ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, January 2017

The Australian Twitter News Index has been on hold for the past few months as we’ve adjusted our data gathering approach to address some changes to Twitter’s data gathering frameworks, and unfortunately this period has also included the U.S. election and its immediate aftermath. But we’re back in time to the inauguration of President Trump, …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, September 2016

As the world turns its attention to the slow-motion car crash that is this year’s U.S. presidential election, September in Australia was a comparatively ordinary, intermediate month for news. A number of continuing scandals and controversies – including the donations affair engulfing Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, the Country Fire Authority pay dispute in Victoria, and …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, August 2016

As the 2016 federal election campaign recedes into memory, online engagement with the news in Australia has returned to what passes for normality these days. This is also reflected in the news sharing activities we are able to observe in the Australian Twitter News Index for August: the long-term patterns of how Twitter users’ attention …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, June-July 2016

This instalment of the Australian Twitter News Index covers the business end of the Australian federal election campaign, which culminated in election day on 2 July 2016 and was followed by a brief period of uncertainty over whether the Coalition government had in fact held on to enough seats in the House of Representatives to …

#ausvotes: A Final Update from the Social Media Hustings

As we conclude this very lengthy Australian election campaign, let us review how the candidates fared on Twitter these past two weeks. Our research tracks all tweets directed at or posted by the candidates’ Twitter accounts. This provides a more comprehensive picture than the comparatively more self-selecting election- and politics-related hashtags #ausvotes and #auspol. The …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, May 2016

We’re now well into the federal election season, and of course this is reflected in the Twitter-based news sharing activities captured in the Australian Twitter News Index as well. But – because as in previous elections the general public tends to fully connect with the campaign only in the final weeks before election day – …

#ausvotes 2016: Some Early Impressions

We’re now well into one of the longest Australian election campaigns in recent memory, and close enough to election date that we should expect the general public and not just the usual political junkies to begin engaging with the parties’ campaigns. Time, then, to examine how the parties are faring on social media to date. …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, April 2016

Even before Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull fired the starting gun on this year’s election campaign last weekend, Australian media were very clearly switching to election mode. Speculation about any last-minute budget sweeteners and debate about likely policy settings began to pick up, and commentary about the implications of a double dissolution election was already in …

#ausvotes Revisited: Social Media in the 2013 Australian Federal Election

As Australia commences one of the longest federal election campaigns in living memory, much attention will be paid again to how parties and politicians are utilising the latest tools available in their campaigning arsenal: social media. We’ve seen Facebook and Twitter used as emerging campaigning tools in the 2010 and 2013 elections already, and even …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, January-March 2016

In spite of my best intentions, I’m afraid the Australian Twitter News Index continues to be a somewhat irregular affair for the moment, and so this latest update once again covers a number of months: in this case, it’s reporting on news sharing patterns in Australia for the first quarter of 2016. We begin, therefore, …