Behruz Mistry AD1 Info 202 Chang Liu

An Analysis Of The Use And Influence Of Twitter Upon

Society And Other Twitter Users Direct Online Links

Info 202 Article Review Assignment 2

Behruz Mistry

Section: AD1
TA: Chang Liu

In this paper, I will review an article that discusses the use of twitter online and

the influence that twitter users and tweets about certain topics has on other

users and their views/opinions about the topic. In order to analyze the

implications of twitter as a modern day system, I will reflect upon the

infrastructure of the socio-technical interaction network and depict its influence

on broader society; the exploration includes consideration of users who are

more influential and how far their influence spreads based on the structure of

twitter. In addition, I will also explore twitter as a form of media, and see the

relationship that the network with news broadcasting, gossip and other forms of

public information.

The article Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy

(Kling 2002), written by Meeyoung Cha, Hamed Haddadi, Fabricio Benevenuto

and Krishna P. Gummadi, for the Association for the Advancement of Artificial

Intelligence (AAAI) explores primarily the influence that direct links on social

media, specifically twitter, have on users; direct links are reflected by anything

from intimate friendships to common interests. The paper compares three main

measures of influence, the three ways of user interactions: the number of users

who follow/tweet to a user (indegree), forwarding these tweets to their own

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followers (retweeting), and commenting or responding to the initial tweet

(mentioning). Focusing on different topics, the authors examine how the three

types of influential users performed in spreading popular news topics.

Additionally, they also investigate the dynamics of an individuals influence by

topic and over time. Thirdly, they characterize the precise behaviors that make

ordinary individuals gain high influence over a short period of time.

Overall, the authors concluded three main observations. Firstly, popular users

who have high indegree (number of followers) are not necessarily influential in

terms of producing retweets or mentions. Secondly, the most influential users

can hold significant influence over a variety of topics, and not just topics that

they are related too. Finally, influence is not gained spontaneously or

accidentally, but through concerted effort such as limiting tweets to a single

topic; users tend to produce a fan base, and thus promote topics that appeal to

their followers. The authors findings provide new understandings of viral

marketing and may even suggest that traditional marketing strategies such as

promoting through a user with a large amount of followers may not have much

influence on the public. (Kling 2002)

The first perspective that I explore in my essay is that of infrastructure and socio-

technical interactive networks (STINs). The concept of STINs describe the

widespread resources that contribute to allowing a system of any form to work

effectively; this can include anything from people and political influence, to roads and

gas stations (the STIN of Cars). STINs are rooted in all forms of information

communication technology used in daily life. (Gasser 2015)

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The basis of STINs are considered infrastructure; this includes the physical and

technological organization of a system. It is important to note that each element of a

STIN is essential to the overall operation, and cannot be neglected each element is

crucial to the infrastructure of the system, another sub-concentration of my essay.

Another aspect of STINs is the idea of socio-technical shaping; it is often considered

that the development of technology shapes society and its outcomes, or vise versa

social norms are a driving motive to the advancement of technology. For example,

technical difficulties with equipment in an e-learning environment can greatly

frustrate users. In turn, the lack of faith that users express towards e learning, leaves

the online system redundant.

The second perspective I will explore the implications of twitter from is as a form of

media. We can often think of ICTs as a form of media for conveying and shaping

information and experience. The ICT acts as a mediator between the source and the

recipient of the information.

It is important to remember that media is easily manipulated and can often lead to

deception of the recipient. One aspect of ICT as media is representation; the

information that the ICT produces is a representation of the real information, and thus

can be misinterpreted. For example, when viewing an image online, we are shown

only a momentary capture of the real-life experience and not the context or

background of the experience.

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Furthermore, it is easy for users of media to select what information they choose to

portray, and what information is rejected, or what is more focused upon. Once again,

this removes from the context of the information. It is critical, then, which is named

as the gatekeeper of the information i.e. who decides what information is spread.

