Introduction
We decided to look at the Twitter network of user @tharwacolamus. The user, Ammar Abdulhamid, is a US-based Syrian and Middle East activist with nearly 3,200 followers. He tweets in both English and Arabic and serves as an important lynchpin in the worldwide network of Middle-East activists.
Our dataset is the full 1.5-degree network of this user. It includes all of his followers, all of the links between any followers, and information on each user such as (number of followers/followed), most recent tweet, and biographies.
We cover nearly 5,200 separate relationships among almost 300 users. This network has a non-unique total of over 17 million followers, making it an excellent representation of the activist network. In addition, these 300 users are incredibly active, with an average of 5,300 tweets each.
Syrian Activist Twitter Presence Minimal
Egyptian and Middle East political exiles based in the U.K. are the most active.
Discussion
After pruning the data to display activity and impact on the network, it was evident that activists are extremely well connected among peers. A closer inspection revealed that Syrian activist presence is minimal even though protests are occurring.
Egypt clearly stands out as the main contributor to the activist population on Twitter. One explanation is that this country contains 25% of the total Arab population in the region, which is triple the number of inhabitants of the second-ranked country, Algeria.
This leaves us with a chicken-egg dilemma: did the activist community have an established network, which nurtured various revolutions throughout the Arab world or did the revolutions nurture the network?
The existence of a well established community may have provided activists with an effective tool, which they applied in their respective countries causing the domino-like revolutions the world has witnessed.
The U.K. based activists provide another significant contribution. Many exiled activists are operating from this country after leaving their respective countries. They most likely had networks of followers before being exiled.
Huffington Post and Aussie Radio Shows:
It’s all about connections.
Two sources are surprisingly the best-linked channels on the Middle East protests.
Discussion
Two press agencies clearly stand apart from the rest with respects to effective connection with Middle Eastern activists, media, and reporters. In this visualization, we focused on two well-connected media outlets and their relation to Abdulhamid’s network.
The Huffington Post is an online blog that aggregates content from a wide variety of sources on a single site. It differs from traditional media outlets by relying largely on third party contributions. This has created a niche for voices who do not receive proper attention nor have access to traditional media outlets, in this case Middle East activists. Its Web 2.0 architecture has created and continually strengthens a symbiotic relationship with its worldwide followers who can also participate as contributors. Furthermore, the Huffington Post is known for its liberal bias, evidently shared by activists.
@huffingtonpost has nearly a million followers and is the 355th most popular twitter account in the world (far higher if you do not count entertainment celebrities).
Australia’s ABC radio shows are also tremendously well connected in an even more direct way to Middle East activists. @amworldtodaypm is the twitter feed from three ABC Australian Radio programs: “AM”, “PM”, and “The World Today”. As you can see, their network of followers is even more central than the Huffington Post. This is even more surprising given that they only tweet at about 1/5th the rate, and have only five percent as many total followers!
We do not believe anybody has noted the incredible centrality of this particular media outlet, especially its relation to Middle East activism. Perhaps this station is known for its international reporting among those in the know.
Western Media Left in the Dark
Traditional media has minimal contact with active Middle East reformers.
Discussion
In this NodeXL visualization, we focused on the largest and most famous “Western media” outlets and their relation to Middle East activists.
American media outlets like CNN, C-Span, and ABC Politics have very few primary sources with respects to Middle Eastern activists. On Twitter, they mostly rely on secondary sources, which are often based outside of the Middle East, implying a mutual lack of interest.
Data shows the Middle Eastern activists are indifferent towards these media outlets. One possible cause is that these activists cannot depend on U.S. media outlets for timely and richly detailed reports.
Their traditional news retrieval architecture results in delays in reporting developments from that region and watered-down analyses. This in turn keeps them well-buffered from the activists that are the most-connected.
Disclaimer: American media outlets do report on events in the Middle East. However, this study shows that their interest in Twitter as a method of communication and information sharing is minimal. For example, @cnn has 1886456 followers but only follows 538 users, meaning that it does not factor this social networking tool into its news retrieval infrastructure.
NodeXL Application Critique
Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel
NodeXL is a Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 Template that can be used to visualize networks (“graphs” in the mathematical sense) and perform various analyses. It generally focuses on social media networks and has various tools to import data.
Benefits
High-Level
· Free to download
· Good documentation and books available
· Lots of import tools and import file formats supported
· Scales well enough to examine relatively large datasets
· Easy-to-use built-in statistical tools
· Piggybacks on users’ common knowledge of Excel
Low-Level
· Easy to start viewing graphs right away
· Contextual help often handy
· Install process easy
· Open-source (though GPL-incompatible)
Drawbacks
High-Level
· Only works on Microsoft Windows using Microsoft Excel, both of which are quite expensive.
· It can be difficult to fine layouts and column autofills that show interesting insights
· The tool appears to stop performing adequately with very large graphs.
Low-Level
· When refreshing, the graph takes a different form and the dynamic filters are reset.
· When saving an image, if you do not change the name, it overwrites a previously saved one without warning.
· Tips are displayed at random and are difficult to minimize.
· Twitter rate-limiting makes getting research-quality data nearly impossible
· Template doesn’t show up in “New” dialog box
Authors
Jorge Faytong
Nishant Patel
Acknowledgements
Ben Shneiderman, for his great help and contacts,
Derek Hansen, for helping us obtain the data,
Ammar Abdulhamid, for his network and feedback,
anyone we missed,
Twitter,
and the entire NodeXL team!
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