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Extra, Extra, Tweet All About It!: How Twitter Became Synonymous with News

Sara Clark, Irene Wang, Amelia Lee

October 1, 2019

Milestone 2: Research

In this research-focused milestone, we focused on three areas of Twitter and news media related research. The first category, “History of Twitter and Development of News Media” is focused on questions regarding the development of the social media platform Twitter. In addition, this portion of research seeks to understand social media platforms as the most modern form of news and opinion sharing. The next category seeks to answer questions about the “Public perception and usage of the platform.” This research focuses on case studies related to how users view the platform and seeks to discover the various uses of the platform beyond sharing news. The last category of questions this research focuses on is titled “Algorithms and Content Management” and the technological side of Twitter. It reveals how Twitter the company monitors the platform and the effect of their algorithms on content and user interactions.

History of Twitter and Development of News Media

Academic/Scholarly Articles

  1. Barnard, Stephen R. Twitter and the Journalistic Field:How the Growth of a New(s) Medium is Transforming Journalism. ProQuest, 2013. Link to article. Keywords: Journalism, development of media, news, history.
  2. Siles, Ignacio:Inventing Twitter: an Iterative Approach to New Media Development Citation Metadata. International Journal of Communication (Online), 1 Sept. 2013. Link to article. Keywords: Development, Creation, History.

General News Sources/Ethics

  1. Bilton, Nick: All Is Fair in Love and Twitter., The New York Times, 9 Oct. 2013. Link to article. Keywords: Founders, creation, development.
  2. Bilton, Nick: Ferguson Reveals a Twitter Loop., The New York Times 28 Aug. 2014. Link to article. Keywords: Twitter, news, politics.

Techonology/Finance Focused Publications

  1. Martínez, Antonio García: Journalism Isn't Dying. It's Returning to Its Roots., Wired, Conde Nast, 9 Feb. 2019. Link to article. Argues that news on Twitter reflects 19th century journalism; Keywords: Journalism, history.
  2. Martin, Nicole: How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News., Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 Nov. 2018. Link to article. Keywords: Social Media, news, Development

Public perception of platform and usage

Academic/Scholarly

  1. David S. Morris: Twitter Versus the Traditional Media: A Survey Experiment Comparing Public Perceptions of Campaign Messages in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, , Social Science Computer Review, August 2018. Link to article. Keywords: 2016 Presidential Campaign, Public Perceptions, Trump.
  2. Jiang Bian, Kenji Yoshigoe, Amanda Hicks, Jiawei Yuan, Zhe He, Mengjun Xie, Yi Guo, Mattia Prosperi, Ramzi Salloum, François Modave: Mining Twitter to Assess the Public Perception of the “Internet of Things”, PLOS|ONE, July 8, 2016. Link to article. Keywords: Social Media, Public Perception, Google Trends.

Twitter’s interference with public domains and accounts

  1. Kate Conger: Facebook and Twitter Say China Is Spreading Disinformation in Hong Kong, New York Times, 19 Aug. 2019. Link to article. Main Topic: Twitter Account suspensions in Hong Kong
  2. Chris Baraniuk: How Twitter Bots Help Fuel Political Feuds, Scientific American, March 27, 2018. Link to article. Key Ideas: Bot accounts, spreading propaganda, retweets.

Relationship between tweets and votes

  1. Emerging Technology from the arXiv: How tweets translate to votes, MIT Technology review,27 Oct. 2017. Link to article. Keywords: Voters, Political Discourse, Politicians

Opinion articles

  1. Daniel Funke: How has fake news on Twitter changed since the 2016 election? Not much, report finds, Poynter, Oct 4, 2018. Link to article. Main ideas: Fake news, misinformation on the the spread of fake news, external researchers.
  2. Melissa Blake: What if we all unfollowed Trump on Twitter?, CNN, Aug 3, 2019. Link to article. Main ideas: Trump, Reality TV, Stage.
  3. Noah Smith: Twitter’s Problem Isn’t the Like Button, Bloomberg, Oct 30, 2018. Link to article. Main idea: The Like button is a much-needed way of delivering positive feedback on a platform that tends to amplify the negative.
  4. Lindy West: I’ve left Twitter. It is unusable for anyone but trolls, robots and dictators, The Guardian, Opinion, Jan 3, 2017. Link to article. Key ideas: Deactivating a twitter account, authentic voice verses online presence.

Algorithms and Content-Management

Academic/Scholarly

  1. Kurt Thomas, Chris Grier, Vern Paxson, Dawn Song: Suspended Accounts in Retrospect: An Analysis of Twitter Spam, International Computer Science Institute, November 2011. Link to article. Discusses how spam content is created and is able to thrive on Twitter’s platform as well as how Twitter’s algorithm works to identify such spam in order to remove it.
  2. Ajeet Grewal, Jimmy Lin: The Evolution of Content Analysis for Personalized Recommendations at Twitter, SIGIR '18: The 41st International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research & Development in Information Retrieval, June 2018. Link to article. Looks at what algorithms Twitter uses to make recommendations to users but also suggests better algorithmic approaches to give users more streamlined and refined recommendations.
  3. Kiran Garimella, Ingmar Weber, Munmun De Choudhury: Quote RTs on Twitter: usage of the new feature for political discourse, WebSci '16: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science, May 2016. Link to article. Examines how the quote RT feature of Twitter has influenced users’ ability to engage in meaningful political discourse.

General New Scources/Ethics

  1. Kimberly Ellis: Black Twitter Saw This Coming, In These Times, Chicago, Jun 2018. Link to article. Article looking at which account Twitter has chosen to remove from its platform vs the ones which are allowed to stay using the company’s algorithm. Mentions the backlash Twitter has received for not managing the content on the platform how users would like.
  2. Amy Webb: Bots Bite Man, Mother Jones, San Francisco, March/April 2017. Link to article. Discusses how algorithms are programmed to design user feeds and promote viral content which can unintentionally spread fake news which help to affirm user beliefs, whether true or false. Algorithms can therefore unintentionally reinforce user biases.
  3. David Pierson: Social media just latest tool to stir discord; Indictments reveal how Russia exploited Facebook and Twitter to foster fear, outrage and unverified info, February 2018. Link to article. Discusses how algorithms push content that makes users angry in order to have higher engagement and how this can have negative effects on discourse and political spheres.

Technology/Finance Focused Publications

  1. Arielle Pardes: At Twitter, It Seems No One Can Hear the Screams, Wired, Aug 15, 2019. Link to article. Article about how Twitter decides the type of content that show up in the trending topics page, how Twitter is used as a platform to fuel hate or affirm toxic opinions and how Twitter is attempting to make the platform a place for healthy dialogue while still showing users content that are relevant to them.
  2. Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox: Twitter Has Started Researching Whether White Supremacists Belong on Twitter, May 29, 2019. Link to article. Article looks at how Twitter is debating whether or not to ban white supremacists from using the platform and whether or not people with differing opinions should be allowed to remain in order to provide opportunity for “healthy discourse”. Ties into how users view the platform as article discusses how Twitter can be echo chambers in that people aren’t going to Twitter to have meaningful dialogue but rather to further their own opinions. Some good academic researchers mentioned in the article who’s work could be useful to our project.
  3. Alexis Madriga: You Can Never Go Back to the Old Twitter, The Atlantic, September 18, 2018. Link to article. Mentions Twitter’s ways of designing users’ feeds and arranging the content users see. Briefly mentions how the algorithms decide what to put as the top tweets for you to see. Discusses the benefits and downfalls of the way Twitter’s feed is set up.