Reading the Riots on Twitter
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READING THE RIOTS ON TWITTER READING THE RIOTS ON TWITTER Rob Procter (University of Manchester) Farida Vis (University of Leicester) Alexander Voss (University of St Andrews) [Funded by JISC] #readingther iots http://www.analysingsocial media.org/
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Presentation to Social Research Association, March 2012
Transcript of Reading the Riots on Twitter
READING THE RIOTS
ON TWITTER
READING THE RIOTS
ON TWITTER
Rob Procter (University of Manchester)Farida Vis (University of Leicester)
Alexander Voss (University of St Andrews)[Funded by JISC] #readingtheriots
http://www.analysingsocialmedia.org/
READING THE RIOTS
ON TWITTER Overview
• Background• Methodology• Infrastructure and tools• Findings• Future work
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Background
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ON TWITTER Social Media
• Social media such as Twitter generate vast quantities of valuable research data:– How public opinion shapes and is shaped by events– Who shapes it, how it propagates and changes – in real-time– Everyday events, behaviour and choices– Polling, prediction, early warning, tracking social change
• Traditional methods of media analysis are inadequate in the face of this ‘deluge’ of data.
READING THE RIOTS
ON TWITTER The Riots Corpus
• 2.6M tweets harvested from the Twitter ‘fire hose’ matching specified #tags.
• 700,000 individual accounts.• What can the corpus tell us about:– Reactions to events, both general and specific– How information flows through social media– Kinds of ‘actors’ involved and how they shape
discourse– How social media is used to inform, organise, etc
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Methodology
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• Development of computer-based tools for sentiment and topic analysis of tweets is an active area of research.
• Our methodology combines computer-based tools with established content analysis techniques in ways that are complementary to their respective strengths.
READING THE RIOTS
ON TWITTER Information Flows• Any collection of tweets can be divided into tweets
that are ‘original’ and retweets.• If we are interested in how Twitter is used to
communicate and share information, only reliable evidence that a tweet has been read is that it has been retweeted.
• We used computational tools to group a tweet (the parent) and its retweets (its children) into information flows.
READING THE RIOTS
ON TWITTER Information Flow Analysis
For N = 1, CorpusMaxInformationFlow[N-1] = {}If Corpus[N] == “RT @”.username.body
(LevenshteinDistance, Parent) = LDMin(N-1, username, body)
If LevenshteinDistance < 30 InformationFlow[Parent] = InformationFlow[Parent] + Corpus[N]
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ON TWITTER Example Information Flows
Great sight in my #Birmingham where #Pakistani lads are protecting temples while Sikh lads protecting the mosques: 758
Gang of 200 just gone through Birmingham centre, armed with sticks
etc, riot police dealing with them #birminghamriots #riots: 720
#Manchesterriots #MissSelfridges This is the Arsonist
who set fire to Miss Selfridges in Manchester. Do You
Know Him? http://t.co/lnOSdo3: 890
Visit ww
w.riotcleanup.co.uk for info on
how and w
here to help if you can.
#riotcleanup: 7320
someone calling them
selves #punchcroft
has just posted Go on
Hackney! Fuck the feds! #hackney
Can we have them
arrested for incitem
ent pls?: 5
Riots Corpus
2.6M Tweets700000 accounts
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ON TWITTER Coding Frames
• Used established methods of content analysis to understand how Twitter was being used in the context of topics we wished to analyse.
• Inductively coded information flows to develop a ‘code frame’ to categorise topics and examine relationships in context of a given topic.
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ON TWITTER Coding Frames
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Infrastructure and Tools
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• Provides a generic runtime framework for data ingestion, annotation and analysis scripts.
• Web front-end to allow researchers to run jobs and access output data.
• Provenance of data through capture of job execution history and version-control of analysis scripts.
• Makes use of a set of nodes for work-intensive jobs: both statically configured computers and cloud instances.
• Cloud nodes are automatically created and configured as queue length builds up, then torn down when they fall idle.
Jenkins
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READING THE RIOTS
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ON TWITTER Why Cloud Computing?
St Andrews Cloud Collaboratory (StACC)
Information flow analysis: 16 instances, one working day.
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ON TWITTER Findings
[day 2]
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Rumours on TwitterREADING THE RIOTS
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ON TWITTER Rumours on Twitter
• Rumours ‘break’ quickly in Twitter. • Evidence of people acting mischievously (and
perhaps maliciously) to initiate and reinforce false rumours.
• Trusted sources such as mainstream media and the Police tend to lag behind crowd-sourced reports, so false rumours may persist longer, with potential risks to public order and safety.
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Was Social Media to Blame?
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The Accusers
• David Cameron, Prime Minister“…whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”“…struck by how they [the riots] were organised via social media.”
• Louise Mensch, Conservative MP “Common sense. If riot info and fear is spreading by Facebook & Twitter, shut them off for an hour or two, then restore. World won’t implode.”
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The Defenders
• The Police – social media is a vital channel of communication:Twitter allows for “direct reassurance” and “dispel rumours … in a way that we could never have achieved previously.” On Use of Twitter: “overwhelmingly positive.”Kevin Hoy, web manager, Greater Manchester Police
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The General Public
• Two-thirds support social networking blackout in future riots:
“A poll of 973 adults carried out for the online security firm Unisys found 70% of adults supported the shutdown of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry Messenger (BBM), while only 27% disagreed.”
• Support strongest among 65+, weakest among 18-24 year olds.
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Incitement on Twitter?
• Social media was used to incite and/or organise illegal acts.• We find very little of this in the Twitter
corpus.• Pales into insignificance when
compared to evidence that Twitter was used for more positive purposes.
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#riotcleanup: Seen Potentially by 7 millionREADING THE RIOTS
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READING THE RIOTS
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READING THE RIOTS
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Who Tweeted the Riots?READING THE RIOTS
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1. riotcleanup 40960 mentions
2. paullewis 30031 mentions
3. piersmorgan 20412 mentions
4. bbcnews 18836 mentions
5. itv_news 15177 mentions
6. bbcbreaking 13476 mentions
7. guardian 11513 mentions
8. lawcol888 9290 mentions
9. simonpegg 9240 mentions
10. gmpolice 8904 mentions
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mainstr
eam m
edia
only onlin
e med
ia (new
s)
non-(new
s) main
strea
m med
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journali
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edia)
non-(new
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employe
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bloggers
activis
ts
UK Twittera
ti
political
actors
police/em
ergen
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vices
riot a
ccounts
celeb
rities
resea
rchers
members
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losed down
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poof acco
untother
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
125768
13303
30839
79043
4607
32308
22896 25464
51534
5757
14065
59193
16136
1031
45869
5962 31968285
18163
4011
Top 200 Twitter accounts by actor type
< spoof
Who Tweeted the Riots?READING THE RIOTS
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< mainstream media
< journalists
< riot accounts
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Who Tweeted the Riots?
• Mainstream media and individual journalists mentioned most.
• Riotcleanup most mentioned individual account.• Greater Manchester Police in top 10 individual
accounts.• Emergency services low overall.
Organise, broadcast and ask for information, voice opinions – support, ridicule for the riots, rioters,
authorities and commentators
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Future Work
READING THE RIOTS
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February 23 2012 59
READING THE RIOTS
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Rob Procter (University of Manchester)Farida Vis (University of Leicester)
Alexander Voss (University of St Andrews)[Funded by JISC]
Jonathan RichardsAlastair DantKatie LowethMarta CantijochYana ManyukhinaMike ThelwallSteven GrayRachel GibsonAndy Hudson Smith
http://www.analysingsocialmedia.org/
