tag:theconversation.com,2011:/columns/axel-bruns-1433Social media and society – The Conversation2017-11-24T01:52:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/880242017-11-24T01:52:05Z2017-11-24T01:52:05ZQueensland election: One Nation dominates Twitter debate in the final weeks<p>As Queensland approaches its election day on Saturday, the social media campaign for votes continues alongside. But over the final two weeks, the focus of that campaign has gradually shifted.</p>
<p>Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s plan to <a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-analysis-shows-queensland-labor-has-put-adani-behind-them-87320">veto a potential A$1 billion loan to the Adani mine project</a> resulted in a considerable drop in Adani-related tweets directed at Queensland candidates, and that pattern has held through subsequent weeks. Labor has not entirely neutralised the Adani controversy, but the mine project is no longer the major talking point of the Twitter campaign.</p>
<p>By contrast, the most significant emerging theme of these past two weeks has been the role that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party might play in the new parliament. We saw some of this in our previous analysis, in response to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/11/queensland-election-lnp-preferences-one-nation-before-labor-in-50-seats">the LNP’s decision to direct preferences to One Nation</a> over Labor in a majority of Queensland seats. That particular discussion has now shifted to a much broader debate about the very real prospect that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/21/one-nation-a-thorn-in-its-queensland-rivals-sides">One Nation may hold the balance of power</a> after the election.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196093/original/file-20171123-18006-ynsryu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Major topics in tweets by and at candidates in the 2017 Queensland election campaign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our dataset captures the tweets posted by and directed at Queensland election candidates. Of those tweets, some 51% addressed the Adani mine or One Nation, but the emphasis has now swung considerably towards the latter. This was sparked in part by the Liberal National Party’s (LNP) preference announcement, with preferences briefly becoming a distinct major topic in their own right.</p>
<p>Labor has been quick to exploit this arrangement, in well-shared posts from the central party account. However, recent controversial footage of its own MP Jo-Ann Miller hugging Pauline Hanson on the campaign trail might have blunted this message somewhat.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"929497192355606528"}"></div></p>
<p>One Nation also featured heavily in another major topic of the second half of the campaign: schools. While <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-10/queensland-election-campaign-labor-promises-six-new-schools/9137898">Labor’s pledge to establish several new schools</a> received only moderate attention, Queensland One Nation leader <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-11/annastacia-palaszczuk-rubbishes-one-nations-safe-schools-claim/9141520?pfmredir=sm">Steve Dickson’s bizarre comments</a> about the Safe Schools anti-bullying programme was met with widespread condemnation. A tweet criticising Dickson’s subsequent apology is now the second most retweeted post of the entire campaign:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"929955447410323456"}"></div></p>
<p>Somewhat more surprisingly, the impact of Uber and similar ridesharing services on the Queensland taxi industry has also been a minor theme throughout the campaign. This was aided by some orchestrated activity by taxi drivers, and <a href="http://www.northweststar.com.au/story/5075419/traeger-queensland-election-campaign-three-days-to-go/">supported by Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) candidate Robbie Katter</a>, who has championed their cause in several campaign events. Meanwhile, transport also figured in the Premier’s commitment to fixing the issues with troubled <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-09/labor-promises-150-million-fix-trains/9134574">new Queensland Rail rolling stock in Maryborough</a>, which generated a brief flurry of support as well as criticism.</p>
<p>These topical changes have affected the patterns of engagement with the candidates on Twitter. In total, Labor candidates still continue to be mentioned more frequently than their LNP counterparts. But over the past two weeks, this gap has closed slightly: as attention has shifted from Adani to One Nation, so have Twitter users moved to asking more questions of LNP and One Nation rather than Labor politicians. Retweets, however, continue to favour Labor by a considerable margin: its candidates have received more than four times as many retweets as all other party candidates put together.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196095/original/file-20171123-18021-1dlat5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engagement with candidates in the 2017 Queensland election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A network of interactions around candidate accounts (combining both @mentions and retweets over the course of the entire campaign) demonstrates the state of play at this late stage of the election campaign. Labor commands the largest engagement network, at the centre of the graph. Discussions about Adani have been prominent, and form a distinct cluster of debate that is most closely interconnected with the Labor and Greens networks. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, LNP and One Nation candidates are mentioned frequently alongside one another. These tweets are often asking about their preference arrangements or their willingness to work together in the absence of an outright majority for either major party. </p>
<p>This association is so strong, in fact, that our visualisation algorithm treats both groups as part of the same discussion cluster. Slightly to the side of this sits the Uber debate, which therefore appears to be more closely associated with – and perhaps supported by – LNP candidates than their Labor counterparts.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196092/original/file-20171123-17982-1rcwaiv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Network of interactions around candidate accounts in the 2017 Queensland election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The picture that emerges here is one which points to the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of politics. For Labor, its troubled path to a firmer stance on the Adani mine may remain in environmentally conscious voters’ minds even if the online discussion has died down somewhat.</p>
<p>For the LNP, the emerging view that its best path to government is through an arrangement with One Nation will similarly dent the electorate’s enthusiasm for a change of government. That Labor commands by far the majority of retweets for its messages may give it hope, though – at least in urban electorates, where Twitter is likely to have its greatest footprint.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere".</span></em></p>With Labor having largely defused the Adani issue, debate on Twitter in the final weeks of the 2017 Queensland election campaign has come to focus chiefly on the role of One Nation.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873202017-11-13T08:32:33Z2017-11-13T08:32:33ZTwitter analysis shows Queensland Labor has put Adani behind them<p>There’s still plenty of time to go in the current Queensland state election campaign, but early signs from the social media trail offer some encouragement for Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. She is receiving considerably more retweets than Liberal Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls, and chatter about the controversial Adani mine project has declined in recent days.</p>
<p>Twitter and Facebook are now a standard part of the campaigning toolkit for all major parties. Previous state and federal campaigns suggest that voters who’ve already seen a party’s messages in their social media feeds may be a little more open to a chat when the local candidate comes doorknocking. (<a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/australianlaborparty/pages/2378/attachments/original/1403229510/2013_Campaign_Review_FINAL.pdf">Labor’s internal review of its 2013 campaign</a> stresses the combination of online and in-person campaigning, for example.)</p>
<p>On Twitter, we’ve identified 60 Labor and 48 Liberal National Party candidates, as well as central party and campaign accounts. The Greens are represented by 34 accounts, while One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party each have only a handful of tweeting candidates. Combined, over the first two weeks of the campaign, they’ve sent some 3,300 tweets in total, and received some 54,000 @mentions and retweets.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194224/original/file-20171112-29324-11dl9kh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Twitter @mentions and retweets per party, 30 Oct. to 12 Nov. 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are far from evenly distributed, however. @mentions of parties and politicians tend to favour the incumbent, and this is not surprising: more of the debate on social media and elsewhere will be about the track record of the current government, rather than about the promises of the opposition. </p>
<p>At 30,000 tweets, Labor accounts have received nearly double the @mentions of the LNP (17,000) to date, and this is in line with <a href="https://theconversation.com/ausvotes-a-final-update-from-the-social-media-hustings-61922">patterns in previous state and federal elections</a>.</p>
