Posts tagged twitter

The Geography of Hate Speech on Twitter

Dr. Monica Stephens, professor at Humboldt State University in California, worked with undergraduate researchers to create The Geography of Hate Map. The map geographically tags and plots homophobic and racist statements tweeted all over America from June 2012 - April 2013.

In Stephens’ introduction to the map, she explains that HSU collected the data with DOLLY (Data On Local Life and You), a University of Kentucky project that maps social media geography for research. 

The Geography of Hate Map suggests that out of 150,000 mapped tweets, most haters reign from the Midwest to the East Coast. Is this accurate? Sort of.

Via Time:

Stephens herself notes, “Even when normalized, many of the slurs included in our analysis display little meaningful spatial distribution,” and as she later tweeted, “in the east coast the counties are smaller so if a word is used in adjacent counties it appears as a hotspot,” which accounts for some of the East Coast / West Coast disparity.

What about hate words that are used in a joking way? As Chris Rock points out in his stand-up: ”It’s not always the word [that’s offensive], it’s the context in which the word is said.” To account for such varying intent, the researchers read each “hate-tweet” individually to determine a tweet’s sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral — and only negative tweets are shown on the map.

Though the study accurately depicts the hate of those Tweeters that managed to make it into the study, the map isn’t a perfect depiction of Twitter hate in the US. As Matt Peckham notes: people who haven’t enabled geotagging aren’t included in the study, meaning there could be more hateful tweets out there that haven’t been plotted. Also, more hate words exist than those Stephens chose to incorporate; when those other hate words aren’t counted, results are skewed. 

FJP: When social media becomes social meanie-a… - Krissy

 Image: Screenshot of The Geography of Hate Map

We Promise Not to Screw

Quick, someone teach the Yahoo social team how to use the Tumblr Twitter box. STAT.

Image: Automated tweet from Yahoo’s Tumblr to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Twitter account.

The Geography of a Tweet

A team of researchers lead by GDELT co-creator Kalev Leetaru gained access to the Twitter decahose last October and November and examined 1.5 billion tweets from 71 million users.

Among the many things they parsed from the two terabytes of data was the average physical distance between an original tweet its retweet: Some 749 miles (1205 km).

For @ mentions, the average distance between one user referencing another when exact geolocation is known is 744 miles (1197 km).

The paper, Mapping the Global Twitter Heartbeat: The Geography of Twitter, also includes the geographic difference between mainstream news media and news items from Twitter:

Mainstream media appears to have significantly less coverage of Latin America and vastly better greater of Africa. It also covers China and Iran much more strongly, given their bans on Twitter, as well as having enhanced coverage of India and the Western half of the United States. Overall, mainstream media appears to have more even coverage, with less clustering around major cities.

Image: Detail, Network map showing locations of users retweeting other users (geocoded Twitter Decahose tweets 23 October 2012 to 30 November 2012), via FirstMonday.org. Select to embiggen.

Twitter Introduces #Music Discovery App

Twitter #music is a music discovery app where Twitter uses its own analytics of tweets and overall engagement to categorize and promote artists. The app divides music into four categories: music that is #nowplaying and tweeted by those you follow, #popular music trending on Twitter, #suggested music based on your tastes, and #emerging artists (“hidden talent” found in tweets). Every artist you follow shows up on your profile in the app, and you can tweet about what you’re listening to from the app as well.

The music on Twitter #music comes from Spotify, Rdio, and iTunes. To listen to full songs, you need to sign up with a basic Rdio account or a premium Spotify account through the app. If you refuse to sign up for either of those, you’ll only hear 30 second song previews from iTunes. Also, you can only hear the hit song of the artist. If you like what you hear, you have to go elsewhere. The app isn’t available for Android yet.

The customer complaints on iTunes seem to be trending toward: “Why would I want to see the tweets of every artist I listen to?” and “Why create a music app where you have to sign up for another music source to hear the whole song?”

FJP: Twitter is for following friends, but it’s also for following your interests. Twitter #music allows you to see what you favorite magazine or nonprofit organization deems worthy of its playlist — which could be interesting.

