Getting Granular on Twitter Tweets from a Conference and their Limited Usefulness for...

Getting Granular on Twitter:Tweets from a Conference and Their Limited Usefulness for

Non-participants

Martin Ebner, Herbert Mühlburger, Sandra Schaffert, Mandy Schiefner, Wolfgang Reinhardt, Steve Wheeler

http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddhiestand/197704394/

Increase ofdevices

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sovietuk/141381675

Getting Granular on TwitterEbner, Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler

Mobile Learning?

http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/


„Hence, learning materials must be designed for easy access by the nomadic learners during using mobile technology regardless of where they are located and which network

infrastructure they are using to access information“

Allen, 2007

Is microblogging a possibility for a specific community to exchange ideas, interests and

information?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividbreeze/480057824


Microblogging is a small-scale form of blogging, generally made up of short, succinct messages, used by both users and

business to share news, post status updates and carry on conversations Templeton, 2008

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418



http://www.twitter.com

http://www.jaiku.com

http://www.pownce.com(down on December 15, 2008)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/1815164756/

http://www.plurk.comhttp://identi.ca/

http://www.twitter.com/





http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/1815164756/




http://www.twitter.com


Getting Granular on TwitterEbner, Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheelerhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195

What the hell is twitter?

- 140 character- from mobile, client or web interface- Followers- Direct messages- @Replies and Retweets- #Hashtags- Open API



btw, thanks for the last slide to ...


http://www.slideshare.net/mweller/twitter-microblogging-and-living-in-the-stream-presentation?type=powerpoint



http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_ways_to_have_fun_with_twitter.php


Daily Chatter

Templeton, 2008

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418

Communicator

Reporter

Exchanger

Different kind of people using microblogs

Java et al, 2007



http://cogdoghouse.wikispaces.com/TwitterCycle



Twitter ok, but how can we use it

for scientific conferences?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leapfrog_photo/2532068489



Pre-studies – Use of Twitter at conferences

• ED-Media 2008

• Summer School 2008

• ED-Media 2009

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525


Twitter stream beside keynote(ED-Media 2008)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuagedenuit/276092250

„in the background we discussed things more

deeply than the guys on the stage“

„Twitter can be distracting - you pay less attention“

versus



Number of Tweets at ED-Media 2009


„... top trend makers show who is the heartbeat of this online community and

the key terms pointed out, what the community was talking about“

http://www.flickr.com/photos/radekreks/316541927


• for communication amongst participants

• for communication amongst organizers /presenters and audience

• for reporting to non-participants about the conference

http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525

Research outcomes – Twitter can be used in the context of conferences:



Research Question:

Is Twitter proper to report from a conference in order to share the event

with the scientific community from outside the conference?


Study:

• Educamp Hamburg 2010 (barcamp; unconference)

• Twitter was monitored from 5.2 – 4.3.2010 (used Hashtag #ec10hh)

• In summary 2110 tweets were examined

• Two stage analysis – automatically and manually


Four categories of Tweets:

• Irrelevant Tweets “Who found my drinking cup? #ec10hh”

• Administrative Tweets “Wifi is not available #ec10hh”

• Topical Discussions “nice idea of @estudyskills Aggregation of all student weblogs at Tumblelog gives overview”

• Topical Tweets “open-learning: initiative on OER usage for informal education: http://u.nu/4a7ya #ec10hh”

http://u.nu/4a7ya


Analyses of participants


Categories of Tweets (manual analysis)


Detailed Analysis of Tweets (manual analysis)


Discussion

• Keyword extraction (automatically analysis) did not show any interesting result – no direct correlation

• In average each user posted 6 tweets during the conference period

• High number of Retweets (18%) – often not useful without the necessary context


Main Outcome:

If we reduce the tweets to those occurring during the conference period

(5th and 6th February) only 120 posts are of interest at all, which relates to

about 6%


Practically, the obviously limited usefulness of the tweets of the EduCamp participants for interested external participants evokes new ideas for practical and effective alternative usage of the tweets as well as the need for appropriate tools.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/minaartwork/3695954155



Interpretation – Twitter usage follows other logic:

• usage as backchannel with limited comprehension potential for outsiders

• usage of self promotion and profiling to generate attention for own profile

• documentation and illustrating connections

• usage as a public notepad

• usage as an evaluation tool


Outlook:

How must a web-based application that can also be used offline (without Internet connection) for information retrieval and knowledge discovery based on a micro-content system like

Twitter look like?


http://grabeeter.tugraz.at

http://grabeeter.tugraz.at/


Archive and

Searchoffline






• Micro-content (tweets) is achievable due to the fact that any tweet can be retrieved at anytime from a local hard-drive

• Micro-content is storable in a way that the user can distinguish between different events

• Micro-content is searchable along keywords, hashtags, time frames as well as different entities (URLs, @, ... )

Grabeeter allows ...


Microblogging as potential

for the future

http://www.flickr.com/photos/161/

- if we see it as a newcommunication

channel

http://flickr.com/photos/nettsu/1365343292/

SOCIAL LEARNINGComputer and Information Services

Graz University of Technology

Martin Ebner

http://elearning.tugraz.at

http://elearningblog.tugraz.at

Grab and Search your Tweetshttp://grabeeter.tugraz.at

Slides available at: http://elearningblog.tugraz.at

mebner

[email protected]

http://elearning.tugraz.at/





Getting Granular on Twitter Tweets from a Conference and their Limited Usefulness for...

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