<p>It’s the retweets that tell a more remarkable story. The nearly 7,000 retweets for Labor candidates’ tweets amount to more than twelve times the 570 retweets received by the LNP. During an election campaign, retweets usually <em>do</em> indicate some level of endorsement. </p>
<p>The pattern in this election is considerably different from recent elections. In 2016, for example, the incumbent federal Coalition received <a href="https://theconversation.com/ausvotes-a-final-update-from-the-social-media-hustings-61922">far fewer retweets</a> than the Labor opposition. In the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-queensland-election-on-twitter-some-key-qldvotes-patterns-36507">2015 Queensland election</a>, Campbell Newman’s incumbent Liberal National Party government also struggled to attract retweets for its messages.</p>
<p>These patterns do not point to a significant mood for change or substantial willingness amongst Twitter users to promote the LNP’s campaign messages. Conservative commentators may want to chalk this up to a purported left-wing bias in the Australian Twittersphere – but that claim is not borne out by <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-twitter-is-more-diverse-than-you-think-76864">our analysis</a>, showing Twitter contains sizeable communities of both left-wing and right-wing supporters.</p>
<h2>Adani and One Nation generate heat for the major parties</h2>
<p>Labor also seems to have weathered the early onslaught of critical coverage well.</p>
<p>The first week of the campaign saw a substantial volume of debate about the controversial Adani mine project, which divides opinion between the southeastern population centres around Brisbane (where concerns about environmental impacts are high) and the regional centres near the mine (which anticipate greater job prospects from the mine). </p>
<p>During week one some 1,500 tweets per day, both by and to candidates, contained the word “Adani”. Hashtags related to the controversy (#adani, #stopadani, #coralnotcoal, and others) were the most prominent topical hashtags in our overall dataset, in addition to generic tags like #qldvotes, #qldpol, and #auspol. </p>
<p>The story is further complicated by the fact that, in his role at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Premier Palaszczuk’s partner <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-12/queensland-election-premier-not-aware-pwc-donation-to-labor/9142252">was involved</a> in Adani’s application for a A$1 billion loan. Palaszczuk announced at the end of the first week of campaigning that <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-03/premier-annastacia-palaszczuk-veto-qld-government-adani-brisbane/9117594">she would veto that loan</a> if the application were successful.</p>
<p>Judging by our Twitter data, this veto threat appears to have neutralised the Adani debate to some extent. “Adani” tweets by and to candidates declined from 1,500 to less than 600 in week two. The overall volume of tweets by and to these accounts has also dropped from over 5,000 to some 3,700 per day in week two. </p>
<p>This shift in position may indicate that Labor believes that supporting Adani will lose more votes in the southeast than it will gain further north. Our social media patterns seem to bear out this view.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, with Pauline Hanson’s much-publicised arrival on the campaign trail the second week has seen more discussion about the role that One Nation may play in the next parliament. In particular, the announcement on the evening of Friday 10 November that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/11/queensland-election-lnp-preferences-one-nation-before-labor-in-50-seats">the LNP will preference One Nation over Labor</a> in more than half the seats in Queensland has already generated substantial debate. Some 20% of tweets by and to candidates on the following Saturday included keywords related to One Nation and/or preferencing.</p>
<p>While the LNP announcement – after the evening news on a Friday – was probably timed to minimise media scrutiny of its decision, it remains to be seen whether this debate will carry over into the third week of the campaign. Labor will no doubt seek to exploit this preference arrangement to attract traditional conservative voters who remain critical of One Nation.</p>
<p>And finally, if you’re still uncertain about which hashtag to use to join the debate: in tweets by and to candidate accounts, plain old #qldvotes leads #qldvotes2017 by more than ten to one so far. It’s a landslide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere".</span></em></p>Twitter activity over the first two weeks of the Queensland election campaign shows good support for Labor and a slowdown of the Adani debate.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/844592017-09-28T23:08:12Z2017-09-28T23:08:12ZThe beautiful social media game: A-League winners and losers on Twitter<p>Social media are integral for Australian professional sports – teams have professionalised their pages, and official hashtags allow us to connect around live matches. But my analysis shows that social media success isn’t predictable when it comes to sports. </p>
<p>The most successful team doesn’t have the most followers. The highest-profile games don’t create the most engagement. And social media strategies diverge as much as on-field ones. </p>
<p>Social media are proving particularly important for niche and growing sports, given their limited coverage in the mainstream media. <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/85129/">Twitter was crucial</a> for netball at a time when broadcasters were ignoring it. Similarly, A-League teams have <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/66328/">taken to Twitter more effectively</a> than their counterparts in much bigger leagues, such as the English Premier League or the German Bundesliga. </p>
<h2>The A-League’s Twitter leaderboard</h2>
<p>In terms of followers, one team stands head and shoulders above the rest. It’s not the 2017 champions Sydney FC, but their cross-town rivals, the Western Sydney Wanderers. Sydney FC had nearly 64,000 followers by the end of the 2016/17 season. The Western Sydney Wanderers had 125,000. </p>
<p>The A-League’s most successful team, Melbourne Victory, sat between the two with 88,000.</p>
<p>Indeed, in spite of a somewhat disappointing season, the Wanderers picked up an additional 24,000 followers during the season. This is almost as many as the least followed team, the Central Coast Mariners, have in total. </p>
<p>The Wanderers’ strong following is most likely due to the club’s 2014 triumph in the AFC Champions League. This translated into a substantial volume of audience interest on Twitter. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187200/original/file-20170922-17241-1kkgubd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A-League teams’ follower development over the course of the 2016/17 season.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Twitter engagement largely mirrors city population sizes. In order, the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane teams receive the greatest volume of mentions and retweets. Smaller-town clubs like the Newcastle Jets or the Central Coast Mariners, along with the Wellington Phoenix, attract much less attention.</p>
<h2>Taking it to the other teams</h2>
<p>Whether or how teams engaged with each other on Twitter was one of the major ways in which social media strategies differed. </p>
<p>Over the course of the past season, Western Sydney Wanderers and Melbourne City hardly acknowledged their competition at all. They mentioned each other team barely more than ten times on Twitter. </p>
<p>The Brisbane Roar and Wellington Phoenix, on the other hand, took it to their opponents on Twitter as much as on the field. They mentioned and retweeted each opposition team some 60 to 90 times. Part of the story here is that the Roar account live-tweets most of its A-League, W-League, NPL and other matches, frequently mentioning opposing teams by their Twitter handles.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=118&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=118&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=118&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187199/original/file-20170922-17306-1fmtqw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A-League team accounts’ interactions over the course of the 2016/17 season.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ten teams mostly mentioned themselves – mainly because they retweeted messages that mentioned their own accounts. It may not be surprising to followers of the A-League that Sydney FC was the most self-referential during the past season, while Melbourne Victory’s @gomvfc was least self-centred.</p>
<p>There’s little evidence, too, of the great rivalries that the A-League organisation has been keen to promote. Fans may eagerly anticipate the Sydney and Melbourne intra-city derbies, but the teams involved hardly acknowledge each other’s existence online. </p>
<p>During the 2016/17 season, Melbourne Victory tweeted 73 times at the Brisbane Roar, for instance, but only 12 times at Melbourne City. Sydney FC mentioned the Central Coast Mariners in 43 tweets, but the Western Sydney Wanderers only nine times. No love lost there, then.</p>
<h2>A hashtag lasts 90 minutes</h2>
<p>Building on its collaboration with Twitter Australia, the A-League has adopted a standard system of hashtags that it encourages fans and teams to use as they tweet about each match. These take the form of #HOMEvsAWAY, with both teams represented by well-established three-letter acronyms. One-third of the 1 million tweets by, at and about the A-League teams over the 2016/17 season used these hashtags.</p>
