{"id":1797,"date":"2012-09-26T15:45:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T05:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/?p=1797"},"modified":"2012-09-26T15:48:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T05:48:26","slug":"atnix-australian-twitter-news-index-week-382012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/2012\/09\/26\/atnix-australian-twitter-news-index-week-382012\/","title":{"rendered":"ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, Week 38\/2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last couple of weeks of our Australian Twitter<\/em> News Index have been somewhat underwhelming: overall levels of news sharing on Twitter<\/em> have been comparatively low, even in spite of a small blip at the tail end of week 37 which was caused by the reporting and commentary which covered the Sydney riots around the Innocence of Muslims<\/em> film. In terms of total activity, week 38 picks up a little, but still fails to move past the long-term average \u2013 and that\u2019s in spite of some notable spikes in the sharing of opinion articles from leading news sites.<\/p>\n

Standard background information:<\/strong> this analysis is based on tracking all tweets which contain links pointing to the URLs of a large selection of leading Australian news and opinion sites. For technical reasons, it does not contain \u2018button\u2019 retweets, but manual retweets (\u201cRT @user \u2026\u201d) are included. Datasets for those sites which cover more than just news and opinion (abc.net.au, sbs.com.au, ninemsn.com.au) are filtered to exclude irrelevant sections of those sites (e.g. abc.net.au\/tv, catchup.ninemsn.com.au). For our analysis of \u2018opinion\u2019 link sharing, we include only those sub-sections of mainstream sites which contain opinion and commentary (e.g. abc.net.au\/unleashed, articles on theaustralian.com.au which include \u2018\/opinion\u2019 in the URL), and compare them with dedicated opinion and commentary sites.<\/p>\n

See the posts tagged \u2018ATNIX\u2019 on this site for a full collection of previous results.<\/a><\/p>\n

ATNIX Week 38: 17-23 Sep. 2012<\/h1>\n

Overall numbers for this week provide a poor point of comparison, as \u2013 due to scheduled server maintenance \u2013 most of Friday 21 Sep. is missing from this week\u2019s dataset. Given that this incomplete dataset contains some 108,000 tweets linking to Australian news Websites, and that we would usually expect to see at least another 15,000 such tweets on a Friday, though, we can assume that the total volume for this week would be somewhere upwards of 120,000 tweets \u2013 which would be at least a small improvement on the preceding week\u2019s 115,000 tweets linking to news sites. Here\u2019s how they are distributed across the sites we track: the main mover in the leading group is The Age<\/em>, which surpasses news.com.au<\/em> by some margin this week, after a virtually dead heat last time around.<\/p>\n

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

The situation for the opinion and commentary sites and sections is particularly interesting this week, as the day-to-day patterns below will also demonstrate. First, the total number of tweets linking to such sites has actually declined a little (from around 17,600 to 16,700), while the Fairfax sites have substantially increased their dominance: the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> maintains a remarkable 26% share of all Australian opinion links shared this week (unchanged from the similarly unusual result last week), but The Age<\/em> now joins it by adding another 17%. This once again pushes it past the long-term runner-up The Conversation<\/em>, which received roughly the same amount of links as last week, but was clearly outperformed by the substantial spike in The Age<\/em> shares. There is further shuffling of positions on the minor places (the ABC\u2019s The Drum<\/em> loses another place, continuing its decline of the past few weeks), but these represent fairly small numbers in the first place.<\/p>\n

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

These patterns are further illustrated by the day-to-day comparisons (ignore the drop in numbers on 21 Sep. due to server maintenance, obviously). Links to the news sites remain below the long-term average, but are generally improved from the previous week; this is especially notable for The Age<\/em> (in green), which is now well above news.com.au<\/em>\u2019s purple line. At the same time, there are no obvious spikes in activity \u2013 as weeks go, this is a sedate one.<\/p>\n

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

That\u2019s not the case for the opinion and commentary sites and sections, on the other hand: here, Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> and The Age<\/em> and both spiking on 17 and 19 September, and Fairfax\u2019s online-only Brisbane newspaper site Brisbane Times<\/em> gets a minor spike (by its admittedly modest standards) on 18 September:<\/p>\n

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

For the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, the new week continues a trend which the preceding Sunday\u2019s comparatively more minor spike around a piece by sports commentator Peter FitzSimons about the Sydney riots already foreshadowed: a substantial amount of tweets sharing links to commentary about the Innocence of Muslims<\/em> film and its aftermath. On the Monday, it\u2019s a more considered argument by Waleed Aly<\/a> which is shared in more than 700 times.<\/p>\n

By Wednesday, however, attention is split between this issue and a new political controversy: while another opinion piece on the Sydney protests<\/a>, by Mohamad Tabbaa, gains some 140 additional shares, the majority of the 19 Sep. spike is driven by opinion articles which discuss the parliamentary debate about same-sex marriage. National Times<\/em>-cobadged articles about Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi\u2019s hysterical fear campaign<\/a> and his subsequent resignation<\/a> as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott\u2019s personal parliamentary secretary are shared in some 260 tweets, while pieces about NSW Premier Barry O\u2019Farrell\u2019s intention to allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage in state parliament<\/a> and Finance Minister Penny Wong\u2019s fight for the recognition of same-sex relationships<\/a> each added another 100 tweets.<\/p>\n

Similar patterns apply at The Age<\/em>. Waleed Aly\u2019s piece was published here as well, and receives some 375 tweets on Monday, and a (pre-bestiality) Cory Bernardi also enters this<\/em> debate, if only as a sideline<\/a>. At the same time, a piece about the erosion of Australian Internet users\u2019 privacy rights through the government\u2019s proposed data retention laws<\/a> also receives some 150 tweets. Wednesday, on the other hand, is all about Cory Bernardi: articles discussing his contributions to the same-sex marriage debate account for more than half of all Age<\/em> links shared on Twitter that day.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the smaller spike in Brisbane Times<\/em> links on the Tuesday is purely about state matters, incidentally: some 165 tweets linked to a piece by author John Birmingham on what\u2019s wrong with Queensland Premier Campbell Newman<\/a>. This makes sense in the overall context of the Fairfax setup, with SMH<\/em> and Age<\/em> as the national flagships, and the Brisbane Times<\/em> as a secondary, local platform which syndicates much of its national coverage from those newspapers \u2013 so Fairfax readers who are interested in following the national coverage should be expected to be more likely to link to those sites in their tweets than to the Brisbane Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last couple of weeks of our Australian Twitter News Index have been somewhat underwhelming: overall levels of news sharing on Twitter have been comparatively low, even in spite of a small blip at the tail end of week 37 which was caused by the reporting and commentary which covered the Sydney riots around the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, Week 38\/2012”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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