Over the past 16 years, Twitter has amassed an incredible amount of user-generated data which contains a detailed and extensive record of cultural moments. Musk’s takeover threatens these archives.
Suleman Lazarus, London School of Economics and Political Science and Mark Button, University of Portsmouth
Twitter users’ responses suggest that southern Yahoo boys are more criminalised by Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission than their northern counterparts. We explain why.
Social media sites like Twitter have been a major source of both true and false information regarding COVID-19 vaccines.
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Jungmi Jun, University of South Carolina and Ali Zain, University of South Carolina
A team analyzed more than 21 million tweets about COVID-19 vaccines and found that negative sentiments on social media were tied to lower-than-expected vaccination rates in many nations.
‘That physicians in the Anti-Vaccine Society (England, early 19th C) were concerned that Jenner’s smallpox inoculation gave people bovine-like features.’ – historian’s tweet in reply to author asking about memorable finds.
Twitter/Wellcome
Historians, archivists and other researchers got in touch with tales of their archival finds and bizarre research moments. These ranged from the quirky to the disturbing to the profound.
Tweeting from NYC? There’s a good chance you’re talking about art. LA? More likely health care.
Times Square: farmboyted/Flickr, Sunset Boulevard: Doug Kerr/Flickr
The differences in sentiment in areas of high and low neighbourhood amenity have been clear under Melbourne’s tough COVID restrictions. It’s further evidence of the impacts of inequity on well-being.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Donald Trump have had different approaches to tweeting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here the two talk during a NATO session in December 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
An analysis of social media troll activity during the 2016 election campaign shows that exposure to Russian propaganda may have helped change American minds in favor of Republican candidate Trump.
Lesley Visser was one of the first female television sports reporters – but she’s appalled at how little progress has been made.
AP Photo/Bill Sikes
Female athletes barely receive more attention than horses and dogs. And if you’re a woman who wants to become a sports journalist, you should steel yourself for some social media venom.
Trump isn’t the first to think a country can be full.
Arthimedes/Shutterstock.com
The positive mood of tweets varies with time of day and season, but it’s consistently higher in parks than in built-up areas, where people are more likely to express anger and fears.
How do we know that what people tweet is what they really think?
Shutterstock/AlesiaKan
Twitter can be a useful tool in trying to predict what people think on an issue. So why did a study of almost half a million tweets on the same-sex marriage survey get it wrong?
Some may say it’s far fetched to compare a 1970s African dictator with the President of the United States. But the similarities between Idi Amin and Donald Trump are quite startling.
Donald Trump’s reinvention of the royal fiat as rule-by-tweet, or ‘twiat’, is anti-democratic and needs to be resisted.
Twitter
Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science
Donald Trump is reinventing the royal fiat by novel means: the rule-by-tweet, or ‘twiat’. This move is not an extension of popular democracy, but its enemy, and it needs to be resisted.
This will be part of your permanent record.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
On Twitter’s 10th birthday, we look at how researchers have used the platform for a range of studies, from predicting the next flu outbreak to identifying the happiest city in America.