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The 6 Types Of Twitter Conversation
Social media is increasingly home to civil society. As Pew Research notes, it is the place where knowledge sharing, public discussions, debates, and disputes are carried out. As the new public square, social media conversations are therefore as important to document as any other large public gathering. By analyzing many thousands of Twitter conversations, Pew identified six different conversational archetypes. The following infographic describes each type of conversation network and an explanation of how it is shaped by the topic being discussed and the people driving the conversation.
Conversations on Twitter create networks with identifiable contours as people reply to and mention one another in their tweets. These conversational structures differ, depending on the subject and the people driving the conversation.
Six structures are regularly observed: divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, and inward and outward hub and spoke structures. These are created as individuals choose whom to reply to or mention in their Twitter messages and the structures tell a story about the nature of the conversation.
If a topic is political, it is common to see two separate, polarized crowds take shape. They form two distinct discussion groups that mostly do not interact with each other. Frequently these are recognizably liberal or conservative groups. The participants within each separate group commonly mention very different collections of website URLs and use distinct hashtags and words. The split is clearly evident in many highly controversial discussions: people in clusters that we identified as liberal used URLs for mainstream news websites, while groups we identified as conservative used links to conservative news websites and commentary sources. At the center of each group are discussion leaders, the prominent people who are widely replied to or mentioned in the discussion. In polarized discussions, each group links to a different set of influential people or organizations that can be found at the center of each conversation cluster.
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Still, the structure of these Twitter conversations says something meaningful about political discourse these days and the tendency of politically active citizens to sort themselves into distinct partisan camps.
And on a slightly less socio-economically serious side, here's 10 curious facts about Twitter...
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Studied and analyzed like mice in a maze with no way out, except to log off.
What is Twitter?
An appropriate question from someone with your moniker. Twitter is what your avatar gives me.
I've done my own study of Twitter conversations. I took a stratified random sample of 100 Twitter users (50 women and 50 men) and found that all 100 were extremely retarded.
Your sample was too small a percentage of the millions of users.
There are many intelligent people who use twitter.
100 natives living in the Amazon jungle would not know much of the modern world,
so by that sample you will conclude that all humans are retarded?
If you use Twitter you are a retard. It really is not that hard to understand.
Apparently it is. For a Twitter user.
I am Chumbawamba.
"If you use Twitter you are a retard."
I think that definition can be expanded to "anyone that loves the sound of their own voice".
Root word: Twit
Next-gen HFT's will likely reply on these relations going forward. Specifically when scrapers start to parse multi-platforms and blogs for trending socioeconomic themes.
G20 talks should be fun, the next 4 months of confidence will depend on their structural reforms and inflation forecast.
Exactly. This kind of study scares me, because, it is precisely the root of the dark side of the whole system. You have to ask yourself first, why is someone even trying to classify, categorize, and label sheeple behavior? Answer: to ultimately make it easier to control them.
How long before these types of divisions are used to label you individually, and to screen or steer your participation into certain types of social networking activities? How long before you won’t be able to participate in a certain group discussion unless your “Unified” network score is at least a 7 out of 10? How long before you won't be able to comment on ZH or any blog for that matter without also routing your comment to a Twitter or Facebook account assigned to your Social Security number, and your freedom to use their system has somehow transformed into a requirement to use their system?
"How long before these types of divisions are used to label you individually, and to screen or steer your participation into certain types of social networking activities? How long before you won’t be able to participate in a certain group discussion unless your “Unified” network score is at least a 7 out of 10? How long before you won't be able to comment on ZH or any blog for that matter without also routing your comment to a Twitter or Facebook account assigned to your Social Security number, and your freedom to use their system has somehow transformed into a requirement to use their system?"
I dunno. Ask the 'moderator' or simply say what the fuck you really think and expect the so called 'ban hammer' to silence your dissention.
Political correctness & attendant pretensions of civility suck ass.
twitter is a mystery to me. what makes one think anyone cares about every little thing that crosses their mind, about the trifling minutia of their daily lives?
I just don't get it.
Twitter can go to h3ll... :)
I'm still not sure what twitter is supposed to do or be.
The funny thing is that really I don't feel like I'm missing anything important.
The Ignorance of the Ignorant.
Gutenberg's printing press never was important, was it?