<p>However, here too the major derbies fail to draw the crowd that the A-League might have expected. Altogether, the Melbourne derbies produced fewer than 2,500 tweets. And with only 3,100 tweets, their Sydney counterparts fared little better (the scoreless #SYDvWSW match in January generated only 839 tweets in total). Least popular, however, are the matches that make up the so-called “F3 Derby” between the Newcastle Jets and Central Coast Mariners – their three clashes generated barely 700 tweets in total.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=213&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=213&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=213&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187201/original/file-20170922-17256-15ibnxz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=268&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A-League match hashtag activity over the course of the 2016/17 season.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most bankable teams, meanwhile, are the two Melbourne clubs and Brisbane Roar at home, as well as Perth, Melbourne Victory and the Western Sydney Wanderers away – on average, whenever they step on the field, football fans are most likely to get amongst it on the match hashtag as well. </p>
<p>The two high-scoring clashes between Melbourne City and Perth Glory, the tense Wanderers visits to Brisbane (especially including a penalty shootout in the play-offs), and the Berisha-inflamed grudge matches between Melbourne Victory and Brisbane Roar each rated especially well with Twitter audiences. </p>
<p>If the past season is any guide, rather than focusing overly on the not-so-classic derby matches, it is these rivalries that the A-League may wish to promote in the 2017/18 round. Let the fans decide which clashes they are especially passionate about: don’t assume that intra-city contests necessarily generate audience engagement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere". Axel Bruns supports the Brisbane Roar.
</span></em></p>The A-League has embraced social media. But analysis shows success online doesn’t correspond to success on the field.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/837752017-09-14T23:05:03Z2017-09-14T23:05:03ZAn ABC News story shows how strange “going viral” can be<p>ABC News has now firmly established itself as the nation’s third most visited online news source, according to data from the Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX). But one specific ABC News story shows social media’s power to reach large and unexpected audiences. </p>
<p>A republication of a Conversation article exploring <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8831826">what the bible really has to say about same-sex marriage</a> accounted for some 9,000 shares on the 24th of August, and nearly 16,000 for the entire month. ABC News saw 18,700 tweets in total on the 24th, which is nearly twice the number they can expect on an ordinary day. </p>
<p>But the story doesn’t end there. Some 15,200 of the tweets linking to this story are due to a single post written in Korean and retweeted widely. From an Australian marriage equality survey, to an Irish-based bible scholar to going viral in Korea, news on Twitter can sometimes travel in mysterious, roundabout ways.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the version of this article published <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-christians-arguing-no-on-marriage-equality-the-bible-is-not-decisive-82498">on The Conversation itself</a> received only 300 shares on Twitter.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185348/original/file-20170910-32271-12dx7c2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, Aug. 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because of its paywall, The Australian’s articles are not usually widely shared on Twitter. But from mid-August onwards, a story on the role of <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/investigations/trumps-bid-for-sydney-casino-killed-off-by-mob-connections/news-story/65a0e5289cc924722f988bdca4b01e9b">Donald Trump’s alleged mafia links</a> in the rejection of his 1987 Sydney casino bid was shared some 17,500 times. This amounts to 21% of all the tweets linking to The Australian throughout the month.</p>
<p>Here, too, we can observe several interesting developments in the redistribution of the story. From its local origins Australian users forwarded it to a variety of US-based political commentators, who shared the article in their own right. It’s a clear indication of how symbiotic the relationship between journalism and social media has now become: news outlets publish their stories, but social media users boost their visibility by circulating them through their own networks.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185350/original/file-20170910-32284-hm3wdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, Aug. 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But moving away from these viral stories, the other leading stories in August diverged notably. </p>
<p>In addition to its republished Conversation article, ABC News received a substantial number of Twitter shares for original content addressing topics as diverse as <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8785174">former Liberal minister Bruce Billson’s failure to disclose a lobby group salary</a> during his time in parliament (3,200 tweets), a Radio National Background Briefing on <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8813604">the role of the Pine Gap installation in U.S. battlefield operations</a> (2,000 tweets), medical findings suggesting that <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8785566">vitamin B3 supplements can prevent miscarriages</a> (1,400 tweets), and the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-23/senior-politicians-rush-to-disclose-free-foxtel-subscriptions/8832532">belated disclosure of free Foxtel subscriptions</a> by senior federal politicians (1,400 tweets).</p>
<p>At the Sydney Morning Herald, meanwhile, the focus of the most tweeted stories is a great deal more narrow, largely revolving around refugee policy and the same-sex marriage survey. Here, the prominent stories include early reporting on <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gy4vnh.html">the government’s cancellation of income support for asylum seekers</a> (3,600 tweets), the <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gy5ci7.html">federal immigration minister’s labelling of asylum seekers’ lawyers as “un-Australian”</a> (2,500 tweets), the Catholic church’s <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gxy4ds.html">threat to dismiss staff entering into same-sex marriages</a> (1,800 tweets), former Human Rights Commission president <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gy29zp.html">Gillian Triggs’s attack on the “post-truths” peddled by the government</a> (1,700 tweets), and the <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gxskoj.html">lack of regulations against malicious campaign material</a> in the lead-up to the marriage equality postal survey (1,600 tweets).</p>
<p>Whether it is deliberately driven by news editors or determined by social media users voting with their tweets, we see in this a gradual diversification of these outlets’ roles in the social media news landscape. ABC News remains the news generalist while the Sydney Morning Herald becomes a specialist for the coverage of federal politics. Whether this arrangement persists only while specific issues and debates are prominent remains to be seen.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185351/original/file-20170910-32266-1oayppp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total visits to selected Australian news and opinion sites, Aug. 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyond social media, however, online news readership trends do not mirror these patterns. Here, News.com.au continues to reign supreme and the Sydney Morning Herald leads the best of the rest. ABC News has now firmly established itself as the third most visited Australian news site. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">Hitwise data</a> on total site visits per month (as you can see in the chart above), ABC News pulled ahead of Nine News for the first time in June this year and has remained in a solid third place since.</p>
<p>This shift is unrelated to any short-term viral news trends. This dataset counts only site visits from Australian users, so the unexpected Korean audience for ABC News’ bible story would not figure here. And even major viral stories would account only for a small subset of the total number of visits to a news site. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185349/original/file-20170910-24217-1o8aca5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total visits to selected Australian news and opinion sites, Aug. 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This makes ABC News’ upward trajectory all the more remarkable. In fact, even though the online news market in Australia is relatively stable, what we see here is a genuine flow of online audiences towards the ABC in recent months. Time will tell whether this is as high as ABC News can go – or whether eventually even the Sydney Morning Herald might come into reach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83775/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere". Axel Bruns is collaborating with The Conversation in the ARC Linkage project "Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions' Impact on Public Debate". Data on Australian Internet users’ news browsing patterns are provided courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity (<a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/</a>).</span></em></p>ABC News has quietly moved into third place in the domestic online news market and had a piece that went unexpectedly viral in Korea.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/819882017-08-03T02:48:48Z2017-08-03T02:48:48ZABC News’ long-form journalism pays off on Twitter<p>As they face a changing market for journalistic content, Australian news organisations are increasingly being forced to experiment with new approaches to telling their stories. The Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) for July 2017 shows that some new formats for investigative reports can generate considerable audience engagement – but old-fashioned commentary and opinion pieces also still manage to attract an audience.</p>
