goal of establishing that users do in fact employ
microblogs for these purposes was accomplished. Combined with the suggestions for
improvement in future research, the study provides a useful starting point for more rigorous
and careful examination of this interesting and rich new field of study. While
microblogging remains a niche activity (and one that excludes large volumes of potential
users through material, cultural and other barriers), it is nevertheless growing in its
prevalence. Beyond microblogging sites such as Twitter (and its several competitors such
as Jaiku, Plurk and Pownce), mainstream SNSs such as Facebook, MySpace and even the
more staid and business-directed LinkedIn have added microblogging functions that have
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found popular success. As a pilot study of Facebook status updates suggested, there could
be rich opportunities to examine the way that users in different virtual environments
employ microblogs for identity performance as well as other purposes as a result of
differences in the networks approach to perennial CMC issues of privacy and trust.
In any event, this study has validated, at least in the eyes of this researcher,
microblogs as a useful and important field of study. Although there are prominent critics
who suggest that microblogging sites such as Twitter encourage users to record useless and
mundane details about their daily lives, it is in the recording of these passing events,
actions and ideas that a body of microblogs like Twitter gains value as a repository of
meaningful, if sometimes ephemeral, assertions of identity and cultural capital, complete
with an automated timestamp. Microblogs have a value both on a granular level - looking
at the way an individual user expresses themselves through the choice of messages to
broadcast and across the whole body of the population measuring the level of attention
paid to a topic, the number of times a key word is repeated by all of the millions of users.
Whether the content of the conversation is informative (numerous news agencies,
government agencies, corporations and other organizations have created profiles and share
information and news through Twitter (Lashinsky, 2008)), entertaining (not surprisingly
one format that has taken to the hyper-local and instantaneous nature of microblogging has
been celebrity news updates) or even life-saving (numerous articles have been written on
the use of Twitter in case of disasters like fires and earthquakes (Ingram, 2008), as well as
the widely-reported Twitter jailbreak (Simon, 2008)), it contributes to a growing database
of readings of the public psyche.
Of course one must take a critical eye to such techno-utopian notions of collective
intelligence (Levy 1999) or a hive mind. Several challenges crop up against the notion
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that a microblog service like Twitter allows social scientists a reliable stand-in for society
broadly. The nature of Twitter and other microblog services are inherently exclusive,
requiring users to negotiate access via internet or mobile phone, creating a financial barrier.
In addition, language and skill barriers can bar access to a large population of users even if
they are equipped with the necessary information and communication technologies. These
intersecting inequalities often result in disadvantaged groups becoming further isolated
through lack of access, and act to limit the representativeness of microblogs and society
generally.
This is a legitimate and accurate criticism of microblogs, as well as the Internet and
ICTs generally. Access is limited by barriers, typically material ones, which
disproportionately bar the poor and poorly educated from receiving the benefits of the
technology. As a consequence of these barriers, it is important to recognize the limits of
technologys reach, and account for this problem when making projections and assessments
of the impact of digital media and ICTs. However, having acknowledged this inherent
limiting factor, it is not then fair to say that there is no value in the data revealed through
the study of microblogs. Due attention must be made in observing that the conclusions
drawn from study do not extend beyond their bounds, but operating within the limitations
imposed by the medium we can still draw rich results.
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Appendix A Coding Schedule:
1. Tweet Number (1-1,505)-a number that identifies the individual message within the sample.
2. Twitter User ID# (1-100)
-a number that specifies which account in the sample published the tweet
3. Average frequency of individual user (in tweets per day)-total up all the tweets in 7 days by a user, divide by 7. That is the average frequency of tweets.
3. Gender of user1 = male : 2 = female : 99 = cannot be determined-Look for indications in username and/or photo. If there is any ambiguity, code 99.
4. Location of user1 = West : 2 = Midwest : 3 = South : 4 = Northeast : 5 = Alaska/Hawaii : 6 = Outside USA99 = cannot be determined-Regional groupings are taken from US Census
5. Number of total updates-the total number of updates posted by this user since creating their account with Twitter
6. Do they list a web links?1 = Yes, Personal Page : 2 = Yes, but not personal page : 3 = Yes, but unclear if personal or not4 = No link provided
7. Classify the kind of message1 = Sharing Links : 2 = News : 3 = Sharing Location : 4 = Answering the Prompting Q5 = Asking a Q : 6 = Work : 7 = Taste Statement : 8 = Personal : 9 = Future Plans
10 = Other : 11 = Conversation-Note: refer to the prioritization schedule to determine which kind of message you have
8. Method of Tweeting
1 = via website : 2 = via SMS : 3 = via external application-Note: the external app category is very broad, everything but twitter.com and twitter SMS
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Appendix B Sample of User Profile
In this example of a user page, the small About section can be seen to display the variousfields that allow users to enter information about themselves for other users. Additionally,the Stats field displays descriptive data about the user, including his total updates (in thiscase, 3,611).Note in the list of microblog messages that each one is marked with a time stamp as well asan indication of the method used to input the message (in this users case, all of his recentmicroblog messages, excepting the most recent one were inputted via the web interface at
http://twitter.com. The most recent one was inputted via the third-party Twitter applicationPing.fm).
