{"id":1554,"date":"2012-06-25T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2012-07-01T10:34:17","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T00:34:17","slug":"twitter-circulation-ratings-for-australian-news-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/2012\/06\/25\/twitter-circulation-ratings-for-australian-news-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Circulation Ratings for Australian News Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"

What I\u2019ll describe in this post is a research project I\u2019ve been meaning to tackle for some time, but the events of the past week have given it added relevance \u2013 for those of you outside Australia, I\u2019m referring to the announcement of some 1900 job cuts at one of the country\u2019s leading news organisations, Fairfax<\/a>, and the hints at similar job cuts to come at News Ltd. In the wake of these announcements, there\u2019s been plenty of discussion about the further decline of newspapers, and the shift towards an all-digital future, and some of my colleagues have articulated their suspicion that newspaper circulation figures in Australia have long been overestimated<\/a>. Which leads me to wonder: is there a way to generate reliable circulation-style figures for Australian news Websites, by tracking the links being shared on Twitter<\/em>?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been tracking tweets containing links to a handful of major Australian news sites for some time now; notably, this includes tweets where the actual URL contained in a tweet has been shortened to a t.co<\/em>, bit.ly<\/em>, or other short link, but eventually points to abc.net.au<\/em> or one of the other sites we\u2019re tracking. Using such data, we were able to document the impact of The Australian\u2019s (partial) paywall on the circulation of its content on Twitter<\/a><\/em>, for example. Recently, I\u2019ve substantially increased the list of sites we\u2019re tracking in this way, and we\u2019re now covering almost all major national and regional news sites in Australia, as well as a number of opinion sites. In the following post, I\u2019m presenting the first full week of circulation data, from noon on Friday 15 June to noon on Friday 22 June (we\u2019ll move to a standard Monday to Sunday schedule soon, but I needed to get this analysis done over the weekend).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We\u2019re now tracking tweeted links to a total of 26 domains: abc.net.au <\/em>(from which we remove any links that aren\u2019t directly news-related, such as abc.net.au\/triplej; we also generate a separate figure for links toabc.net.au\/unleashed), adelaidenow.com.au<\/em>, afr.com<\/em>, au.news.yahoo.com<\/em> (which we split into the general news site and au.news.yahoo.com\/thewest, the Web presence of the West Australian<\/em>), brisbanetimes.com.au<\/em>, canberratimes.com.au<\/em>, couriermail.com.au<\/em>, crikey.com.au<\/em>, dailytelegraph.com.au<\/em>, heraldsun.com.au<\/em>, nationaltimes.com.au<\/em>, newmatilda.com<\/em>, news.com.au<\/em>, ninemsn.com.au<\/em> (also removing links which aren\u2019t news-related, but retaining World Wide of Sport<\/em>, A Current Affair<\/em>, and similar TV shows), nit.com.au<\/em>, ntnews.com.au<\/em>, onlineopinion.com.au<\/em>, perthnow.com.au<\/em>, sbs.com.au<\/em> (from which we similarly remove links that aren\u2019t news-related, though I\u2019ve left in links to SBS\u2019s The World Game<\/em> site, given that Euro 2012 is a newsworthy event), skynews.com.au<\/em>, smh.com.au<\/em>, theage.com.au<\/em>, theaustralian.com.au<\/em>, themercury.com.au<\/em>, thepunch.com.au<\/em>, and watoday.com.au<\/em>. (If you think there are any major Australian news or opinion sites missing from this, please let me know. We\u2019ve already added The Global Mail<\/em> to our tracker, but too late for this week \u2013 and we\u2019re staying away from regional and local news sites for now.)<\/p>\n

I also need to point out again that our data gathering methods don\u2019t allow us to track \u2018button\u2019 retweets \u2013 only \u2018manual\u2019 retweets (e.g. \u2018RT @user \u2026\u2019) are included in our dataset. For that reason, I won\u2019t focus particularly strongly on raw numbers of tweets here \u2013 but I\u2019d suggest that the distribution of attention across the sites we\u2019ve tracked is nonetheless a reasonable indicator of overall Twitter<\/em> circulation (there\u2019s no reason to believe that any one site would attract disproportionately many manual<\/em> retweets).<\/p>\n