<p>Most notably, on 10 July 2017 ABC News recorded a significant increase in the number of tweets sharing its articles. This was due entirely to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-09/did-trumps-g20-performance-indicate-us-decline-as-world-power/8691538?WT.mc_id=newsmail&WT.tsrc=Newsmail">political editor Chris Uhlmann’s strident criticism of the Trump administration</a> (2,700 tweets that day), published from the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg. </p>
<p>Given the strong and well-documented international response to Uhlmann’s comments, the article actually receives fewer tweets than we might expect. His comments were republished or excerpted in text and video by news outlets around the world, so Twitter users did not necessarily need to go searching for the original piece.</p>
<p>Still, over the course of the entire month the story was shared some 5,300 times on Twitter, making it the most widely shared ABC News article in July by a considerable margin. In keeping with a pattern established over past months, by contrast, the other major ABC News stories for the month retain a strong domestic focus. </p>
<p>A major report on <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8652028">the sexual abuse of women by evangelical Christians</a> was shared 2,300 times; coverage of <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8687268">Elon Musk’s plans to build the world’s largest lithium ion battery in South Australia</a> received 2,200 tweets. Another special report on leaked documents exposing <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8466642">human rights abuses by Australian special forces in Afghanistan</a> was shared 2,100 times; and coverage of <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8678466">a new map of historic massacres of indigenous Australians since 1788</a> was shared in 1,500 tweets.</p>
<p>The presence of two special reports is especially noteworthy here. These reports are long-form and investigative, presented in a format distinct from ordinary ABC News articles. We’ve seen these appear from time to time, and the inclusion of two such dossiers in ABC News’ most shared articles during July clearly shows the strong public demand to this form of content. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180812/original/file-20170803-19918-ngu0sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, July 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the midst of considerable staff cuts in the commercial media, the public broadcaster is now one of the last major news organisations in Australia that is still able to conduct complex investigative reporting on key public interest issues. The response on Twitter indicates that the national news audience is rewarding such efforts with its engagement.</p>
<p>The Sydney Morning Herald did not manage to attract quite as much attention this month. Its top story for July is an opinion piece decrying <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gxb6qh.html">conservative media outlets’ sustained <em>ad feminam</em> attacks on Yassmin Abdel-Magied</a> (1,700 tweets). </p>
<p>Other key articles include a report on UN claims that <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gxhi1o.html">the Australian government reneged on a refugee resettlement agreement</a> (1,500 tweets), on <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gx7mv5.html">the failure of Philip Morris’s court case against plain tobacco packaging laws</a> (1,400 tweets), and on <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gx820x.html">federal MPs’ refusal to sign up to the “Fitzgerald Principles” for ethical conduct</a> (1,300 tweets). Another opinion piece rounds out the top five: <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gxi2nk.html">Ross Gittins’s criticism of the federal government’s new homeland security regime</a> is shared in 1,200 tweets.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180810/original/file-20170802-8795-4p1rrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, July 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s striking that two of the top five SMH articles in July were opinion pieces. In light of the commercial difficulties Fairfax is facing, it may well choose to focus increasingly on comparatively inexpensive-to-produce commentary, while ceding yet more of the business of investigative journalism to ABC News and other publications. </p>
<p>Longer-term trends in content production and audience engagement will see such strategies emerge more clearly.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180811/original/file-20170803-23530-17j2lzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total visits to selected Australian news and opinion sites, July 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">The data</a> on the total number of visits to each news site by Australian internet users see ABC News well ahead of nearest rivals Nine News and The Age for the second month in a row; this extends an unexpected decline especially in Nine News’ numbers since the end of May. </p>
<p>However, news.com.au and the Sydney Morning Herald still remain well ahead of the pack and their comparative market dominance seems unlikely to change any time soon.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180813/original/file-20170803-16521-ya5swy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total visits to selected Australian news and opinion sites, July 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s also notable that at a domestic level, ABC News does not record a major increase in visits as a result of Chris Uhlmann’s G20 piece on 10 July; this points clearly to the fact that most of the additional attention to that article came from overseas. </p>
<p>Twitter may have played its role in the viral dissemination of Uhlmann’s criticism; but, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-10/how-chris-uhlmanns-g20-takedown-of-donald-trump-went-viral/8695144">as we now know from subsequent coverage</a>, mainstream reporting and republishing of Uhlmann’s views by major US and UK outlets soon followed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere". Axel Bruns is collaborating with The Conversation in the ARC Linkage project "Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions' Impact on Public Debate". Data on Australian Internet users’ news browsing patterns are provided courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity (<a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/</a>).</span></em></p>ABC News’ investment in long-form journalism is generating strong take-up on Twitter.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814872017-07-26T02:04:25Z2017-07-26T02:04:25ZTurnbull’s Trump parody was only a brief Twitter hit in June<p>Secretly recorded video of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull impersonating Donald Trump was a brief Twitter hit in June. But the month was dominated by Australian federal politics and other domestic issues, as Twitter users largely ignored news from Syria, North Korea and other trouble spots.</p>
<p>Beyond Turnbull’s impersonation, charges against George Pell and the Australian Census were the two major stories highlighted by the Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) in June. ATNIX tracks the sharing of articles from Australian news and opinion sites on Twitter.</p>
<p>Nine News broke the story of Malcolm Turnbull’s Trump impersonation and saw the biggest increase in Twitter engagement. <a href="http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/06/15/14/18/malcolm-turnbull-impersonates-donald-trump-in-leaked-audio">Nine’s post of the leaked video</a> racked up more than 11,000 tweets over June 15 and 16 alone. This was significantly higher than Nine’s long-term average of 1,000 to 1,500 tweets per day, which it quickly returned to. </p>
<p>This suggests that isolated news scoops do not change well-established patterns of audience attention for more than a few days.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179743/original/file-20170726-30134-k0gbk0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179744/original/file-20170726-30149-117xo4g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other widely shared stories during June included ABC News’ exposé on <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8620128">food made from dog meat being sold to unsuspecting tourists in Bali</a> (3,100 tweets), its reports of <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8547668">charges laid against Cardinal George Pell</a> over historic sex offences (2,000 tweets), and its inventive <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8634318">visualisation of the results of the 2016 Australian Census</a> (1,900 tweets).</p>