The app has proved useful because I’ve already discovered a few new artists I enjoy. However, I don’t like how the web version of Twitter #music warps my cover picture and icon. Also, the app seems to have issues updating with the web version. For instance, when viewing #popular artists, Bruno Mars was labeled #20 on the Twitter chartsin the app, but was listed at #5 on the web. Also, the #nowplaying tag updates quickly on the web, but lags in the app. These discrepancies are probably just early bugs though. They’ll be snatched up in the beak of the Twitter bird soon enough. — Krissy

Image: MoneyCNN

Twitter Threat, Twitter Promise, During Breaking News Events

Via Mathew Ingram:

That said, however, there’s no question that Twitter is one of the best tools for breaking-news delivery since the telegraph. Unfortunately, it is also a great tool for distributing lies, speculation, innuendo, hoaxes and every other form of inaccurate information. I’ve argued before that this is just the way the news works now — the news wire and police scanner are no longer available only to journalists, but to anyone who cares to listen. And so is the ability to republish.

Should Twitter do more to verify sources, or highlight accurate information, as some have suggested? It’s an appealing idea. The service could try to use geotagging to identify those who are close to the scene, or some other method to determine credibility — something third-party services like Sulia and Storyful also try to do through a variety of methods. But is that really Twitter’s place?…

…Why don’t we get YouTube to verify the source of videos as well, like the ones that are posted from Syria or Egypt? Or get Google to sort the news it pulls in based on the likelihood of it being credible? The simplest answer is that this isn’t what those services are for — they are distribution engines, or pipes (a series of tubes, if you will). Asking them to become news entities is a little like asking AT&T to eavesdrop on phone calls in order to figure out who is a terrorist.

Rather than relying on Twitter to do this, I think it’s far better to accept the somewhat chaotic nature of the medium, and rely on journalists — and not just the professional kind, but the amateur kind as well — to filter that information in real time, the way Andy Carvin did during the Arab Spring (by using Twitter as a crowdsourced newsroom) and others did during Sandy and the Colorado shootings. Over time, I believe, Twitter becomes a kind of self-cleaning oven, as writer Sasha Frere-Jones put it.

Image: Screenshot, Twitter post by Geoff Grammer.

Do Social Media Sites Like Tumblr Need Their Own News Publications?

We learned last week that Tumblr is shutting down Storyboard — the news blog responsible for reporting on creative and noteworthy posts by Tumblr users. Tumblr’s cofounder, David Karp, posted his explanation for Storyboard’s closing on the site’s staff blog, saying: “What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now, and our editorial team will be closing up shop and moving on.”

Karp mentions that Storyboard partnered with the likes of WNYC, Mashable, Time, etc. and was even nominated for a James Beard Award (to name a few accomplishments). So, why is it best to “move on” when the project has been so successful? 

The consensus (here, here, and here) seems to be that Tumblr needs to downsize to turn a profit this year. However, in an interview with The New York Times, Charlie Warzel, deputy technology editor at Buzzfeed, suggested Storyboard is closing because there’s no point in writing about what you can just go and see for yourself. He said:

It is always peculiar when a social network branches out into publishing, it just seems odd to bring on even excellent editorial talent to cover what is already going on organically.

And he’s not the only one who shares the sentiment. 

The New York Times calls attention to Dan Fletcher (a journalism school graduate) who quit his “amorphous” job as managing editor of Facebook in 2012. His position required him to write about FaceBook trends. He said that reporters aren’t needed on FaceBook and that articles detract from user activity that is “inherently more interesting” than the articles themselves.

FJP:  Why is it “peculiar” that an excellent editorial staff would be reporting on the “organic” events of social media communities? Isn’t that what journalists do? Just because social media communities exist in the cyber-verse doesn’t make them less newsworthy.

Admittedly, Storyboard and other social media news blogs (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) aren’t exactly watchdog reporters (they want to talk about the posts that make themselves look good, after all), and that should make us question whether these publications can really be “journalistic.” But social media news is in its larval stage. Maybe, in the future, social communities will be publishing articles about juveniles who break copyright laws, and sites will be locking people’s profiles in cyber-jail-blocks for weeks due to hazing. Surely, social sites are gonna need some objective, guardian watchdogs for that, right? Eh? — Krissy

Image: Screenshot from Storyboard.

