About a month ago now, more than 15 Australian and international researchers as well as industry representatives came together at QUT to participate in the interdisciplinary research workshop The World According to Twitter (#WAT11) which set out to explore innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to researching Twitter, to develop a better overview of current topics, purposes, and applications of Twitter research, identify key research questions, and share possible methodological approaches for addressing them. The workshop was held in the context of Axel and Jean’s collaboration with the University of Düsseldorf Junior Researchers Group “Science and the Internet” and saw visiting fellows Katrin Weller and Cornelius Puschmann amongst the group of presenters.
As indicated on the original workshop invitation, the presentations on the day focused on two key areas:
- Twitter and ‘acute events’: what are the uses of Twitter during key events and crises, including the royal wedding and other major televised events, political controversies, sporting events, natural disasters, brand crises?
- The emergence of Twitter’s own cultural forms: what are the dynamics of ‘cultural generativity’ which play out on Twitter, leading to the introduction of new conventions (such as ‘@’ and ‘#’), the emergence of meta-Twitter memes, the dissemination of hashtag jokes and other phenomena?
Presenters included:
- Dr Katrin Weller & Dr Cornelius Puschmann, University of Düsseldorf Germany
- Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns & Dr Jean Burgess, Queensland University of Technology
- Dr Suku Sinnappan, Swinburne University of Technology
- Christopher Mascaro, Drexel University’s College of Information Science and Technology (iSchool)
- Dr Julie-Anne Carroll & Dr Orit Ben Harush, Queensland University of Technology
- Aneesha Bakharia, Queensland University of Technology
All our presenters kindly agreed to share their presentations on this blog and so it is with great pleasure that we bring to you:
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