One Day in the Life of a National Twittersphere

Taking a break from all the politics, Brenda Moon and I have examined everything that goes on in the Australian Twittersphere on a given day. We found that older, more sociable uses of Twitter persist in spite of everything. Our article is out now in The Conversation and Nordicom Review. The research was made possible by the TrISMA LIEF project, funded by the …

Now Live: The Australian Twitter News Index as a Dashboard

For the past few years I have published regular monthly updates of the Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) at The Conversation and here on this site. As that partnership has now come to an end and the writing of regular updates had become somewhat onerous, we’ve now developed a new approach to sharing the trends …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, September/October 2017

Twitter news sharing patterns for Australian news sites in recent months point to the considerable public attention directed at a handful of key issues. The September/October period is once again notable for a number of major ABC News stories that attracted attention on Twitter well above the long-term average. The first of these, trending from …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, August 2017

Audience engagement on social media is an enormously powerful tool for boosting the circulation of news stories, as this month’s Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) shows: a number of Australian news stories go viral well beyond their intended target audience. But away from these momentary successes, a quieter shift is underway, too: ABC News is …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, July 2017

As they face a changing market for journalistic content, Australian news organisations are increasingly forced to experiment with new approaches to telling their stories. The Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) for July 2017 shows that some new formats for investigative reports can generate considerable engagement – but old-fashioned commentary and opinion pieces also still manage …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, June 2017

Last month’s Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) saw a comparative return to a focus on domestic matters. Twitter users predominantly shared links to Australian news media stories that dealt with federal politics and related issues. June largely continues that trend, with one notable exception: unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s secretly recorded attempt at impersonating Donald …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, May 2017

Between the bombshell announcement of further deep staff cuts at Fairfax publications, subsequent strike action by Fairfax journalists, the handing down of the 2017 federal budget, and the much-publicised return of drug smuggler Schapelle Corby to Australia, the news in May was surprisingly strongly focussed on domestic Australian issues. But not all of these matters …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, April 2017

There seems to be no end in sight to the barrage of breaking, critical news from home and abroad these days, and Australians might be forgiven for trying to switch off during the Easter and ANZAC holidays. Even if they did attempt to do so, however, the Australian Twitter News Index for April 2017 shows …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, March 2017

For anyone based in Australia – and especially for those of us here in Queensland – the major domestic news story of March 2017 is no doubt the impact of Tropical Cyclone Debbie on the coastal communities of the central coast Queensland. It is not entirely surprising, however, that the cyclone fails to impact strongly …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, February 2017

It feels as if February 2017 has been a month of permanent crisis. Between the exceptionally controversial first steps of the fledgling Trump administration in the United States, the increasingly fragile relationships between the various factions within the Coalition government, and the renewed hostilities between government and opposition on the resumption of federal parliament, hardly …