Gutenberg wasn't limited to 140 characters per book, and didn't feel the need to tell everyone what he was doing, where he was going, or with whom he was doing it every hour of every day. On the other hand, Twitter is great for narcissistic nobodies.
#nobody gives a fuk what you think and you're not funny
What would be really interesting is people actually communicating face to face, but that seems to mostly take place with guns in our hands. The only way to avoid killing each other may be to remain anonymous.
#shallow
I don't see Terroristy on there.......
Yeah I didn't see Stock manipulation listed as one either. iCON call your office!
There is only one type of twitter conversation: FUCKING RETARDED
Isn't Tyler on Twitter? I wonder which Archetype ZH twitter would fit in?
"people in clusters that we identified as liberal used URLs for mainstream news websites, while groups we identified as conservative used links to conservative news websites"
MSM is neither liberal nor conservative. It is owned by a few very large corporations who create a false debate to distract readers/watchers/listeners from their agenda. ZH was once different.
MSM is neither liberal nor conservative.
Neither is the Depublicrat party. Both of its branches are big-government war socialists.
A numerical and political examination of the Mainstream Media,
appears to me to be mostly Liberal, especially if comparing the number and size of the largest media organizations, the number of viewers or readers, the financial size of the business.
ABC, CBS, NBC, as Liberal, versus FOX as conservative.
It is nonsense to say that these are neither liberal nor conservative.
It may not be black and white, it may have shades of grey,
but there are many shades of grey that can be recognized as nearer to one side or the other of black and white.
Unless you claim that all words have no meaning.
So you're saying that ZH " is owned by a few very large corporations who create a false debate to distract readers/watchers/listeners from their agenda.", LetThemEatRand?
They were bought out.
Really? When? Do tell.
When you first raised this idea I was a bit skeptical. However, after paying further attention to the stories being presented as well as the writing styles employed, I must agree with you.
The ideas that the MSM is liberal leaning and owned by a few very large corporations who create a false debate are not mutally exclusive.
Liberals and large faceless corporations that own the world have always gone hand in hand. I read it on my Obamaphone. You heard it on Limbaugh. Ever have that not so fresh feeling?
"... a few very large corporations who create a false debate to distract readers/watchers/listeners from their agenda ..."
BINGO!
If you can bring yourself to really listen to and take notes on Rachael Maddow's and Sean Hannity's shows, not looking at what they say so much as what they don't talk about, you'll discover the truth of this. They both seem like free spirits, loose cannon, wildly opposite. Both are on short leashes - in the same hands!
To bring the two clusters together, look for the core issues that they both leave out.
The Pew Research Center and the Social Media Research Foundation are grateful to the NSA, without whose cooperation this study would not have been possible.
Is one immune from this infectious dis-ease if they've never had a twitter or facebook account?
Unfortunately, no, you are not immune.
You are one particle in a seething mass of millions and will most likely get sucked down into the upcoming instanity by the unthinking mass.
Only a few will avoid this fate, and I think the choosing of who they are will be a bit of a crap shoot. You may, if you are careful and lucky be able to tip the odds a little in your favour, but that's about it.
Twatter, Fartbook etc. should really be called anti-social media, as they discourage face-to-face communication. A lot gets lost when a keyboard is your main method of communication (funny, as I'm typing this, but at least I am not limited to a number of characters)
Some twitter accounts have tens of millions of followers.
Twitter messages can include hypertext links.
How many people read your blog comments?
How many of those "folowers" are meat-bags?
His name was Tyler Durden, cot'd.
God bless the First Amendment.
Twitter is only as good or bad as the twitter accounts that you follow and read,
or the twitter accounts that follow and read your account.
Actually, it can be the independent internet media for everyone to use for their own purpose and communication,
another form of independence from the Establishment media.
For the Non-Twitter members in the ZH universe, in case you did not know,
Many twitter messages are written so as to contain hypertext links to web pages,
which greatly expand the amount of information that can be presented to the reader.
Twitter has suspended the account of Kvakaz Center after pressure was applied by the FSB (KGB).
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2014/02/22/18924.shtml
Saturday morning, February 22, 2014, the Twitter administration suspended the account of the Kavkaz Center, @kavkazcenter, without explaining the reasons for its actions.
Kavkaz Center sent a standard inquiry to the Twitter administration. In response, the administration said "Twitter rules have been violated", but no details were provided. It is a standard Twitter reaction to political pressure.
