Breaking news on Twitter
Mengdie Hu Georgia Tech
Shixia Liu MSR Asia
Furu Wei MSR Asia
Yingcai Liu UC Davis
John Stasko Georgia Tech
Kwan-Liu Ma UC Davis
Twitter broke Osama Bin Laden’s death
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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Twitter broke Osama Bin Laden’s death
9:45 pm: White House announces Pres. Obama speech
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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Twitter broke Osama Bin Laden’s death
10:24 pm: Keith Urbahn tweets about Osama rumor
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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Twitter broke Osama Bin Laden’s death
10:45 pm: ABC, NBC & CBS report Bin Laden’s death
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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Twitter broke Osama Bin Laden’s death
11:30 pm: Pres. Obama begins remarks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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Prior Analysis
• Brian Stelter (New York Times): How the Bin Laden
Announcement Leaked Out
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/how-the-osama-announcement-leaked-out/
• Gilad Lotan (SocialFlow): Breaking Bin Laden:
Visualizing the Power of a Single Tweet
http://blog.socialflow.com/post/5246404319/breaking-bin-laden-visualizing-the-power-of-a-single
• Frédéric Filloux (Guardian): Lessons from the Osama
bin Laden Coverage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/09/lessons-from-bin-laden-coverage
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Data
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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Data
•
•
•
•
May 1st 10:20 pm EST – May 2nd 12:20 am EST
“laden”
614,976 tweets
Sampled (roughly 10%)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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Did Twitter Break the news?
Tweets posted between 10:20 and 10:45 pm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitteroffice/5681263084
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News breakers
@jacksonjk: Jill Jackson – CBS News Capitol Hill producer
@keithurbahn: Keith Urbahn - Chief of staff of former defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld
@brianstelter: Brian Stelter – New York Times reporter
Mentions per min
1200
1000
800
600
@keithurbahn
@jacksonjk
@brianstelter
400
200
0
22:21 22:23 22:25 22:28 22:30 22:33 22:35 22:37 22:39 22:41 22:43 22:45
Time
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News breakers
Mentions per min
1200
1000
800
600
400
@keithurbahn
@jacksonjk
@brianstelter
10:24 pm
10:32 pm
200
0
22:21 22:23 22:25 22:28 22:30 22:33 22:35 22:37 22:39 22:41 22:43 22:45
Time
12
Did Twitter convince its audience?
• All English Tweets in data set: 420,134
• Certainty classification
– Certain: They caught Osama Bin Laden!
– Uncertain: Rumor, Bin Laden dead. Don’t know for sure.
– Irrelevant: Obama: "the US is not – and never will be – at
war with Islam…Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he
was a mass murderer...“
• Classifier
– Training set: 300 tweets, 2 raters agreed on 235 (78.3%)
– SVM with bag-of-words as features
– Cross-validation: 75.8% overall confidence
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Keith Urbahn
1
22:21
22:28
22:35
22:41
22:46
22:51
22:55
22:59
23:02
23:06
23:09
23:13
23:16
23:20
23:23
23:27
23:30
23:34
23:37
23:41
23:45
23:48
23:52
23:56
0:00
0:05
0:10
0:15
% of tweets classified
as certain
Did Twitter convince its audience?
ABC, NBC and CBS
Obama speech
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Time
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Did Twitter convince its audience?
1
ABC, NBC and CBS
Obama speech
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
22:21
22:28
22:35
22:41
22:46
22:51
22:55
22:59
23:02
23:06
23:09
23:13
23:16
23:20
23:23
23:27
23:30
23:34
23:37
23:41
23:45
23:48
23:52
23:56
0:00
0:05
0:10
0:15
% of tweets classified
as certain
Keith Urbahn
Time
29.91% tweets @keithurbahn contains “Rumsfeld”
18.61% tweets @jacksonjk contains “CBS”
20.74% tweets @briansteler contains “NYT”
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Who generated the buzz?
• 100 accounts mentioned in 18.10% of
sampled tweets
Mainstream media
26 @cnn, @nytimes, @cnnbrk
Media people
18 @jacksonjk, @brianstelter
Twitter celebrities
16 @nzafro, @yourfavwhiteguy
Real-life celebrities
15 @stevemartintogo, @kimkardashianb
Blogs
6 @realmorte, @ugglytruth
Political people & org
4 @barackobama, @whitehouse
“Osama”, “Jesus”
4 @real_bin_laden, @osamabinladen
News aggregators
3 @breakingnews, @usabreakingnews
Others
5 @jtalarico328, @realliltunechii
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Who generated the buzz?
3500
mass media
Mentions per min
3000
media people
2500
celebrities
2000
1500
1000
500
0
22:21
22:43
22:57
23:09
23:21
23:32
23:45
23:57
0:14
Time
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What did people share?
• 9.69% tweets contain links
• Top 26 sites made up 58.8% of total valid links
URL number / tweet number
0.18
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
22:21
22:28
22:35
22:41
22:46
22:51
22:55
22:59
23:02
23:06
23:09
23:13
23:16
23:20
23:23
23:27
23:30
23:34
23:37
23:41
23:45
23:48
23:52
23:56
0:00
0:05
0:10
0:15
0
18
0
cnn.com
msn.com
nytimes.com
twitpic.com
yfrog.com
globo.com
twitlonger.com
youtube.com
tumblr.com
reuters.com
tmi.me
lockerz.com
mashable.com
go.com
bbc.co.uk
wsj.com
facebook.com
whitehouse.gov
huffingtonpost.com
aljazeera.net
yahoo.com
google.com
foxnews.com
uol.com.br
blogspot.com
globovision.com
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
Mass media and government
4000
4500
64.07%
Video & image sharing, social networks,
35.93%
blogs and tweet-shortening services
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Discussion
• People are willing to trust information from
social media – if the sources are credible
• Concentration of attention on “elite users”
• Different groups of elite users play different
parts
• Journalists utilize personal social media
accounts to “break” news
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Associated Press Staff Scolded for Tweeting Too Quickly About
OWS Arrests
The official rules note, "Don’t break news that we haven’t published, no matter
the format." (Reuters spells out the same idea plainly in their handbook: "Don't
scoop the wire.") Instead of getting "caught in the moment," the AP's
freewheeling tweeters are urged in the e-mail to run "sensitive official AP
business" through editors and corporate communications. The AP's social media
guidelines were recently updated to insist, "Retweets, like tweets, should not be
written in a way that looks like you’re expressing a personal opinion on the issues
of the day.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/11/ap-staff-scolded-for-tweeting-about-ows-arrests.html
Breaking news guidance for BBC journalists
“But we've been clear that our first priority remains ensuring that important
information reaches BBC colleagues, and thus all our audiences, as quickly as
possible - and certainly not after it reaches Twitter.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2012/02/twitter_guidelines_for_bbc_jou.html
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