<p>The <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gx0v8y.html">charges against George Pell</a> also received a strong response at the Sydney Morning Herald (3,300 tweets). An <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gwhuyx.html">open letter</a> by Martina Navratilova accusing Margaret Court of homophobia also generated considerable interest (1,900 tweets), as did a report on Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gqzauy.html">suspected links with Chinese political donors</a> (1,700 tweets).</p>
<p><a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">Hitwise</a> data on the total number of visits to leading Australian news and opinion sites reveals a similar picture. Nine News received a brief boost from the leaked video of Malcolm Turnbull’s Trump impersonation. Despite this, ABC News managed to pull ahead of Nine to become the third most visited Australian news sites in the month.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179745/original/file-20170726-20161-1p1pa84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total visits to selected Australian news and opinion sites, June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179746/original/file-20170726-2133-1osfgv9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">AHNIX June.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The strong showing for the national broadcaster reflects a long-term trend. In recent years, total site visits to The Age and the Daily Mail have declined slightly, while Nine News has stagnated and ABC News has grown. If the trend continues, ABC News will permanently establish its position as the third most visited Australian news site.</p>
<p>It is remarkable that Australian Twitter was <a href="https://theconversation.com/schapelle-corby-fails-to-draw-a-twitter-audience-78914">once again</a> caught up in domestic issues – in spite of the considerable global instability caused by Brexit, Trump, the concerns over Syria and North Korea, and various other trouble spots. This indicates, at least in part, that we have now incorporated these daily uncertainties into our everyday lives: we no longer feel the need to share news stories about them on a daily basis. </p>
<p>It also means that those of us who continue to monitor these situations closely are more likely to consume and share news from closer to the source: for instance, by sharing news from British or American outlets rather than waiting for Australian media to recapitulate the latest developments.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>ATNIX is based on tracking all tweets which contain links pointing to the URLs of a large selection of leading Australian news and opinion sites (even if those links have been shortened at some point). Datasets for those sites which cover more than just news and opinion (abc.net.au, sbs.com.au, ninemsn.com.au) are filtered to exclude the non-news sections of those sites (e.g. abc.net.au/tv, catchup.ninemsn.com.au).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere". Axel Bruns is collaborating with The Conversation in the ARC Linkage project "Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions' Impact on Public Debate". Data on Australian Internet users’ news browsing patterns are provided courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity (<a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/</a>).</span></em></p>Australian Twitter users largely ignored news from Syria, North Korea and other trouble spots in June, focussing instead on domestic politics.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/789142017-06-07T23:32:47Z2017-06-07T23:32:47ZSchapelle Corby fails to draw a Twitter audience<p>Between the bombshell announcement of further deep staff cuts at Fairfax publications, subsequent strike action by its journalists, the handing down of the 2017 federal budget, and the much-publicised return of drug smuggler Schapelle Corby to Australia, the news in May was surprisingly strongly focused on domestic Australian issues.</p>
<p>But not all of these matters were reflected equally strongly in the Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) for the month. ATNIX tracks the sharing of articles from Australian news and opinion sites on Twitter.</p>
<p>The major story in the Australian news industry itself during May was <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/fairfax-media-cut-further-125-editorial-staff-in-restructure/8492738">the staff strike at Fairfax</a>, triggered by significant job cuts across the editorial offices of the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and other publications. The walkout – which also affected Fairfax’s coverage of the federal budget – clearly received considerable sympathy from Australia’s Twitter users; several well-connected Twitter users in Australia posted calls to boycott Fairfax sites and refrain from sharing their articles during this time.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"860625159790526464"}"></div></p>
<p>As a result, during the period of the strike on 3 to 10 May, sharing rates for articles in the leading Fairfax publications declined precipitously. Both SMH and The Age only return to standard day-to-day sharing levels on Twitter by the middle of the month.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Sydney Morning Herald’s weakness over the course of the strike is so pronounced that it very nearly enables perennially third-placed site news.com.au to catch up. news.com.au’s strong performance is driven in part also by its attention-grabbing coverage of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/news-story/b628f1e1ca3813a29307398dabb4f589">a “mystery monster” washing up on the shore of an Indonesian island</a>, which went viral well beyond the site’s ordinary Australian audience. The article was shared in some 4,600 tweets on 13 May alone, and in almost 5,800 tweets over the course of the entire month.</p>
<p>Another Sydney paper, the Daily Telegraph, doesn’t usually show up on ATNIX, as few Twitter users appear prepared to publicly share the stories they read on its site. However, in May it too records a brief but major spike in sharing, for its coverage of <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/news-story/8a8f82a38746dff4d6204aa750bde3f9">Korean boy band BTS’s arrival in Sydney</a> (4,400 shares on 25 May). This is another example of an Australian news story spreading well beyond the national audience.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172369/original/file-20170606-18469-1swg5yt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, May 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, the return of drug smuggler Schapelle Corby from Bali on 27 May barely even rates a mention in the Australian Twittersphere. This is even in spite of, or quite possibly because of, the breathless coverage of Corby’s release by the mainstream media. While the leading commercial TV networks even interrupted their scheduled programming to bring us shaky dashcam footage of Corby’s progress from her Balinese residence to the airport, none of the most shared news links on Twitter during this time relate to the story. </p>
<p>ABC News does perform exceptionally well during these final days of the month – but the stories that drive that performance are about <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8570158">U.S. Senator John McCain’s visit to Australia</a> (2,600 shares), and <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8567166">a fisherman’s close encounter with a great white shark</a> (1,100 shares). Meanwhile, Nine News and Yahoo! 7 News receive practically no attention from Twitter users for their efforts in covering the Corby saga.</p>
<p>This pattern of disinterest is also reflected in <a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">Hitwise data</a> on the total number of visits to these Australian news sites. Despite the hype, the last few days of May appear utterly ordinary: Nine News and Yahoo! 7 News, along with most other news sites, fail to see any notable influx of visitors as a result of this latest development in the Corby saga. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172370/original/file-20170606-28191-4ddn41.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total visits to selected Australian news and opinion sites, May 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, in spite of the considerable impact on how much its articles were shared on Twitter, the total number of visits to Fairfax sites during the staff strike appears to decline only slightly against the long-term average. Readers might not have advertised in tweets that they continued to read the SMH and The Age during this time, but continue to read they did, for the most part. The 37.8 million site visits to the SMH in May, for instance, are virtually unchanged from previous months.</p>
<p>It’s notable, though, that on budget Tuesday and the following Wednesday (9 and 10 May), it is ABC News that performs well above average: for the coverage of this major event in the Australian political calendar, readers clearly preferred the national broadcaster this year.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>ATNIX is based on tracking all tweets which contain links pointing to the URLs of a large selection of leading Australian news and opinion sites (even if those links have been shortened at some point). Datasets for those sites which cover more than just news and opinion (abc.net.au, sbs.com.au, ninemsn.com.au) are filtered to exclude the non-news sections of those sites (e.g. abc.net.au/tv, catchup.ninemsn.com.au).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere". Axel Bruns is collaborating with The Conversation in the ARC Linkage project "Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions' Impact on Public Debate".