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Appendix C Sample of Twitter Public Timeline
This example of the Public Timeline (http://twitter.com/public_timeline) displays the mostrecent public messages received by Twitter at that time. Several different types of messagescan be observed in this example, including a @username conversation by user Marti_L,sharing links by user FFFFIND and a taste statement by user austinscorpio23 who refersto the Nintendo video game console system Wii.
Additionally, the three different input mechanisms are on display in this example, with aprevalence of third-party applications (such as Twhirl, Twitterfeed and TwitterBerry), aswell as web inputs by user yep_that_url and SMS inputs by user moixoxo
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Appendix D Prioritization Schedule
When coding for message type, refer to this schedule to determine the priority message type. The followinglists, in descending order from the highest priority, how to assess which category a given microblogmessage will be encoded into.
11: Conversation. When a microblog message is encountered that employs the @username construction, itis always encoded as a Conversation.
1: Sharing Links. When a microblog message is encountered that includes a hyperlink in the standardnotation (eg. http://www.example.com), it is always encoded as Sharing Links provided that it is notcontained within a Conversation message.
7: Taste Statement. When a microblog message is encountered that includes a reference to cultural or socialproducts, ideas, places or things (as defined within the theoretical framework of the study), it will alwaysbe encoded as a Taste Statement provided that it is not a Conversational or Link Sharing message.
8: Personal. When a microblog message is encountered that includes self-referential information, thoughts,concerns, anxieties or other kind of expression that are principally concerned with sharing some insight intothe users personal mood, status or state of mind, these will be encoded as Personal provided they do not
satisfy an above category.
4: Answering the Prompting Q. When a microblog message is encountered that includes references tocurrent actions (especially when constructed using the active voice verbs ending in ing), it will beencoded as Answering the Prompting Q so long as they do not satisfy an above category.
5: Asking a Q. When a microblog message is encountered that concludes with a question mark (?), it willbe encoded as Asking a Q so long as it does not satisfy an above category.
3: Sharing Location. When a microblog message is encountered that includes a reference to a physicallocation that the user indicates they are presently at, it will be encoded as Sharing Location provided it doesnot satisfy an above category.
9: Future Plans. When a microblog message is encountered that includes references to future plans
(especially if referring to specific event or date in the future), it will be encoded as Future Plans so long asit does not satisfy an above category.
6: Work. When a microblog message is encountered that includes references to tasks or responsibilitiesrelated to a users professional life, they will be encoded as Work provided that they do not satisfy anyabove category.
2: News. When a microblog is encountered that makes specific reference to current events or news, it willbe encoded as News provided it does not satisfy an above category.
10: Other. When a microblog is encountered that does not satisfy any above category, it will be encoded asOther.
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Appendix E Selected Inter-Coder Reliability Figures for overall agreement, as well asbroken out figures for message categories: Sharing Links, Taste Statements, Conversation
UserID1stCoder
2ndCoder Agreement Sharing Taste Conversation
1 7 3 n n
1 7 7 y y1 6 6 y
2 3 4 n
2 8 8 y
2 8 8 y
4 2 1 n n
4 2 1 n n
4 2 1 n n
5 6 6 y
5 11 11 y y
5 5 5 y
8 7 7 y y
8 7 7 y y8 7 7 y y
10 1 1 y y
10 11 11 y y
10 11 11 y y
13 7 7 y y
13 11 11 y y
13 11 11 y y
14 2 4 n
14 4 1 n n
14 1 1 y y
16 8 8 y
16 11 11 y y
16 7 7 y y
17 4 8 n
17 11 11 y y
17 7 7 y y
18 7 7 y y
18 8 8 y
18 11 11 y y
19 5 8 n
19 11 11 y y
19 11 11 y y
22 1 1 y y
22 1 1 y y
22 2 1 n n
27 4 1 n n
27 5 5 y
27 7 7 y y
30 11 11 y y
30 11 11 y y
30 11 11 y y
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32 8 8 y
32 5 5 y
32 11 11 y y
36 11 11 y y
36 11 11 y y
36 7 7 y y
37 7 7 y y37 4 4 y
37 7 7 y y
46 4 4 y
46 4 4 y
46 1 1 y y
48 7 7 y y
48 4 4 y
48 7 7 y y
52 8 8 y
52 4 4 y
52 4 4 y
56 7 4 n n56 4 7 n n
56 7 7 y y
64 6 1 n n
64 11 11 y y
64 11 11 y y
65 4 4 y
65 4 4 y
65 3 4 n
66 7 8 n n
66 11 11 y y
66 8 4 n
69 7 7 y y69 7 7 y y
69 1 1 y y
72 7 7 y y
72 7 7 y y
72 7 7 y y
77 8 3 n
77 7 4 n n
77 3 4 n
80 6 4 n
80 4 4 y
80 7 4 n n
88 7 7 y y88 11 11 y y
88 8 7 n n
90 7 7 y y
90 7 7 y y
90 7 7 y y
92 4 4 y
92 4 2 n
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92 4 4 y
92 4 4 y
93 11 11 y y
93 11 11 y y
93 11 11 y y
100 total 13 total 31 total 23 total
75 yes 6 yes 24 yes 23 yes25 no 7 no 7 no 0 no
0.75 0.46153846 0.77419355 1