Paper presented at the Association of Internet Researchers conference, Salford, 19-21 Oct. 2012.

1. Sharing the News:
Dissemination of Links to
Australian News Sites on
Twitter
Axel Bruns, Tim Highfield, and Stephen Harrington
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns | t.highfield | s.harrington @ qut.edu.au
@snurb_dot_info | @timhighfield | @_StephenH
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

2. SOCIAL MEDIA AND REAL-TIME NEWS
• Key news-related uses of social media:
– First-hand news reports:
• Hudson River emergency landing; Abbottabad raid; crises and disasters
– Continuing news discussion:
• Information sharing, commentary, story curation
– ‘Ambient’ news coverage (Hermida; Burns):
• Early indicator of breaking stories; trending topics, themes, URLs, etc.
• Ad hoc formation of online communities:
– Drawing on available tools and platforms
– Driven by current themes and problems
– Quasi-journalistic research and commentary
– User-driven data journalism

3. HASHTAG METRICS

4. SHARING THE NEWS
• Twitter as a medium for news dissemination:
– Mainstream news sources remain important
– Twitter news sharing as a form of user-driven curation
– Everyday practice, heightened around acute events
• Gatewatching (Bruns, 2005):
– Collaborative tracking and sharing of relevant news
– By everyday users as well as journalists and other newsmakers
• Beyond hashtags:
– Sometimes centred around shared hashtags (#budget, #auspol)
– Usually a much more widespread, non-hashtagged practice

5. INVESTIGATING NEWS SHARING
• Standard Twitter research:
– Tracking of keywords / hashtags through Twitter API
– E.g. yourTwapperkeeper: delivers CSV/TSV datasets of tweets
– Further processing of datasets as required
• Tracking news sharing:
– Use of domain names (abc.net.au, smh, com.au) as keywords
– Returns all tweets containing these domain names
– Including tweets where URLs have been shortened
(e.g. abc.net.au  bit.ly  t.co)
– Enables tracking of all tweets which refer to specific sites

6. ATNIX: AUSTRALIAN TWITTER NEWS INDEX
abc.net.au
adelaidenow.com.au
• Basic principles: afr.com
au.news.yahoo.com
– ATNIX tracks 29 leading news and opinion sites brisbanetimes.com.au
– Further filtering for abc.net.au, ninemsn.com.au, sbs.com.au, canberratimes.com.au
by URL paths (broadcaster sites with extensive non-news couriermail.com.au
content); au.news.yahoo.com (general site + West Australian) crikey.com.au
dailytelegraph.com.au
– Links to opinion sections extracted by URL paths if possible heraldsun.com.au
– Tweets by staff and corporate accounts are retained independentaustralia.net
(key sources of retweets) nationaltimes.com.au
– Aggregation into daily and weekly volume newmatilda.com
news.com.au
ninemsn.com.au
• Parallels? nit.com.au
– Newspaper circulation: total number of sharing ‘readers’ ntnews.com.au
onlineopinion.com.au
– Television ratings: comparisons of Twitter ‘marketshare’ perthnow.com.au
– But: URL tweets ≠ click-throughs / site hits / reads sbs.com.au
skynews.com.au
smh.com.au
 ATNIX measures active audience engagement with content theage.com.au
(link sharing, regardless of whether articles have been read) theaustralian.com.au
theconversation.edu.au
theglobalmail.org
themercury.com.au
thepunch.com.au
watoday.com.au

