twitter adoption and use in mass convergence and emergency events

Twitter Adoption and Use in Mass Convergence and

Emergency Events

Amanda Lee Hughes & Leysia PalenConnectivIT Lab

University of Colorado at Boulder

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

2

Overview

• Quantitative & Opportunistic study of Twitter in the late summer of 2008

• Examine use in four mass convergence events– 2 emergency

– 2 non-emergency

• Future research

3

Twitter

• Micro-blogging service• Short messages up to 140 characters • Messages (also known as tweets) can

be sent and retrieved through various means

• Over 3 million user accounts• Nearly 1 million messages sent per day

4

Events of Study August and September of 2008

• Democratic National Convention (DNC)– August 25-28, 2008– Denver, Colorado– Estimated attendance of 50,000

• Republican National Convention (RNC)– September 1-4, 2008– Saint Paul, Minnesota– Estimated attendance of 45,000

5

Events of Study August and September of 2008

• Hurricane Gustav– August 25-September 4, 2008– US Landfall near Cocodrie, Louisiana on

September 1, 2008– Nearly two million evacuated in the US

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

6

Events of Study August and September of 2008

• Hurricane Ike– September 1-September 14, 2008– US Landfall at Galveston, Texas on

September 13, 2008– Mandatory evacuation of 160,000 in the US

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

7

Event Timeline

8

Data Collection

Event Data Collection Timeframe

Search Terms # Tweets

Conventions

DNC 21 Aug 2008 – 28 Aug 2008

Denver, DNC 21,139

RNC 8 Aug 2008 – 4 Sep 2008

RNC, St Paul, Saint Paul

17,588

Hurricanes

Gustav 25 Aug 2008 – 4 Sep 2008

Gustav, hurricane 38,373

Ike 1 Sep 2008 – 14 Sep 2008

Ike, hurricane 59,963

9

Data Collection

• General Twitter Sample - to compare against our event specific data– Taken during our entire data collection timeframe,

August 21, 2008 – September 14, 2008.

– Of the approximately 27 million tweets sent during this time frame we randomly sampled 1%

– Tweets from our other data sets were included

10

Convention Daily Twitter Activity

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

21-Aug-0822-Aug-0823-Aug-0824-Aug-0825-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-08

DNC

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

28-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08

RNC

11

Convention Daily Twitter Activity

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

21-Aug-0822-Aug-0823-Aug-0824-Aug-0825-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-08

DNC

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

28-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08

RNC

Days of each convention

12

Hurricane Daily Twitter Activity

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

25-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08

Gustav

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

1-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-085-Sep-086-Sep-087-Sep-088-Sep-089-Sep-0810-Sep-0811-Sep-0812-Sep-0813-Sep-0814-Sep-08

Ike

13

Hurricane Daily Twitter Activity

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

25-Aug-0826-Aug-0827-Aug-0828-Aug-0829-Aug-0830-Aug-0831-Aug-081-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-08

Gustav

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

# Tweets

1-Sep-082-Sep-083-Sep-084-Sep-085-Sep-086-Sep-087-Sep-088-Sep-089-Sep-0810-Sep-0811-Sep-0812-Sep-0813-Sep-0814-Sep-08

Ike

US Landfall US LandfallCuba Landfall

14

Number of Tweets Per User

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

DNCRNCGustavIke

15

Reply Tweet Example

“@miamiherald what did Gov. Crist say this morning about the Hurricane and Evacs? #Ike”

16

Reply Tweets

0

5

10

15

20

25

% ReplyTweets

DNCRNCGustavIkeGeneral

17

URL Tweet Examples

“Hurricane Ike hampers relief effort in Haiti - guardian.co.uk

http://tinyurl.com/5qwkjo”

“For latest shelter info: http://www.msema.org/ #gustav”

18

URL Tweets

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

% URL Tweets

DNC

RNC

Gustav

Ike

General

19

Adoption of Twitter

• Collected information about all the new users in each data set

• Examined how many tweets each new user had sent since the time of the original data collection

• Defined “active users” as those who have contributed one or more tweet every week

20

Adoption of Twitter

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

% Active Users

DNCRNCGustavIkeGeneral

21

Conclusions

• Twitter supports information broadcasting and brokerage.

• Preliminary evidence that those new Twitter users who join during and in apparent relation to a non-routine event are more likely to become long-term adopters of the technology.

22

Future Research

• This research serves as a baseline.• Twitter activity is changing.• Right now, we are looking at Twitter

activity around the recent Red River floods and Oklahoma fires. – Quantitative– Qualitative

23

Future Research

• Look for more to come soon...

24

Thank You!

• This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation:

– NSF CAREER Grant IIS-0546315

• For more information about our research in Crisis Informatics:

– http://disaster.cs.colorado.edu/