ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, September/October 2014

In my previous post, I introduced the revamped and rebooted Australian Twitter News Index, which now covers both link sharing patterns on Twitter for Australian news and opinion sites and general online popularity trends for those sites. Having covered the long-term trends since 2012 in that post, it’s now time for the first monthly update …

From ATNIX to Hitwise: Australian Online News Audiences, 2012-14

It’s been a long time since I’ve published the Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) on a semi-regular basis – other commitments got the better of me for some time, I’m afraid. In addition, I’ve also needed to make a number of technical changes to make the index more manageable and sustainable, and I’ve outlined some …

Rebooting ATNIX, using MySQL and Tableau

During 2012 and 2013 I published a more-or-less-weekly overview of the news sharing patterns in the Australian Twittersphere, the Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX), which I also crossposted to my column at The Conversation. Technical issues and the call of other commitments have forced me to put ATNIX on the backburner for some time, but …

First Steps in Exploring the Australian Twittersphere

Twitter is widely used in Australia, but we don’t actually know such a great deal about the structure and dynamics of the Australian Twittersphere. Back in 2011/12, our research began to identify Australian Twitter users and map their follower/followee connections in order to develop a better understanding of the structure of the network and from …

Video of our talk at the University of Göttingen now available

Last month Axel, Darryl Woodford and I visited the University of Göttingen’s Centre for Digital Humanities as part of a two-year, ATN-DAAD funded collaboration. During our visit, we participated in a public workshop on Twitter and network analysis. Here is the video of our public talk, which touches on broader issues around digital methods and …

Hashtag as hybrid forum: the case of #agchatoz

I’m posting this from the University of Amsterdam, where we are now well into the final day of a fantastic three-day conference called Social Media and the Transformation of Public Space. We have quite a gang of participants here from the QUT Social Media Research Group, and we’ll collect all our papers up and post …

Layers of Communication on Twitter

If you’ve been wondering about the lack of news on this site – yes, we’re still here, and if we haven’t posted since the start of the year it’s because behind the scenes we’ve been busy preparing for a number of major new research projects that are about to start, as well as crunching some …

New Users in Times of Crisis (and Revolution)

As part of our recent work investigating the Twitter Userbase, we have collected data on accounts registered around the 2011 triad of natural disasters; the Queensland Floods (January), Christchurch Earthquake (22 February) and Tokyo Earthquake & Tsunami (11 March). By looking at new accounts registered between 1 January 2011 and 30 April 2011, we are …

Announcing Twitter and Society

Much of the focus of this site in recent years has been on Twitter research, often in collaboration with our various colleagues and friends around the world. We’ve tried our best to help along the development of Twitter research methods and approaches by exploring the uses of Twitter, contributing to methodological innovation in the field, …

Sporting Twitter Analytics: Comparing the Australian Grand Finals

Over the past fortnight, both of the major Australian winter sporting codes (AFL – Australian Football League & NRL – National Rugby League) played their showpiece occasions, the grand final. Without getting into the technicalities of Australia’s version of the playoff system, these events saw teams competing for the ultimate prize in their respective sports. …