{"id":2901,"date":"2015-02-20T16:25:14","date_gmt":"2015-02-20T06:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/?p=2901"},"modified":"2015-02-20T16:57:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T06:57:34","slug":"atnix-australian-twitter-news-index-january-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/2015\/02\/20\/atnix-australian-twitter-news-index-january-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, January 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ordinarily, January is a relatively slow news month in Australia. That\u2019s 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<\/a>. Then, Prime Minister Tony Abbott\u2019s \u201ccaptain\u2019s call\u201d of awarding a knighthood to Prince Philip<\/a> as part of the Australia Day honours generated first disbelief, then significant criticism of Abbott\u2019s leadership style. Finally, the Queensland Liberal\/National Party lost what almost everybody had considered an unloseable election on 31 January<\/a> \u2013 resulting in further recriminations and finally an unsuccessful leadership spill motion in the federal Liberal Party (but that\u2019s a matter for next month\u2019s article).<\/p>\n

Time, then, to examine how any of these events affected news sharing and news reading patterns in Australia, as tracked by our Australian Twitter<\/em> News Index (ATNIX) and Experian Hitwise. We begin as usual with the day-to-day patterns of news sharing on Twitter<\/em>, across the 36 major Australian news and opinion sites we are tracking (as always, click to enlarge the graphs).<\/p>\n

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You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that the major spike in tweets sharing links to Brisbane\u2019s Courier-Mail<\/em> on 4 January relates to an early scoop foreshadowing Campbell Newman\u2019s decision to call an election \u2013 but you\u2019d be wrong: as is so often the case with such major spikes in sharing activity, this one relates instead to a story which has gone viral well beyond the usual online readership of the Courier-Mail<\/em>. In this particular case, the paper\u2019s article inviting viewers to vote for \u201cthe biggest sports jerk of the week<\/a>\u201d also included Saudi Arabian footballer Nasser Al-Shamrani as one of the options, and tweets flagging this were widely retweeted within the Saudi Twittersphere (where Twitter<\/em> is particularly popular at present). Even a smaller, secondary spike on 7 January is still related to this article \u2013 by contrast, the Courier-Mail<\/em>\u2019s articles about the coming election are not shared particularly widely during the same week.<\/p>\n

This is not necessarily a surprise, however: the Courier-Mail<\/em> is traditionally not a strong performer when it comes to readers sharing its content on Twitter<\/em>, and in spite of the surprise at the early election date, it is very common to see only limited user engagement with election coverage during the early weeks of a campaign. As we approach the tail end of the Queensland election period, there\u2019s a significant increase in sharing activity \u2013 especially as it relates to ABC News<\/em>, which records its strongest performance on 30 January, the Friday before election day. Although no one single article emerges as the major driver of this increase, many of the most widely shared ABC articles that day relate to the Queensland election.<\/p>\n

In between these dates, we find the inevitable spike in shared links that occurred on Australia Day, 26 January, as the Prime Minister\u2019s knighthood decision was made public. Here, the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> and (to a lesser extent) its stablemate The Age<\/em> win the contest to provide the most salient and shareable content, as they receive the greatest number of additional tweets. A quick look at what exactly is being shared also reveals an interesting transformation of the story over the course of the day, from a simple news report about the knighthood decision<\/a> through articles pointing out Prince Philip\u2019s many gaffes<\/a>, reports about Abbott having to defend his choice<\/a>, and furious reactions from his Coalition colleagues<\/a>, finally to coverage of the social media reaction to the knighthood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Experian Hitwise\u2019s overall patterns of access to these Australian news sites, beyond the sharing of their links, also point to the substantial controversy which Abbott\u2019s knighthood decision caused: again, we see a pronounced spike in site visits across multiple news sites on Australia Day, with the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> receiving a particularly above-average number of visitors. This is especially unusual in the context of a public holiday and long weekend, during which we would usually expect a significant drop in attention to the news. As news.com.au<\/em>, Daily Mail Australia<\/em>, The Age<\/em>, ABC News<\/em>, and Guardian Australia<\/em> also show patterns of heightened activity on Australia Day, it also becomes obvious that the response to the knighthood was not merely a Twitter<\/em> storm (or an outbreak of \u201celectronic graffiti<\/a>\u201d, as the PM described it), but reflects considerably more broad-based disapproval.<\/p>\n

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By contrast, the early Twitter<\/em> spike for the Courier-Mail<\/em>\u2019s \u201csports jerk\u201d article is not replicated in the Hitwise data: this spike clearly was<\/em> a phenomenon related directly to social media activities, and driven by users outside of Australia. As our Experian Hitwise data show general site visits by Australian users only, such international activities are unlikely to register here.<\/p>\n

Finally, the small but notable uptick in site visits on 31 January, the Queensland election day, which the Hitwise data also reveal, points to a very select distribution of user attention on the day. While most of the news sites experience their usual weekend slump, ABC News<\/em> and the Brisbane Times<\/em> actually gain visitors on the Saturday, most likely because of their rolling coverage of the emerging election result and its implications. Left out from this trend, however, is the major Queensland newspaper, the Courier-Mail<\/em>, which does not see any gains. The available data do not provide sufficient basis for a conclusive judgment on this point, but we may speculate whether the disconnect between the paper\u2019s strong opposition to Annastacia Palaszczuk and the very evident voter backlash against Campbell Newman may be a reason for this comparatively weak performance on election day.<\/p>\n

Standard background information:<\/strong> ATNIX is based on tracking all tweets which contain links pointing to the URLs of a large selection of leading Australian news and opinion sites (even if those links have been shortened at some point). 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 the non-news sections of those sites (e.g. abc.net.au\/tv, catchup.ninemsn.com.au). Data on Australian Internet users\u2019 news browsing patterns are provided courtesy of Experian Marketing Services Australia. This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project \u201cUnderstanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ordinarily, January is a relatively slow news month in Australia. That\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201ccaptain\u2019s call\u201d of awarding a knighthood … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “ATNIX: Australian Twitter News Index, January 2015”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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