Data on Australian Internet users’ news browsing patterns are provided courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity (<a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/</a>).</span></em></p>The Schapelle Corby media circus wasn’t reflected in Twitter stats and calls to boycott Fairfax during the staff strike show limited impact on this social media platform as well.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/784672017-05-31T03:26:27Z2017-05-31T03:26:27ZNo rest over Easter as the barrage of news continues on Twitter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171401/original/file-20170530-16265-1rns9ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A burst of news kept us on Twitter.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There seems to be no end in sight to the barrage of breaking, critical news from home and abroad these days. The Australian Twitter News Index (ATNIX) for April 2017 shows that Australians weren’t even able to tear themselves away from their social media newsfeeds during the Easter and ANZAC holidays. </p>
<p>Throughout April news sharing patterns on Twitter largely continued to follow their weekly patterns. The weekend before ANZAC Day even seems unusually active. Perhaps there is simply too much going on today for us to disconnect for long.</p>
<p>ATNIX for April 2017 is dominated, however, by a very substantial spike in sharing Sydney Morning Herald content on 10 April. There were 5,900 tweets sharing news of <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gvhdmx.html">the arrest of a Russian programmer suspected of hacking the U.S. election</a>. Given the topic it is very likely that a substantial number of those tweets were posted by Twitter users outside Australia. We have seen this pattern with other international stories in the past - articles in Australian news sites that address key international stories occasionally go viral well beyond Australia.</p>
<p>On the same day, Twitter users’ attention was also drawn to news of beloved Australian comedian John Clarke’s sudden death, further increasing the volume of news-sharing tweets that day. An article on Clarke <a href="https://amp.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/renowned-satirist-john-clarke-dead-at-68-20170409-gvhg1r.html">in the SMH</a> was shared some 1,400 times, while <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-10/john-clarke-dies-aged-68/8430174?WT.mc_id=newsmail&WT.tsrc=Newsmail">ABC News’ coverage</a> received 1,200 shares.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171253/original/file-20170529-6421-1sco0p5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Twitter News Index, Apr. 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the course of the entire month, our data show again that a diverse range of unrelated topics sought to draw our attention. </p>
<p>At the Sydney Morning Herald, in addition to its coverage of the Russian hacker’s arrest (7,200 tweets in total for the month) and of John Clarke’s death (1,400 tweets), articles on <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gvnq0y.html">Malcolm Turnbull’s proposed changes to the citizenship test</a> (1,500 tweets), <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gvutjx.html">the Australian Federal Police’s illegal access to a journalist’s communications metadata</a> (1,300 tweets), and <a href="http://smh.com.au/x/-gvsp1k.html">an opinion piece in defence of Yassmin Abdel-Magied</a> (1,000 tweets) round out the top five.</p>
<p>For ABC News, its coverage of <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8463800">the Australian March for Science events</a> was most widely shared in April (1,700 tweets), along with pieces on <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8464252">North Korea’s warning that Australia should not blindly follow the United States</a> (1,500 tweets), John Clarke’s death (1,300 tweets), <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8454978">an investigation into federal politicians’ property portfolios</a> (1,000 tweets), and <a href="http://abc.net.au/news/8442708">a controversial video by an Islamic group that seemed to condone violence against women</a> (900 tweets).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171254/original/file-20170529-6385-1nmqd0r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total visits to selected Australian news and opinion sites, Apr. 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data courtesy of Hitwise, a division of Connexity.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile data from <a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">Hitwise</a> shows that the total number of visits to the leading Australian news and opinion sites are only very loosely correlated with news sharing activities on Twitter. There is no sign of the substantial spike in interest in the SMH’s Russian hacker story on 10 April. This suggests that much of the Twitter sharing was by non-Australian readers. We do see some small increases in traffic to the SMH, ABC News, and The Age that day, however, which might be attributed to audience engagement with coverage of John Clarke’s passing.</p>
<p>Overall, there is very little sign of flagging news interest during the Easter long weekend or on ANZAC Day. With so many major developments taking place simultaneously, domestically as well as internationally, perhaps we just can’t afford to switch off from the news any more.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>ATNIX is based on tracking all tweets which contain links pointing to the URLs of a large selection of leading Australian news and opinion sites. Sites that cover more than just news and opinion (abc.net.au, sbs.com.au, ninemsn.com.au) are filtered to exclude the non-news sections. Data on Australian Internet users’ news browsing patterns are provided courtesy of <a href="http://connexity.com/au/hitwise/">Hitwise, a division of Connexity</a>. This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project “Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere”.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere". Axel Bruns is collaborating with The Conversation in the ARC Linkage project "Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions' Impact on Public Debate".</span></em></p>A number of big new stories, from home and abroad, meant we didn’t even shut Twitter off over the East long weekend.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/783292017-05-27T01:27:08Z2017-05-27T01:27:08ZThe ABC is not siphoning audiences from Fairfax<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171104/original/file-20170526-23241-hlf2q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Claims that ABC News siphons readers away from Fairfax publications are unfounded. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Joel Carrett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood has been busy. His company’s announcement on 3 May 2017 that <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/05/03/fairfax-to-cut-125-newsroom-jobs/">Fairfax would sack 125 of its newsroom staff</a> led to Sydney Morning Herald and The Age journalists going on strike, at the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-03/fairfax-media-cut-further-125-editorial-staff-in-restructure/8492738">worst possible time in the Australian political calendar</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, media reports highlighted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/09/fairfax-boss-greg-hywood-paid-more-2016">Hywood’s annual pay of over A$7 million</a> – which at <a href="http://www.payscale.com/research/AU/Job=Journalist/Salary">a median reported salary for journalists of just over A$51,000</a> would comfortably pay for the most of the staff laid off in Hywood’s announcement.</p>
<p>This is not to say that Hywood does not deserve a CEO-level salary, of course. But in light of the criticism of the job losses at Fairfax, <a href="https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/17/fairfax-chief-greg-hywood-refuses-to-discuss-pay-deal-at-senate-hearing">his defence of executive pay levels was tin-eared</a>, to say the least:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We pride ourselves on providing above-market salaries… We need good people to work at this business. You don’t fix the issues confronting the media business by doing the same thing again and again, and expecting a different result.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet here we are again, with more journalists sacked, and no clear indication of how this is going to make Fairfax’s news outlets more attractive.</p>
