Is Twitter a Medium of Social Mobilization?
: An Exploratory Study of the Use of Twitaddons.com in South Korea
Sujin ChoiDept. of Radio-Television-Film
University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A.
Ji-Young ParkMaster’s degree candidate
Han Woo Park (corresponding author) Associate Professor, Dept. of Media & Communication
Yeungnam University, South Korea
Sunbelt XXXI, Florida, February 11, 2011
Why Twitter?
Brevity in messages / Mobility / Pervasive access / Broadcast
nature (Zhao & Rosson, 2009)
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Retweeting to spread Tweets to new audiences, publicly agree
with someone, and validate others’ thoughts (boyd et al.,
2010). More focus on personal status update or interpersonal
relationship
Recent use for social mobilization
Twitaddons.com
Launched on Mar. 4, 2010
Added social gathering feature to Twitter
create and organize a party (“dang”)
108,876 tweets generated in Twitaddons.com, while 313,992 in the original Korean Twitter.com (July – Oct. 2010)
Automatically insert hashtags for effective communicationo Inconvenience of using hashtags, particularly in terms of Twitter
use in Korea
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Main Web page of Twitaddons.com
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Literature Review
Relational / Conversational useo Java et al. (2007), Krishnamurthy et al. (2008), Huberman
et al. (2008) , Honeycutt and Herring (2009), Zhao and Rosson (2009), boyd et al. (2010)
Informational useo Jansen et al. (2009), Hughes and Palen (2010)
Social use (for social movement) ?
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Literature Review
Social Mobilization and the Internet
Positive impact on social mobilization for information and organizational functions (Klein, 1999; Van Aelst & Walgrave, 2002)
Online deliberations of opinions?oNegative: Wilhelm (1998) , Sunstein (2007)o Positive: Kellner (2004), Langman (2005), Bennett & Iyengar (2008)
Phases of social mobilization
i) Distribution of information
ii) Organization of movements
iii) Formation of shared values
iv) Implementation of collective action (Porta and Diani, 2006; Van Aelst and Walgrave, 2002; Shirky, 2008)
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Research Questions
RQ 1: What attributes do party organizers on Twitaddons.com have?
RQ 2: In what ways is the activity of a party organizer against members different from that against followers in terms of information distribution and organization?
RQ 3: Do party members form shared values in accordance with the mission statement of the party?
RQ4: Does the online activity of a party extend to its offline collective action?
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Method: Cases
12 parties selected among 2,200 civic advocacy parties
Membership ( > 100), Activeness (recent Tweets), Missions statements (political, commercial, social)
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Political Commercial Social
Cho-pae-gong-sa 730 Blackberry Users 824 Fair Tourism 144
Support MBC119 Info Repository for
Android Phone702
Social Innovation Community
186
Make Common-sense Prevail
299Official Party of
HTC Users 678
Party for Social Welfare
176
Korean HTC Users Party
501Party for
Volunteer Activity359
Food Car of Love 119
Result 1: Attributes of party organizers
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Followers vs. Following Conversation vs. Content Spread
Data period: Mar. – Sept. 2010
Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members
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More conversation and more content-sharing with party members than followers 70 % of activities allotted to their relation with members
*p < 0.1, df = 20Note: i) ‘Chopae’ is excluded from the analysis as an outlier. ii) Actions of reply, mention, retweet, and attribution are counted based on the number of ‘unique tweets’ generated. For instance, if a tweet denotes three members (or followers), it is regarded as one tweet, instead of three tweets. iii) Followers include both members and non-members.
Meant
Member Follower
Conversation per 100 Twitterer
216.1 58 1.842* 0.091
Content Spreading Actions per 100 Twitterer
38.0 11.2 2.068* 0.060
Data period: Mar. – Sept. 2010
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Political Conversation Content Spreading
Chopae
MBC
CommonSense
Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members
NodeXL two-mode network visualizationData period: Mar. – Sept. 2010,
party organizers
party members
followers of the
party organizer
party organizers
party members
followers of the
party organizer
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Commercial Conversation Content Spreading
Blackberry
Android
Official HTC
Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members
Korean HTC
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Social Conversation Content Spreading
Tourism
Innovation
Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members
Welfare
Volunteer
Food Car
party organizers
party members
followers of the
party organizer
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Political Conversation Content Spreading
Chopae
Result 2: Activities of party organizers with followers and members
NodeXL two-mode network visualizationData period: Mar. – Sept. 2010,
Semantic Network Analysis
Case: Chopae, Blackberry, and Volunteer
Data gathering period: Nov. 5 to 25, 2010
CONCOR conducted during the analysis
Top 20 words of each party
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Result 3: Formation of shared values among members
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Result 3: Formation of shared values among members
Chopae(Political)
Blackberry(Commercial)
Volunteer(Social)
1,618 tweets 3,690 tweets 893 tweets
7 clusters
2 large clusters
Engaged in criticizing G-20 and conservative newspapers
7clusters
2 main clusters
Shared product information and tweeted lost-and-found notifications
6 clusters
2 large clusters
Gathering volunteers and notifying schedules of volunteer activities
Hierarchy among memberso 9 executives, 41 directors, 3 heads of a labor union
Forms of online movemento Retweeting: mode of social actions against vested rights
G-20 (109 out of 683tweets)
Conservative dailies and conglomerates (68 out of 683tweets) (at the 1st week of Nov. 2010)
o Online caricature parody, 140-character novels about the President, Newspaper monitoring
Forms of offline actiono Gatherings on a monthly basiso Workshop, lecture, casual party, coalition with other parties
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Result 4: Extension of online activity to offline collective action (Case study of ‘Chopae’)
Shared action plan
o Encourage ‘retweets’ through the participation of at least 10% of total members
o Designate a day for ‘Chopae’ to implement a barrage of ‘mentions’ against ‘Chosunilbo’ in Twitter sphere
o Make leaflets, stickers, and cellular phone accessories
o Arrange offline lectures and interviews with public figures
o Open nationwide events to publicize its argument and recruit human resources as a long-term plan
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Result 4: Extension of online activity to offline collective action
Conclusion
“Small change: why the revolution will not be tweeted” ??
(Gladwell, Oct. 4, 2010)
Not for true activism (lacking strong ties and a hierarchical org.)
Party organizers (acquaintances & broadcasters, conversation > content spreading) invest more organizational effort to party members.Party members form shared values.Online movements increase the feasibility of offline, daily, collective activism.
“Technology-mediated social participation” with increased usability and sociability of technologies to foster vital communities (Pirolli et al., 2010).
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THANK YOU !