I will say, though, that we captured some 150,000 tweets over this past week \u2013 and here\u2019s how they\u2019re distributed across the major news sites (not including opinion-only sites):<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a week of bad news, that\u2019s a very strong result for the two major Fairfax sites of the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> and The Age<\/em> \u2013 but it\u2019s important to keep in mind precisely that this was<\/em> a week of bad news for Fairfax, which may well have artificially boosted the number of links to those sites. It will be interesting to see whether this dominance continues into the coming weeks. The marketshare of News Ltd. sites is also interesting: individually, these sites don\u2019t command positions as prominent as those of the two leading Fairfax papers, but in combination, the four top News Ltd. sites (news.com.au<\/em>, The Australian<\/em>, Herald Sun<\/em>, Daily Telegraph<\/em>) still account for almost exactly 25% of the news links shared. Finally, I\u2019m also somewhat surprised that Fairfax\u2019s online-only news site Brisbane Times<\/em> outperformed its local News Ltd. rival, the print-and-online Courier-Mail<\/em>, by some 900 tweets \u2013 again, it remains to be seen how much of this is due to the news about Fairfax itself this past week.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s also have a look at the attention share of opinion sites, then. Here, it\u2019s important to note that many mainstream news sites also contain opinion articles and columns, of course \u2013 but in addition to these sites, the last few years have seen a significant growth in dedicated spaces for opinion and commentary in Australia. Here\u2019s how they compare:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Crikey<\/em> rules the roost, clearly, followed by the ABC\u2019s The Drum<\/em> (or at least that majority of its articles by non-ABC commentators which are published under the abc.net.au\/unleashed URL path; articles by ABC commentators sit in different URLs paths which we cannot easily distinguish from other ABC news content). The News Ltd. and Fairfax opinion sites, The Punch<\/em> and National Times<\/em>, are roughly even, while long-struggling independent opinion site New Matilda<\/em> puts in a surprisingly strong performance. (Next week, we\u2019ll have enough data to see how The Global Mail<\/em> slots into this group.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Update:<\/span> <\/strong>I initially forgot to include The Conversation<\/em> in the graph above, as some commenters helpfully pointed out; I\u2019ve now updated the graph with a new version. And what a difference this makes: The Conversation<\/em> had a very good week, clearly, especially around its coverage of the Fairfax upheavals \u2013 a very significant proportion of tweeted links to the site were to its articles about the Fairfax job cuts. Crikey<\/em> and the ABC\u2019s The Drum<\/em> follow (or at least that majority of its articles by non-ABC commentators which are published under the abc.net.au\/unleashed URL path; articles by ABC commentators sit in different URLs paths which we cannot easily distinguish from other ABC news content). The News Ltd. and Fairfax opinion sites, The Punch<\/em> and National Times<\/em>, are roughly even, while long-struggling independent opinion site New Matilda<\/em> puts in a surprisingly strong performance. (Next week, we\u2019ll have enough data to see how The Global Mail<\/em> slots into this group.)<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s how the top sites\u2019 Twitter<\/em> marketshare looked on a day-by-day basis. Keep in mind that the two Fridays (15 and 22 June) each represent data only for half a day, so it\u2019s no surprise that they\u2019re considerably lower than the other weekdays. We\u2019ll fix this as we move to a Monday-to-Sunday timeframe for future updates. What is notable from the graph, too, is an obvious drop in activity on the weekend (16-17 June), while Monday seems an especially strong day for sharing news on Twitter<\/em> \u2013 but then, this was also the day of the Fairfax job cuts announcement, so we\u2019ll see if that pattern holds in future weeks.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Update:<\/span><\/strong> I\u2019ve also added The Conversation<\/em> to the following graph, where a sharp spike in shared links on Monday and Tuesday is clearly apparent. Guess it helps having a former Prime Minister contribute an opinion piece about the Fairfax upheavals! Other than that, interestingly, for opinion sites the end of the week seems to be more important: Crikey<\/em> peaks on Thursday (a good 100 of those tweets are about Julian Assange\u2019s flight to the Ecuadorian embassy), along with The Punch<\/em>, and The Drum<\/em> (i.e. abc.net.au\/unleashed, where a piece by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam on Assange was cited in 110 tweets) peaks on Friday.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So much, then, for this first edition of what I\u2019m hoping to turn into a regular feature on this site. Of course, as we see a picture emerge from these posts of the Twitter<\/em> link circulation marketshare for major Australian news sites, it will also be worth reflecting on what these figures mean; I\u2019ll leave most of this for a later post. Clearly, though, we can\u2019t assume that these observations translate straightforwardly into an indication of hits on these sites \u2013 the Twitter<\/em> userbase is too unrepresentative of the wider Australian population for this, and what is shared<\/em> on Twitter<\/em> isn\u2019t necessarily an indication of what is read<\/em> (users may be more inclined to share highbrow than lowbrow content, for example, as they maintain a professional persona on Twitter<\/em>). To get a full sense of the impact of these shared links, we would also need to take into account the number of followers each sharing user has, of course: a link shared by a users with a few dozen followers will necessarily have less impact than one shared by a leading account in the Australian Twittersphere. We\u2019re beginning to gather some good data on this, and might bring follower numbers to bear on this analysis in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I\u2019ll describe in this post is a research project I\u2019ve been meaning to tackle for some time, but the events of the past week have given it added relevance \u2013 for those of you outside Australia, I\u2019m referring to the announcement of some 1900 job cuts at one of the country\u2019s leading news organisations, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Twitter Circulation Ratings for Australian News Sites”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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