The article The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions is an interesting article that helps explain the role that social media (Twitter specifically) played in the Arab Spring and how it became an invaluable resource both for finding and disseminating information. It was written by six authors: Gilad Lotan (Data analysis and visualization expert), Erhardt Graeff (Graduate student and researcher), Mike Ananny (Assistant professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism), Devin Gaffney (Researcher interested in social network topography and online activism), Ian Pearce, and Danah Boyd (senior researcher at Microsoft Research). They are also parts of various other projects and studies, such as Social Flow, Web Ecology Project, and Microsoft Research.
The Social Flow project is one that is based on the idea of reaching the most consumers possible, at times when they are most likely to pay attention to the message. Its goal is to intersect advertising and social media in a way that optimizes gaining consumer attention. By understanding the real time conversations that people are having, corporations can better market their products to consumers. Previously, corporations have had to guess as to what the best time to insert their ads are, but with Social flow, the guesswork is much more accurate.
The Web Ecology Project’s goal is to data mine the internet to track trends and cultures that are occurring online. They are currently in the midst of creating a science around social media and community planning. They are building tools and methods for launching projects that are supported by network sciences.
Microsoft Research is an organization that is dedicated to research regarding computer science and software engineering.
The focus of this article, how information was spread via Twitter during the Arab Spring, is a great study for these organizations, because an event like this had never really occurred in history before. With new and innovative ways to use social media to organize communities, the Arab Spring was a perfect case study for these projects and research groups. It provided them with real data to see where information originates, and which groups in the chain work to propagate the information so that it is disseminated to an entire section of a population.