<p>Faced with such questioning from the Senate inquiry into public interest journalism, Hywood resorted to a familiar trope for commercial media executives – <a href="https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/17/fairfax-chief-greg-hywood-refuses-to-discuss-pay-deal-at-senate-hearing">blame market distortion by the public broadcaster</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ABC is creating additional pressure on commercial media by aggressively competing for the same audience that commercial media rely on by providing online content for free, undermining our ability to create a sustainable model.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, this seems to be fundamentally ignorant of the fact that for years now, the ABC has done what few commercial news outlets have been prepared to do: promote the news stories published by its competitors.</p>
<h2>Promoting the work of others</h2>
<p>The ABC has long partnered with Microsoft’s Bing search engine to include a block of links to related content from elsewhere on the web alongside its own stories. This recognises audiences’ interest in seeing multiple independent angles on the same story. Sadly, commercial outlets like the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) still lack this basic feature and link only to (often virtually identical) stories on their sister sites, such as The Age.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170892/original/file-20170524-13190-12d5kb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Related links in a recent ABC News article - including to Fairfax property <em>Australian Financial Review</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot by Axel Bruns</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rather than siphoning eyeballs from its commercial competitors, could ABC News be a driver of traffic to them, then? Traffic data from <a href="http://www.hitwise.com/au">Hitwise</a>, which tracks Australian users’ web browsing patterns, can provide an answer to this question.</p>
<p>First, let us put these sites in perspective. In order to compare like with like, we’ll use the numbers for ABC News here, rather than visits to the main ABC site with its multitude of non-news content.</p>
<p>Hitwise data report that the SMH consistently attracts a much larger volume of visits than ABC News. In March 2017, for instance, its 38.2 million total visits constitute about a quarter more than ABC News’ 29.9 million. The Age receives around 27.5 million total visits over the same period. Neither can compete with undisputed market leader news.com.au, with 72.8 million total visits that month.</p>
<p>Put together, visits to these two Fairfax properties are already more than twice as large as those to ABC News, then – if the ABC is undermining Fairfax’s market position, it’s not making a very good job of it.</p>
<h2>Traffic patterns</h2>
<p>But this is not a zero-sum game, of course. Visitors to ABC News, aided by its helpful links to external content, may well find themselves heading to the Fairfax outlets for more information. Even in the absence of outbound links from Fairfax, the same might be true in reverse, too.</p>
<p>Here, the upstream websites recorded by Hitwise – that is, the sites visited just before coming to the SMH or ABC News – tell an interesting story. The SMH receives the vast plurality of its inbound reader traffic from Google sites: some 38.9% of its traffic enter via Google Australia, Google (international), Google News Australia, or Gmail. Another 7.8% arrive via Facebook or Twitter.</p>
<p>Similar patterns hold for other sites: in March, The Age receives 28.2% of its traffic from Google sites, and 9.2% from Facebook or Twitter. For ABC News, those percentages are 26.9% and 7.9%, respectively. news.com.au gets 32.2% of its traffic from Google sites, and 7.9% from social media.</p>
<p>ABC News’ outbound links are necessarily a much smaller factor than the connections provided by these internet giants, but should not be ignored. In March, 2.1% of the SMH’s traffic began with readers coming in from ABC sites. For The Age, the percentage is even greater: 2.9% of its traffic originated from ABC sites. But the ABC does not play favourites amongst the commercial sites: 2.2% of news.com.au traffic arrived from here.</p>
<p>Such public service is hardly reciprocated, however: only 0.9% of ABC News’ already lower volume of traffic originated from the two Fairfax sites.</p>
<h2>Empty corporate rhetoric</h2>
<p>There are deeper traffic patterns that the Hitwise data cannot reveal. What we see here are only the sites visited immediately before – not pages opened independently in another user session, or arrived at through a more circuitous route. And yes, as quality news publications ABC News and the two Fairfax sites do operate in the same market segment, of course.</p>
<p>But Hywood’s, and other media executives’, statements continue to assume that online audiences make a conscious binary choice between one outlet and another, and that public service media therefore distort the market. This fails to understand <a href="http://www.journalism.org/files/2013/10/facebook_news_10-24-2013.pdf">how serendipitous our news discovery has become</a> in an age of search and social recommendations. It also fails to recognise that serious news followers – the core audience for these sites – will often read multiple stories on the same events, from multiple outlets.</p>
<p>Not least perhaps because they know that understaffed newsrooms now regularly struggle to cover major issues in sufficient detail.</p>
<p>The traffic patterns we have seen here, at any rate, reveal that audiences lost to ABC News should be the least of Greg Hywood’s worries. The major Fairfax sites consistently outperform the ABC in terms of reader traffic, and the public broadcaster is even a net source of visits to the SMH and The Age.</p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/17/fairfax-chief-greg-hywood-refuses-to-discuss-pay-deal-at-senate-hearing">when Hywood calls for</a> “a level playing field which allows local media to take the necessary steps to compete with Google and Facebook”, he fails to recognise that these platforms are the single greatest source of traffic to Fairfax’s sites.</p>
<p>Fairfax, and other news sites, are not competing with Google and Facebook: for better or worse, they fundamentally rely on them for visibility and visitors. Media businesses that cannot adjust to this fact are doomed to struggle.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Data on Australian Internet users’ news browsing patterns are provided courtesy of <a href="http://www.hitwise.com/au">Hitwise</a>. All Hitwise figures based on data for March 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere". Axel Bruns is collaborating with The Conversation in the ARC Linkage project "Amplifying Public Value: Scholarly Contributions' Impact on Public Debate".</span></em></p>Explaining Fairfax’s struggles, CEO Greg Hywood blamed the ABC for distorting the market - but the national broadcaster actually drives traffic to its commercial competitors.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/768642017-05-02T23:24:44Z2017-05-02T23:24:44ZAustralian Twitter is more diverse than you think<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167350/original/file-20170501-8926-99wi8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tired of seeing the same thing on Twitter?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What are the major drivers of Twitter take-up, in Australia and elsewhere? Do we connect around shared interests, shared location, or pre-existing offline relationships? And when, in the eleven-year history of the platform, did these structures form?</p>
<p>These are the questions that guided a new, long-term study of the Australian national Twittersphere that my colleagues and I have undertaken. </p>
<p>Drawing on <a href="http://trisma.org/">TrISMA</a>, a major multi-institutional facility for social media analytics, we identified some 3.7 million Australian Twitter accounts in existence by early 2016, and captured the 167 million follower/followee connections between them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167138/original/file-20170428-15091-12mdr8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167138/original/file-20170428-15091-12mdr8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167138/original/file-20170428-15091-12mdr8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167138/original/file-20170428-15091-12mdr8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167138/original/file-20170428-15091-12mdr8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167138/original/file-20170428-15091-12mdr8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167138/original/file-20170428-15091-12mdr8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clusters in the Australian Twittersphere.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are plenty of assumptions and not a great deal of reliable data about how we use social media. </p>
