As we’ve seen in past events, Twitter has been an influential network that has exposed news to many people. The following authors dive into the issue of when copious information was released on Twitter during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions.
SocialFlow
Source: SocialFlow Twitter
Gilad Lotan is the vice president of Research & Development at SocialFlow. SocialFlow is a network that assists businesses in increasing their audience engagement. SocialFlow uses Twitter to determine “clicks per Tweet” and “clicks per Follower” because these seem to be important to growing a large social media.
Web Ecology Project
Source: Web Ecology Project Twitter
Erhardt Graeff is the founding member, Devin Gaffney is the managing director, & Ian Pearce is a web ecologist of the Web Ecology Project. Web Ecology Project focuses on the preservation of digital culture. It is a research group in Boston that attempts to incorporate a science that connects community management and social media.
Microsoft Research
Source: Microsoft Research
Mike Ananny was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research’s Social Media Collective, and danah boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research. Microsoft created a research center that works on developing computer science ideas along with integrating these into Microsoft products.
In the International Journal of Communication, these authors wrote the journal, The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions. The information discussed in this journal are collected from the Tunisian demonstrations from January 12-19, 2011, and the Egyptian demonstrations from January 24-29, 2011. There are many different kinds and types of tweets that are released on the Internet by several people. These include:
• Mainstream media organizations (“MSM”): news and media organizations that have both digital and non-digital outlets
• Mainstream new media organizations: blogs, news portals, or journalistic entities that exist solely online
• Non-media organizations: groups, companies, or organizations that are not primarily news-oriented
• Mainstream media employees (“journalists”): individuals employed by MSM organizations, or who regularly work as freelancers for MSM organizations
• Bloggers: individuals who post regularly to an established blog, and who appear to identify as a blogger on Twitter
• Activists: individuals who self-identify as an activist, who work at an activist organization, or who appear to be tweeting purely about activist topics to capture the attention of others
• Digerati: individuals who have worldwide influence in social media circles and are, thus, widely followed on Twitter
• Political actors: individuals who are known primarily for their relationship to government
• Celebrities (“celebs”): individuals who are famous for reasons unrelated to technology, politics, or activism
• Researchers: an individual who is affiliated with a university or think-tank and whose expertise seems to be focused on Middle East issues
• Bots: accounts that appears to be an automated service tweeting consistent content, usually in extraordinary volumes
• Other: accounts that do not clearly fit into any category.
These several groups were identified among the tweeters who talked about the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions.
Actor Type Distribution for Tunisia & Egypt
Source: Journal
I thought it was very interesting to see that a quarter of all tweets were labeled in the “Other” category. This shows that the great majority of tweets are created by commoners, those who are not directly exposed to these issues or demographics but may have opinions, professional ones or not. On the other side, the smallest contributions were made by the political actors. I find this very interesting, yet not very surprising. Those in the government tend to avoid speaking out about such revolutionary issues. This is true especially on the Internet, since once a person says anything on the web it will stay accessible forever. With political people, they are always weary of what they say to the public since their words can be interpreted in several ways, many of which they didn’t intend.
With this in mind, we should obviously consider the actual population that uses Twitter and tweets often. Although I am not fully aware of the concentration of constant tweeters compared to those who only signed up for Twitter but do not tweet, I can safely assume that there is a somewhat even distribution among Twitter subscribers, however the people who actually write tweets regularly are everyday people with nine to five jobs. These tweeters talk about their personal experiences, struggles, or public affairs. They may have passion for a certain issue, and these Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions are no exception. So in my opinion, this distribution shown on the pie chart is not surprising.
Volume of Tweets Over Time
Source: Journal
We find that there is a common trend in retweeting, in the sense that there is a initial wave of retweeting immediately after the tweet is posted. However, after an hour or so the tweet dies down and no longer is posted. Then there is always another spike when someone else discovers the tweet and thus the cycle occurs again, but not as dramatically as the first retweets. I specifially chose this tweet to recapture because I thought the message was peculiar. This quote that is attached to the police guard gives these people a humane side, in the sense that they are only doing as they are told so that they will not be fired. However, it makes people wonder whether these certain people are just weak and do not have the will to stand up for themselves. Obviously they would not post this on Twitter, but because someone else did it shows a different perspective that people may not be able to see.
Overall I thought this article was eye-opening in the sense of the population of tweeters that are exposed to these revolutions. It confirmed that people of all different actor types are following the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions, along with using Twitter to tweet about these events.