BROADCASTING AND LISTENING PRACTICES ON #EGYPT:NETWORKED GATEKEEPING AND FRAMING ON TWITTER

Sharon Meraz, PhD Zizi Papacharissi @zizip

Assistant Professor, Communication Professor and Head, Communication

University of Illinois at Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago

premise

• Twitter and news storytelling

• Collectively prodused news feeds and the news economy

• Twitter as alternative/primary channel for information

previous research

• Twitter as news reporting mechanism• Established news values guide use of Twitter• News breaking/premediation/instantaneity• Homophily, peripheral awareness and ambient news environments,

hybridity

• Twitter as news sharing mechanism during uprisings• Electronic word of mouth• Broadcasting and ‘listening in’ on uprisings• Homophily and group identity +++JOC theme issue

research design• Networked Gatekeeping• Networked Framing

RQ1: Who were the prominent users and how was their prominence negotiated across the different conversational markers?

RQ2: To what extent did prominent users forge connections to other users based on the users’ levels of prominence across the different addressivity markers?

RQ3: To what extent does the usage of hashtags reflect an organic level framing to the real world events occurring during the Egyptian protests?

RQ4: What types of conversational practices support processes of gatekeeping and framing negotiation?

• METHODFrequency analysis (R), 1.5 mil multi-lingual tweets, network analysis (SQL queries), discourse analysis

dual processes of networked gatekeeping and framing

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VIA

dual process of networked gatekeeping and framing

networked framing

networked gatekeeping

networked gatekeeping: connectivity

networked gatekeeping: reciprocal ties

conversational affordances and practices

• Affect and ambience• Conversational practices mix of news, opinion, emotion reflecting

movement toward the not yet, retweets as conversational refrains/chorus, affective gestures support contagion and rhythm, state that conveys impression of constant movement

• Always on environment with a life cycle and pulse of its own, sustaining movement even when nothing new is going on

• Networked gatekeeping and framing• Conversational tendencies• Cosmopolitanism/fluency in (multi) cultural context• Directly conversational, become embedded via offline and online

activities

Practices of broadcasting / listening / redacting• Networked Gatekeeping

Process through which actors crowdsourced to prominence through the use of addressivity markers and conversational practices

• Networked FramingProcess through which a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation attain prominence through crowdsourcing practices

• Affect and ambiencesupport always on space - electronic elsewheres - that treated this movement as a revolution well before it had actually become a revolution

Thank you! @zizip uic.edu/~zizi