(Gasser 2015)

The studies that the research team conducted included forming datasets of the

most followed users on twitter, such as athletes, celebrities, musicians and

writers. When analyzing the infrastructure of a network such as twitter, indegree

serves as a useful tool to measure the influence that users have in a direct one-

on-one relationship.

The most retweeted users were found to be informational content aggregation

services such as TweetMeme, TwitterTips, and UberFacts. Additionally, news

sites such as the NY Times and The Onion were also highly retweeted. This is

because such users provide data about trending topics, and users retweet them

in order to appeal to their own followers. As evident, unlike indegree, retweets

represent influence of a user beyond ones personal followers, and show further

interaction. In this case, popular tweets could be propagated through multiple

nodes of the network.

The infrastructure of twitter also allows for direct communication, through the

form of mentions. The study finds that the most mentioned users were usually

celebrities, indicating twitter users belief that they are in fact communicating

with said celebrity; this shows twitter to be a very powerful form of

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communication, and proves the connectivity of the network allows for people to

connect, irrespective of socio-economical status or geographical location. More

importantly, however, it highlights how the comments or opinions of one person

can easily resonate globally and influence a large amount of people.

Twitter, as an ICT, can be found both incredibly useful and unreliable as a source

of information. From one perspective, twitter provides a minute-by-minute

update on global happenings, and allows users who do not read/watch the news

to remain informed. In addition, information can be passed dynamically and

distributed to a large user-base with little effort.

However, due to the nature of ICT mediums, as mentioned earlier, a lot of

information that is propagated through twitter can often be incorrectly

portrayed or misinterpreted. In accordance to the large-scale distribution of

twitter, the network also risks large-scale misinformation. (Diplomacy.edu, N.p.,

2015)

Gossip columns and celebrity news users will often use this to their advantage,

and provide only the most controversial news, or subjectively phrase their posts

or pictures to implicate certain ideologies amongst other users (ElTayeby, Molnar

& George, 2015). Due to the controversial nature of most of these posts, already

misinformed users are likely to spread this information, and in turn misinform

further. It is possible that the secondary recipients of the information will then

progress to follow the primary source, and promote the misinformation further.

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Behruz Mistry AD1 Info 202 Chang Liu

As evident, the cyclic nature is dangerous for users and can often be detrimental

to reliable news.

Ultimately, the three main interactions provided by twitter to its users indicate

varying levels of influence upon the consumers. Whilst indegree represents a

users popularity and shows infrastructural dominance, it is not necessary a

factor of influence in terms of audience engagement. Alternatively, retweets are

driven by the content value of a tweet, and the topic of discussion is a huge

contributor to the popularity of the specific tweet; this shows that twitter can be

used effectively as a news media distributor, due to the dynamic nature of its

circulation. One interesting observation is that twitter influence is not made

spontaneously or accidentally, but rather earned through a concentrated effort

over time; a fan base must be built and expanded. In my opinion, this gives

twitter users the freedom to use twitter as an appropriate and reliable basis of

information by selectively following sources that have a good reputation and

that they trust. Through this process, the influence of tweets can be filtered to

users preference, which is assumed to be accuracy and validity. Unfortunately, it

can often be the case that users are unaware of the credibility of certain users,

and continue to be influenced by them regardless.

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References
Diplomacy.edu,. 'Indegree, Retweets, And Mentions: What Does It Take To
Be Influential On Twitter?'. N.p., 2015. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.
ElTayeby, Omar, Peter Molnar, and Roy George. 'Measuring The Influence
Of Mass Media On Opinion Segregation Through Twitter'. Procedia
Computer Science 36 (2014): 152-159. Web.
Kling, Rob, Geoffrey McKim, and Adam King. 'A Bit More To It: Scholarly
Communication Forums As Socio-Technical Interaction
Networks'. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology 54.1 (2002): 47-67. Web.
Wait... What?,. '11 Concerns About Icts And Social Media For
Social Good'. N.p., 2010. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.