Winters in Boston are bitterly cold and excessively long. So it’s little wonder that residents greet Patriot’s Day – the mid-April, Massachusetts-only holiday marking the Revolutionary battles at Lexington…
Queensland MP Andrew Laming’s inflammatory comments about violence in Logan were insensitive and misdirected.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Mobs tearing up Logan. Did any of them do a day’s work today, or was it business as usual and welfare on tap?
That’s how MP Andrew Laming responded to recent violence in Logan between Aboriginal and…
Those who see fit have everything they need to measure opinion, conduct sentiment analyses and sway opinion this way or that.
Ali Ali/EPA
Warfare, as we know, has gone digital, its volleys and counterattacks rattled out 140 characters at a time.
Historically, nation states with superior military prowess have been in a position of influence…
Hashtags embody the “digital” aspect of news.
uwgb admissions
With #PillarofDefense, Israel this week launched the world’s first-ever hashtag-driven social media military offensive in Gaza Strip, followed by action on the ground. In direct response, the defensively…
Obama’s victory tweet set Twitter records.
@BarackObama
It’s been quite a year for tweeters. First we had the Twitter Olympics. Now, Barack Obama’s first impulse, on hearing of his re-election as President of the United States, was to tweet out thanks to the…
We’re with the brand: how do we judge authenticity online with so many fakers hiding behind the screen?
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com
I am the FakeMarkRolfe telling you that all FakeMarkRolfes on Twitter are liars. And so is the real Mark Rolfe @Marcjohnr.
I’ve started with a variation of the old liar’s paradox, not to explore logic…
Axel Bruns updates us on who’s been tweeting what from Australia’s news and opinion sites.
Twitter image from www.shutterstock.com
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
Last week I complained about things getting boring. The previous Australian Twitter news circulation index (ATNIX) – an index of reader engagement measuring how links to Australian news sites are shared…
Axel Bruns updates us on who’s been tweeting what from Australia’s news and opinion sites.
Twitter image from www.shutterstock.com
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
Following on from our previous coverage of the Australian Twitter news circulation index (ATNIX), here are the results for week 32 of this year.
ATNIX tracks the sharing of links to Australian news sites…
Danny Boyle and his army of volunteers are to be commended on a stunning television production for the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony. But if you only watched one screen, you missed a significant…
Kristen Stewart engaged in classic oversharing when she admitted to a dalliance with director Rupert Sanders.
EPA/David Maung
Along with Caltex job losses and concerns over whether Our Leisel has thunder thighs, I woke this morning to news that Kristen cheated on R-Patz.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson – for those not yet…
If Twitter allows us to follow (and share) our interests, then can it make a reliable measure of influence for media groups?
AAP/Tracey Nearmy/Twitter
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
News of significant job losses and organisational restructuring at Fairfax has thrown new spotlight onto the continuing transformation of the Australian media landscape.
It’s clear that newspapers in…
It’s time for Australian broadcasters to get smart about how they show live sport. If they don’t, we’ll go elsewhere.
Tim McFarlane
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
The Olympic Games are a fascinating yardstick for how much things have changed in the preceding four years. As Beijing’s fake fireworks beamed across our TV screens, Kevin Rudd was still Prime Minister…
Short urls serve a purpose for users and their creators alike.
Mexicanwave
With each passing day commercial interests seem to find new ways to harness the tools on which the web was built.
Policy initiatives such as the US’s now-defunct SOPA and in-progress CISPA now involve…
Censorship has now caught up with new social media and technology in China.
Flickr/bfishadow
This week’s temporary suspension of comments on China’s two largest micro-blogging services Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo highlight the ruling party’s discomfort with social media’s growing popularity…
Newman and Bligh face off in real life, but how do they fare online?
AAP/Dave Hunt
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
With every recent election, in Australia as well as elsewhere, parties and politicians are adding further to their arsenal of digital campaigning tools.
In the 2010 federal election campaign, my colleagues…
Kony2012 seemed to be everywhere, but attention has now turned to the makers of the video.
Reyhan Dhuny
There have been enough social media disasters of late to make one thing clear: manipulating sentiment through social networks is next to impossible.
The McDonald’s #McDStories campaign in January was…
Tweet success and sweet success increasingly go hand in hand.
Scolirk
In the brave new world of contemporary sport-watching, the goalposts have moved. Watching the big game (once a simple matter of grabbing a beer and some chips and settling down in front of the television…
Comments posted by the writer have seen Twitter sued for defamation.
Mosman Library
By Peter Black, Queensland University of Technology
Twitter is being sued for defamation by a Melbourne man who was wrongly identified as the author of a “hate blog” directed at writer and TV personality, Marieke Hardy.
Hardy posted a tweet last year to…
Brands like Qantas are finding controlling their message on Twitter is not easy.
AAP
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
For major brands, the road to social media infamy is paved with what seemed like good ideas at the time.
Just this week, Qantas succeeded in having Twitter suspend the well-known spoof account, @QantasPR…
There’s no turning the tide when it comes to Twitter.
Rosaura Ochoa
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
The release of Sky News UK’s Twitter guidelines for its journalists – or rather, the Guardian’s not entirely disinterested commentary on those guidelines – has caused a bit of a stir across social media…
Electronic tools can help advance research into rare diseases through creating virtual registries.
Gautheron
Pretty soon, not being involved in social media will be just as implausible as not having a telephone. If my 80-year-old dad is on Facebook and women over 55 are the fastest growing demographic on the…
Have the #occupy protestors been gagged?
AFP/Timothy A. Clary
In the age of social media, if we’re able to get online, engage with a few tools and connect our ideas to others who sympathise, we’re able to initiate social change. Or that’s the theory.
The world begins…
Barack Obama’s web campaign helped him win the presidency. Parties should learn from it.
Flickr/Scorpions and Centaurs
The increasing spread of information and communication technology has changed just about every aspect of Australian society – except democracy.
The opportunities to engage citizens in the democratic process…
What we tweet, and when we tweet it, gives insight into global mood patterns.
joelaz
I know my mood over the course of a day and so, it seems, does Twitter.
Over the years there’s been a lot of work on mood cycles. Much of it has been based on neurochemicals such as serotonin and dopamine…
The numbers in Manhattan streets are far outnumbered by those on social media.
Don Emmert/AFP
On Saturday, hundreds of protestors congregated in the Wall Street area of New York at the start of a protest dubbed #OccupyWallStreet.
The aim? To “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens…
It’s getting harder to know where home starts and the office ends.
webtreats
This week, the American National Labour Review Board ruled to reinstate five workers fired for complaining about a co-worker on Facebook.
The board decided writing about work on Facebook was equivalent…
Social media is helping, not hindering, police efforts in the UK.
AAP
By Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology
There’s a colourful and evocative term among regular users of social media: “headdesking”.
It’s what you do when somebody says or does something so stupid that your instant reaction is to smack your head…
Can social media temper growing public antipathy towards political parties?
Mandel Ngan/AFP
On Tuesday, the ACT government held Australia’s first virtual community cabinet using Twitter. Four ministers faced a barrage of tweets in an hour long question and answer session held with the electorate…
Not sharing your password is one of the basic rules for online safety.
Michael Reynolds/EPA
On July 4, a hacker took control of one of the Twitter accounts of US broadcaster FoxNews.com and sent out several tweets announcing President Obama had been shot.
Because it was a national holiday and…
Facebook is a key tool for the modern revolutionary.
AAP
Facebook, with more than 500 million members, has now reached superpower status. If Facebook were a country, its supporters often say, its population would rank behind only China and India.
But there…