As earlier reported, Twitter closely cooperates with the Russian KGB under threat to block Twitter access to users inside Russia.
It is to be recalled that in recent weeks about 95% of our reporting on Twitter have been devoted to coverage of news from Kiev.
We received the following letter from the Twitter administration:
Hello,
Your account has been suspended for a violation of the Twitter Rules. Some examples of Twitter Rules violations are:
- Abusive Behavior: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169997
- Impersonation of an Individual or Entity: http://support.twitter.com/articles/18366
- Trademark Violation: http://support.twitter.com/articles/18367
- Copyright Violation: http://support.twitter.com/articles/15795
If you would like to request that your account be unsuspended, please respond to this email and confirm that you've read and understood our rules: http://twitter.com/rules. Please note: not all accounts are eligible for unsuspension.
Thanks,
Twitter Trust & Safety
***
It is worth mentioning that that the letter is nothing but hollow pretenses since it contains nothing definite. Any Twitter user could be accused of the same vague "violations". We wonder who was "abused" in our tweets. Was it Putin, or his Ukrainian puppet Yanukovich, or Assad, or the KGB as a whole? How is it possible to violate anybody's copyrights if Twitter allows only 1.5 lines? We never used any foreign trademark. We are not engaged in any business activities. What is "impersonation"? It sounds rather philosophical, doesn't it.
We also wonder how the Twitter administration managed to read us in Russian, Do they read Russian? All our tweets were 97% in Russian.
The fact is that the Russian KGB uses every possible means to make us silent.
As reported by Russian KGB media, last fall the Russian henchman in Chechnya, Kadyrov, demanded from Moscow to include our Twitter account into the Russian KGB "List of Extremist Materials" which is always to be followed by jamming.
But then came problems for the Russians. They are technically unable to jam a concrete foreign account on a social network. As in similar cases of YouTube or Facebook, they are only able the jam to whole website, Twitter in this case, or nothing.
As in other similar cases, they demanded from Twitter to suspend our account under threat of blocking the whole Twitter for users inside Russia. And Twitter complied, of course, as YouTbe or Facebook previously did for us, blatantly violating the First Amendment and our basic human rights for the freedom of speech.
Kavkaz Center
Anytime your commo is in the hands of a US corporation, you are in deep trouble. TV, newspapers, internet providers, the works.
I note that your conditioning has you ignoring the issue of FSB threats and suppression and taking a blame-the-victim stance. Your reaction is to point to the US and identify it as the problem. This is the effect of FSB conditioning. US corporations are infiltrated by the FSB. So is yur mind.
.
This is hilarious coming from a net.kook who thinks that Leonid Brezhnev still runs the USSR and that the commies are still "out to get us".
Comic book thinking, comic book analysis.
I suppose Twitter will be like Facebook,
only Liberal Political Correctness will be allowed to have "free" speech.
Be patient. An open source version of twitter called twister is in the works. It will be decentralized, peer to peer, and distributed over the internet on the Bitcoin blockchain. Currently in alpha: http://twister.net.co/
Hope it's as good as it looks, thanks! Will be a struggle to wean ppl away from Twitter but as this post shows it's
well worth the effort! When it's ready for prime time, put the news up here and we'll keep an eye peeled !
Interesting. I should have suspected they'd do that type of thing though, I guess.
In any event, do you disagree with the Wikipedia description of your organization?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavkaz_Center
Purpose and structureKavkaz Center is the news portal of the Caucasian Emirate, a militant network aiming to establish an Islamic state in the Caucasus.[4] The organisation is banned in Russia, and it is on the United States' List of Most Wanted Terrorist Organizations.[5] Kavkaz Center is controlled by Movladi Udugov,[4] a skilled propagandist who follows a fundamentalist strain of Islam.[6]
According to Dr Greg Simons from Swedish National Defence College, "not all of the content on Kavkazcenter can be classified as being extremist and dangerous. However, some material that appears on the website clearly is falling into the realm of extremist and terrorist material."[7] Some of the material on the site calls "for the violent overthrow of the current regime that was created by a invasion and for acts of aggression against the civilian population. As such, according to both Russian and international standards this is extremist and terrorist material."[7]
From Kavkaz:
About Kavkaz Center (The Caucasus Center)
Kavkaz Centre (www.kavkazcenter.com) is a Chechen internet agency which is independent, international and Islamic. Our agency was founded in March 1999 in Jokhar (Grozny) by the CRI National Centre for Strategic Research and Political Technology, registered with the CRI Ministry of Justice in October 1998 (N 1377/?-17).
