Cyberculture/Social Media/Twitter/Spread of Information

Spread of Information on Twitter

Preference for Twitter's Interface

• 9 in every 10 Twitter use Twitter for news-related purposes.
• 40% of people in the same study use Twitter to keep up with ‘Breaking News’ and 39% use it to keep up with the news in general.
• They can design their own news agenda - identifying sources and topics they want to follow.
• Common reasons why people use Twitter :

1. It’s a great way to get news in real-time.
2. Users come across sources they don’t normally use.
3. Easy to scan through and read.

• Twitter is a way of staying in touch.
• News on Twitter is highly participatory.

Real-time news and live updates

• Immediacy becomes primary.
• Approximately 583 live videos of events in the year 2017.
• Due to the validity of real-time news received through Twitter, users have come to expect almost consistent validity with all information spread through this platform, which enables spread of non-valid information.
• In January 2009 US Airways flight 1549 crash landed into the Hudson River New York and the first news reports and images of the incident were delivered via Twitter from eye witnesses — approximately 15 minutes ahead of any coverage by traditional media sources.
• Twitter was the primary source of information for the first six hours of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Understanding Hashtag Culture

• The Hashtags were first introduced in Twitter on 23 August 2007 by Chris Messina.
• Trends are formed when a hashtag is used many times. Thus, that particular discussion topic becomes visible to a larger demographic.
• Twitter Search and Hashtag Culture (targeting your audience on Twitter for marketing purposes)
• Retweeting hashtags and following hashtags
• Hashtag Hijacking and Crowdsourced Campaigns - used by many industries and companies for advertising.

Attention Economy and Character Limit

• Updated from 140 to 280 characters

• News is spread in real-time and in a concise manner
• 79% find it easier to keep up with the news today than five years ago, compared with 62% of non-Twitter users who feel that way, and 70% of social media users overall
• Allows users to choose which news they want to follow up on.

Spread of Disinformation and Fake News

• Findings suggest that there is some self-correcting element to Twitter and to the web generally, born in part out of the multiplicity of information sources and also out of some degree of skepticism by Twitter users about the information they encounter.

• Twitter threads also provide for a good feature to retaliate to fake news.
• Sixty-two percent of those who encountered a false tweet said they discovered it from another source outside Twitter. 59%, said they saw a tweet alerting them to the problem. 43%, said they were alerted to the problem by a later tweet from the same source correcting their mistake. 21%, said they heard about it from someone later through word of mouth. In other words, the web as a system and Twitter itself has some self correction to it.
• Promoting False Information Policy - False information about voting or registering to vote; False information that could alter the vote’s sincerity or disturb the public order ; Election Integrity Policy - Misleading information about how to participate; Voter suppression and intimidation; False or misleading affiliation.

The Twitter Disinformation Study

• Conducted by Matthew Schneider in March, 2009.

• Created a Twitter account called “InTheStimulus” which primarily tweeted disinformation about the US Economic Stimulus package.
• Initial tweets consisted of false statements that sounded plausible.
• The tweets progressively got less believable and more absurd as time went on.
• Schneider recorded the number of followers and the responses made by them.