7. Domain Operator Notes State
News sites
abc.net.au ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation, major public broadcaster all
adelaidenow.com.au News Ltd. Adelaide Advertiser newspaper SA
afr.com Fairfax Australian Financial Review newspaper, special interest all
au.news.yahoo.com Yahoo!7 Seven Network (TV) / Yahoo! joint venture, all /
includes The West Australian newspaper (Perth) WA
brisbanetimes.com.au Fairfax Brisbane Times online-only newspaper Qld.
canberratimes.com.au Fairfax Canberra Times newspaper ACT
couriermail.com.au News Ltd. Courier-Mail newspaper (Brisbane) Qld.
dailytelegraph.com.au News Ltd. Daily Telegraph tabloid (Sydney) NSW
heraldsun.com.au News Ltd. Herald Sun tabloid (Melbourne) Vic.
news.com.au News Ltd. news.com.au online-only news site all
ninemsn.com.au ninemsn Nine Network (TV) / Microsoft Network joint venture all
nit.com.au Independent National Indigenous Times, special interest all
ntnews.com.au News Ltd. Northern Territory News tabloid (Darwin) NT
perthnow.com.au News Ltd. Perth Now online-only news site WA
sbs.com.au SBS Special Broadcasting Service, minority public broadcaster all
skynews.com.au Sky News Sky News pay-TV news channel all
smh.com.au Fairfax Sydney Morning Herald newspaper NSW
theage.com.au Fairfax The Age newspaper (Melbourne) Vic.
theaustralian.com.au News Ltd. The Australian newspaper all
themercury.com.au News Ltd. The Mercury newspaper (Hobart) Tas.
watoday.com.au Fairfax WA Today online-only news site (Perth) WA
Opinion and Commentary
crikey.com.au Independent Crikey political commentary site all
independentaustralia.net Independent Independent Australia political commentary site all
nationaltimes.com.au Fairfax National Times commentary aggregator for Fairfax sites all
newmatilda.com Independent New Matilda political commentary site all
onlineopinion.com.au Independent On Line Opinion political commentary site all
theconversation.edu.au Independent The Conversation universities-supported commentary site all
thepunch.com.au News Ltd. The Punch commentary aggregator for News Ltd. sites all

8. (total volume: 2.2m tweets)

9. NEWS SITES, WEEK 25-40/2012

10. NEWS SITES, WEEK 25-40/2012

11. KEY OBSERVATIONS FOR NEWS SITES
• Distribution of attention:
– Some fluctuations, but week-to-week leaderboard largely stable
– Major, quality national news sources most important (Sydney
Morning Herald, ABC News)
• Standard weekly activity patterns:
– Strong Mondays, decline over the week
– Limited activity on weekend days, stronger for newspapers with
weekend editions
• Significant spikes in activity:
– Usually driven by domestic coverage reaching a global audience
(Julian Assange, Snoop Dogg/Lion, One Direction)
– Generally limited impact of major events on domestic activities:
no significant increase during the London Olympics etc.

12. (total volume: 300k tweets)

13. OPINION SITES, WEEK 25-40/2012

14. OPINION SITES, WEEK 25-40/2012

15. KEY OBSERVATIONS FOR OPINION SITES
• Distribution of attention:
– Significant fluctuations in attention share for sites
(e.g. SMH marketshare ranging from 21% to 36% of total)
– Mixture of mainstream mastheads / independent commentary sites
– Minor sites occasionally very prominent
– Performance usually centred on a handful of key articles
– Poor performance by paywalled content
• Standard weekly activity patterns:
– Drop-off on weekends, but less pronounced than for news
– Occasionally major spikes on weekend days
• Significant spikes in activity:
– Mixture of international and domestic stories / audiences
(Julian Assange, but also Alan Jones)

16. SITE COMPARISONS (WEEK 27: 2-8 JULY)
• User activity:
– Lead users (most active 1% of users)
– Highly active users (next 9%)
– Least active users (remaining 90%)
– Use of URLs in original tweets, @replies, retweets
a) Sydney Morning Herald b) ABC News c) news.com.au

17. AUDIENCE OVERLAP

18. CONCLUSIONS
• Twitter news sharing in Australia:
– Significant level of activity, stable patterns overall
– News much more widely shared than opinion
– Quality sites preferred: does not match overall news
consumption patterns in Australia
– Possible indicator of Australian Twitter demographics
(25-55, urban, affluent, educated)
– Domestic interests may shift, but total volume remains
relatively stable
– Significant spikes mainly when international audiences
share domestically-produced stories

19. OUTLOOK
• Open questions:
– Sharing  reading:
• Do shares result in hits on the sites?
• Relative impact of celebrity vs. mass link tweeting?
– Dissemination:
• How do links travel through the network?
• What is the role of official (corporate / staff) accounts?
– Domestic / international patterns:
• What proportion of the tweet volume is by Australian users?
• What international news sites do these users link to?
– Long-term patterns:
• How does activity change over the course of the year?
• Can we trace the impact of industry changes (e.g. paywalls)?

20. FURTHER INFORMATION
• ATNIX updates:
– Collected on Mapping Online Publics:
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/tag/atnix/
– Weekly column at The Conversation:
http://theconversation.edu.au/columns/axel-bruns-1433

21. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
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