The internet agency Kavkaz Centre provides reporting of events in the Islamic world, the Caucasus, and Russia. One of Kavkaz Centre's chief objectives is to report events in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria connected to the Russian military aggression against the CRI. Besides we also provide international news agencies with news-letters, background information and assistance in making independent journalistic work in Caucasus.
Kavkaz Centre is a privately run, independent agency and does not represent the viewpoint of any state structures or the CRI government. The Kavkaz Centre agency makes it its mission to report real events in Ichkeria under conditions of a total information embargo and to disseminate to the world community the truth about the war, the war crimes, the evidence of genocide on the part of the state aggressor against the entire population and the positions of the side defending against aggression -- the Chechen mujahedeen.
The agency has plans to widen its activity in creating a complete international information corporation and organization of additional information structures.
http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/about/
Do you believe the Wikipedia entry you posted? Do you have any idea the magnitude of war crimes the Russians have perpetrated against the Chechen people in the past quarter century? Do you know that the Russians have killed more than 1 million Chechen men, women, and children, and have justified this mass murder by claiming Chechens are responsible for terror acts in Russia that evidence shows is the work of the FSB?
No, like most people, I don't know much about the Chechen situation, other than the little I read in the news and the accounts vary widely depending upon the source.
Of course, that's why I asked it as a question. I'm interested in hearing people with far more intimate knowledge of the situation discuss things, as well as respond to the mainstream accounts of the situation.
ZH has a better smattering of folks from around teh world with various viewpoints than most websites... one of the reasons I like checking things out here.
Organizers all face this. We use Twitter because the people we are organizing do. But we have to always remember it can get switched off at any time. This problem with the KGB is a look at our future unless we can wean people away from using this corporate-controlled convenience.
Uh ... kind of like SIGs? Usenet newsgroups? Blog comment sections? Oh, sorry, you young researchers wouldn't know what those are.
Twitter, so fascinating! So new! Screw twitter.
The purpose or the possibility of Twitter is to greatly enlarge the universe of communication,
if free speech is allowed.
along the internet supersypway, it's all a honeypot...
India's Surveillance State [30c3]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A91idibgT0 (51:33)
Yes, the Government spies are spying on, or with, Twitter,
as with everything else.
Twitter and conversation is an oxymoron...
It may be only a one-way conversation,
someone writing, many reading,
but Twitter allows readers to reply to the authors,
and the authors can reply to the readers' comments,
if they so choose.
You must be selling a tranche of twitter shares tomorrow?
"Twitter allows readers to reply to the authors,
and the authors can reply to the readers' comments,
if they so choose."
So does e-mail, but that has no share price to pump.
I have to look for where the hashtag symbol is on my keyboard. @#$%^&*()___++!~`=-}{[]?/.>,<#
"Like" me.
Fuckin' A.
Don't like me unless we have a beer and a burger together and share some face-to-face time (for reals like).
Fucking fucked up society.
The ONLY thing I found interesting on twitter was #askJPM . . .
I lost interest after 14 characters.
Twitter users = sexier than thou.
FarceBook users = more pathetic than thou.
Twitter is "the place". The place where shallow people gather to say absolutely nothing original.
Don't be left out!
I feel it's all data mining, of course. People are arrogant enough to believe others care about what they had for breakfast, if they're taking the dog to the vet, how ineptly old people drive in the parking lot, how hard I worked on my kettlebell/pilates blowout, whatever the fuck.
I also believe all of that shit- and facebook too- goes into the AI analytical hopper to build future prediction models on how the publice will react to certain stimuli. You could conceivably create events to sway public behaviour, based on these previous reactions,to your liking or needs.
Tagging photos in FB, while it appeals to peoples underlying Narcissism, is just offering data into a giant facial recognition system, which will eventually be completly jacked into every police car/drone and surveillance camera everywhere. We are voluntarily feeding this dragon, and one day, and probably already, it will fucking burn us but good.
Twitter is essentially "the world's internet forum" (moreso than Reddit b/c it's more light on the eye for the casuak user).
It will have it day, however, and that's when the US Government shuts it down during the next <insert crisis here> round of bullshit.