<p>Twitter, for example, is variously accused of being <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/why-the-unbearable-darkness-of-the-twitsphere-has-made-me-quit-twitter/news-story/b44bfb77c50ec5d6f9ae28698b4b4ca4">a haven for leftist outrage</a> and <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/gday-pepe?utm_term=.bgpmwAbMm#.foDyn82Vy">a cesspool of alt-right fascists</a>. It is seen as <a href="https://theconversation.com/crisis-communication-saving-time-and-lives-in-disasters-through-smarter-social-media-50403">a crucial tool for crisis communication</a> and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2020378/Facebook-Twitter-creating-vain-generation-self-obsessed-people.html">a place where millennials share photos of their lunch</a>. Surely, these can’t all be true.</p>
<p>Part of the problem here is that we all design our own filter bubbles. What two random users see on Twitter might be entirely different, depending on what accounts they choose to follow, as journalism researcher Paul Bradshaw <a href="https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2016/06/28/dont-blame-facebook-for-your-own-filter-bubble/">has put it</a>. </p>
<p>If all you ever see is food porn, perhaps you need to make some new connections. (Or perhaps that’s what you’re there for). But if we could look beyond our own, personal networks, what would we see?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167139/original/file-20170428-15084-1f1nver.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Australian Twitter Accounts per Day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How Twitter grew</h2>
<p>Data from our study show Twitter took off in Australia in 2009, some three years after its launch, and saw a fairly steady daily sign-up rate of 1,000-2,000 new accounts between 2010 and 2014. Growth has slowed since then, which may indicate market saturation. </p>
<p>There are a number of spikes in sign-ups: the series of natural disasters in early 2011 attracted users to the platform who recognise its role in crisis communication, and the political turmoil of 2013 also seems to have driven take-up.</p>
<p>A major spike in 2015 appears to coincide with the devastating Nepal earthquake, but we’ve yet to determine why that event would lead to new Twitter accounts being created in Australia.</p>
<p>To focus in on the core parts of the network, we further filtered this to accounts that have at least 1,000 connections in the global Twittersphere, which left us with the 255,000 best-connected accounts. We visualised their network using <a href="http://gephi.org/">Gephi’s Force Atlas 2 algorithm</a>, which places accounts close to each other if they share many connections, and further apart if they are only poorly connected.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167140/original/file-20170428-15086-pbqq3v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clusters in the Australian Twittersphere.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Shared interests</h2>
<p>The network map shows clear clustering tendencies. Dense regions (in bright yellow), where many accounts are closely connected, are separated from each other by lower-density spaces (in darker colours). We systematically examined these clusters, labelling them based on the overarching themes that emerged from an analysis of the profiles in each cluster. </p>
<p>The result is a kind of birds-eye view of the Twitter landscape, from politics to popular culture and from education to sports.</p>
<p>Accounts connecting around teen culture make up the largest part of this network: 61,000 of our 255,000 accounts. There are 26,000 aspirational accounts (including self-declared social media gurus, self-improvement and life-coaching practitioners, and others who sought to use Twitter for professional betterment). There are also 25,000 accounts around sports (including distinct sub-clusters for cycling and horse racing) and 17,000 accounts of netizens, technologists, and software developers.</p>
<p>Shared interests emerge as the central drivers of our connections on Twitter. For the most part, we follow others because of the topics they cover, not because they’re from the same city or state or because we already know them offline. An equivalent map for Facebook, where connections are much more strongly based on prior acquaintance, would likely look very different.</p>
<p>We further found that these accounts also arrived on Twitter at very different times: both the netizen and the aspirational accounts were created very early in the history of the platform. Fully half of the population in both these clusters had arrived on Twitter by mid-2010. </p>
<p>Sports took a year longer, and may well have been helped along by Twitter Australia itself <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/twitter-flies-in-to-meet-leaders/story-e6frg996-1226523789033">as it reached out to key sporting codes</a> to get their teams and players signed up.</p>
<p>The teen culture accounts arrived a great deal later. It took until mid-2012 until half that cluster’s population had joined – a second, separate Twitter adoption event following the first big influx of Australian users in 2009/10. We suspect active encouragement from key bands like One Direction and Five Seconds of Summer to have been a major driver here.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167141/original/file-20170428-11206-1ynfxc1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Australian Accounts per Cluster per Month.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Axel Bruns / QUT Digital Media Research Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In spite of Twitter’s reputation as a space for political debate and agitation, politics attracts only some 13,000 accounts (including 1,500 that form a separate, staunchly right-wing cluster). There’s a great deal more to Twitter than political argument.</p>
<p>But if all you ever see on Twitter is partisan bickering, there may be a reason: per capita, the political accounts are some of the most active in the Australian Twittersphere. Over their lifetimes, they’ve each posted an average of 7.2 tweets per day (and the accounts in the hard right cluster even managed 12.5 per day); in the turbulent first quarter of 2017, those averages are even higher. </p>
<p>Most of the other major cluster communities have managed less than half that work rate. Historically, only the teen culture accounts have been similarly active.</p>
<p>In the end, Twitter is what its users make it. Australian users have made it a diverse and dynamic place, even if they’re less aware of each other than they should be. </p>
<p>As users, we should step beyond our networks more often, to avoid becoming trapped in our own filter bubbles – and this goes doubly for politicians, journalists, and others who now treat their immediate Twitter networks as an instant source of popular opinion.</p>
<p>And as a company, Twitter has much work to do to enable its users to experience the full variety of networked communication and culture that the platform has to offer. Changes to how it recommends new accounts to follow, and how it reveals trending topics outside of our existing networks, could help a great deal in combatting the threat of getting stuck in your own filter bubble.</p>
<p>It doesn’t stop there, of course. We can only speculate what the equivalent networks for Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat would look like, and what they might tell us about how people are using these platforms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research is supported by the ARC Future Fellowship project "Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere", and the ARC LIEF project "TrISMA: Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis."</span></em></p>Twitter is made up of numerous communities clustered around all manner of topics. If all you see is the same, it’s time to break out of your filter bubble.Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.