Why False Rumors Spread on Twitter During Times of Crisis

Yasuaki Sakamoto, assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, conducted an experiment in behavioral psychology to test rumor-spreading on Twitter during times of crisis. The original hypothesis was that if a person read a rumor-tweet and then read a rebuttal tweet that criticized the rumor immediately afterward, the rumor-tweet would then have lower perceived importance, anxiety, and overall accuracy — meaning a person would be less likely to continue spreading the rumor-tweet.

To test this, 87 Japanese undergraduate and graduate students were exposed to 20 rumor-tweets and then 10 rebuttal-tweets about the 2011 Japan Earthquake.

The researchers discovered that when someone’s tweet is met with a criticism, it gives the tweet less credibility — making a person less inclined to spread the tweet associated with a criticism. The amount of people who stopped rumor-tweets actually increased 150% when people were exposed to rebuttal-tweets. 

So, basically  the original hypothesis was right. When people hear opposing views, they will be less inclined to spread rumors during a crisis. Spectacular. Funny thing, though…

via iRevolution:

“Whether a receiver is exposed to rumor or criticism first makes a difference in her decision to spread the rumor. Another interpretation of the result is that, even if a receiver is exposed to a number of criticisms, she will benefit less from this exposure when she sees rumors first than when she sees criticisms before rumors.”

So, even when someone is exposed to another point of view after she’s exposed to a rumor, the perceived importance, anxiety, and accuracy of the rumor will still be higher than that of the new opposing point of view. She’ll STILL be instinctually inclined to spread the rumor-tweet just because she heard it first.

With that in mind, one can assume that in times of crisis (when people’s perceptions are most likely influenced by belief or emotions), these people will be inclined to believe the first thing they read regardless of its validity. 

FJP: So, how do we attempt to solve this issue? 

Verily is a platform (currently in development) that will directly connect rebuttal-tweets to rumor-tweets with the intent of decreasing the spread of rumors during disasters. 

Verily’s plan to connect contradicting tweets is a step in the right direction, but even if a rebuttal-tweet is a criticism, it doesn’t mean it’s a valid criticism. Is it any better if people believe the second tweet they read, if it’s just as incorrect as the first one?

How do we make sure that these tweeters can think critically and/or draw their own conclusions about a rumor-tweet without the helpful contradiction of rebuttal-tweets?  

Michael Shammas of The Huffington Post thinks integrating philosophy into American education is the answer:

While some philosophies obviously conduce toward peace more than others, while some philosophers (Marcus Aurelius) seem kinder than others (Nietzsche), the open-minded study of different philosophies at least opens one up to the possibility that one is wrong. One realizes, like Socrates did, that knowledge is anything but certain, that true wisdom lies in realizing how much one does not know, in understanding that our knowledge of the universe (and therefore of earthly things like politics) is utterly inadequate, perhaps comparable to the area of a pin’s tip against a table. This realization makes one less angry when confronted with opposing views, replacing counterproductive anger with productive curiosity.

Is it better to combat ignorance and gullibility in the schools, or in the cyber-streets? Both? Both. — Krissy

Image: iRevolution

Twitter #music

Twitter appears set to launch a music service although what it is is still under wraps. Yes, you can go to music.twitter.com (pictured above) but when you get there and try to sign in, nothing happens.

Via the BBC:

Reports suggest the new service will offer personalised recommendations on music through its own dedicated app.

US celebrity host Ryan Seacrest confirmed the existence of Twitter’s new app on Thursday via a tweet: “playing with @twitter’s new music app (yes it’s real!)… there’s a serious dance party happening at idol right now”

AllThingsD reports that the service will launch this weekend to coincide with the Coachella music festival.

First Papal Tweet

Introducing Pope Francis, via @Pontifex.

CORRECTION: We’re too shorthanded in this title. It’s the first Papal tweet under Francis. @Pontifex was tweeting under Benedict but those posts were erased after he resigned.