research-article

Debanalizing Twitter: the transformation of an object of study

Author:

Richard RogersAuthors Info & Claims

WebSci '13: Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference

Pages 356 - 365

https://doi.org/10.1145/2464464.2464511

Published: 02 May 2013 Publication History

Abstract

This paper enquires into how Twitter has been studied since it was launched in 2006 as an ambient friend-following and messaging utility, modelled after dispatch communications. As Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder, phrased it, Twitter also did rather well during disasters and elections, and subsequently became an event-following tool, at once shedding at least in part its image as a what-I-had-for-lunch medium. Most recently, Twitter has settled into a data set, one that is of value for Twitter, Inc. and also is archived by the Library of Congress. Each of these objects, described here as Twitter I, Twitter II, and Twitter III, have elicited particular approaches to its study, surveyed below. The paper takes each object in turn, describing the debates and scholarship around them, and provides a framework to situate past, current and future Twitter research.

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Index Terms

Debanalizing Twitter: the transformation of an object of study
1. Applied computing
  1. Law, social and behavioral sciences
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. History of computing

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WebSci '13: Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference

May 2013

481 pages

ISBN:9781450318891

DOI:10.1145/2464464

Conference Chairs:
Hugh Davis
University of Southampton
,
Harry Halpin
World Wide Web Consortium
,
Alex Pentland,
Program Chairs:
Mark Bernstein,
Lada Adamic,
Harith Alani,
Alexandre Monnin,
Richard Rogers

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 02 May 2013

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