ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, June/July 2015

I must begin this Australian Twitter News Index update with an apology – we’ve had to skip May due to unforeseen server maintenance, and this has also affected part of our data-gathering for June. Consequently, this post covers the period of both June and July 2015, with future updates returning to a more regular monthly …

What If Google Bought Twitter? A Conversation and Some Further Thoughts

Twitter has been in the news recently, for all the wrong reasons. Business media report that Twitter shareholders are disappointed with the company’s latest results; and this follows recent turmoil in the company’s leadership which saw the departure of controversial CEO Dick Costolo and the (temporary) return of co-founder Jack Dorsey until a permanent replacement …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, April 2015

April has been a very busy month for the Australian media, with the 100th anniversary of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli and the cruelly drawn-out procedures leading towards the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia on 29 April both commanding very substantial coverage. But in the past we’ve also found that such …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, March 2015

Compared to the excitement of January and February, March 2015 has turned out to be a comparatively quiet month in Australian public life, even in spite of the New South Wales state election campaign which culminated in the re-election of Mike Baird’s Coalition government on 28 March. The immediate heat has dissipated from the leadership …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, February 2015

February 2015 has been a tumultuous month in Australian news, not least because of the continuing leadership debate (and defeated spill motion) in the federal Liberal Party following the LNP’s unexpected defeat in the Queensland state election on 31 January. As expected, these and other events also affect the patterns observed in our Australian Twitter …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, January 2015

Ordinarily, January is a relatively slow news month in Australia. That’s far from true for January 2015, however: first, the Queensland premier Campbell Newman surprised journalists, the opposition, and quite a few of his own colleagues by calling an almost unprecedentedly early state election. Then, Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s “captain’s call” of awarding a knighthood …

#qldvotes: A Final Social Media Round-Up

By any measure, it’s been an extraordinary weekend here in Queensland. The same electoral tsunami that brought the LNP to power in March 2012 has washed the government away again in January 2015. Premier Campbell Newman has lost his own seat of Ashgrove, and Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk looks poised to form government – although …

#qldvotes: Final-Week Update on Social Media Activities

This year’s Queensland state election campaign may be very brief, but it’s certainly been action-packed. In my previous post I provided an overview of what were roughly the first two weeks of the campaign; mid-way through the final week, here’s a further update of how the social media campaign has unfolded. As a reminder about …

Twitter in the Queensland State Election, Two Weeks In

Somewhat earlier than expected, Queensland finds itself in the throes of a very tightly contested state election campaign, which was called on 6 January and concludes with election day on 31 January. Just like candidates and the media, we in the QUT Social Media Research Group too have been scrambling to put in place the …

ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, December 2014

The final ATNIX for 2014 arrives with a slight delay due to the summer holidays, but covers an unexpectedly dramatic few weeks in Australian public life, due especially to the deadly siege in the Lindt Café in Sydney’s Martin Place in mid-December. This major breaking news story and its tragic aftermath are clearly reflected in …