Andreas Jungherr
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Publications
    • Digital Transformations of the Public Arena (2022)
    • Retooling Politics: How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy (2020)
    • Analyzing Political Communication with Digital Trace Data (2015)
    • Das Internet in Wahlkämpfen: Konzepte, Wirkungen und Kampagnenfunktionen (2013)
  • Podcast: Tech and Politics
  • Media
  • Teaching
  • Impressum
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Publications
    • Digital Transformations of the Public Arena (2022)
    • Retooling Politics: How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy (2020)
    • Analyzing Political Communication with Digital Trace Data (2015)
    • Das Internet in Wahlkämpfen: Konzepte, Wirkungen und Kampagnenfunktionen (2013)
  • Podcast: Tech and Politics
  • Media
  • Teaching
  • Impressum
15 Mar 2015
Andreas Jungherr Conferences
2015/03/15 Andreas Jungherr

Twitter in the Analysis of Social Phenomena: Poster

Next week I will participate in the Herrenhäuser Konferenz on Big Data in a Transdisciplinary Perspective organized by the Volkswagen Stiftung. The conference aims to address issues raised by “big data” in science, business, and politics:

Large amounts of data, a variety of sources, high speed production, but also high speed processing – these are the basic characteristics of Big Data. The amount of data that is generated and collected in each second grows exponentially. The management of Big Data, the intelligent use of large, heterogeneous data sets, is becoming increasingly important for competition. It is affecting all sectors – industry and academia but also the public sector. While the economy is exploring Big Data as a new gold mine, politicians are fighting over the problem of data capitalism, whereas science tackles the question of cross-disciplinary benefits, as well as on the challenges and the likely consequences for technology, innovation, and society.

I will contribute a poster focusing on some of my dissertation’s findings on the use of Twitter in the analysis of social and political phenomena. More on that topic later this year once the dissertation is published.

Twitter in the Analysis of Social Phenomena: Mediated Reflections of Social Life in Digital Trace Data

Most research using digital trace data in the analysis of social phenomena implicitly assumes these data to provide true mirrors to phenomena of interest (mirror hypothesis). Given specific data generating processes producing the data used in these analyses, this hypothesis seems highly unlikely. Instead, it is far more likely that these data offer a skewed reflection of social phenomena mediated through interests, attention, and intentions of users and service-specific affordances (mediation hypothesis). This can be illustrated by the analysis of political phenomena with digital trace data collected on the microblogging service Twitter.

Traces of political phenomena in Twitter data are produced in a multi-step mediation process. Based on an underlying political or social phenomenon (A) a stimulus emerges (such as an event) which has to grab the attention of a Twitter user for her to consider referring to politics in a tweet (B). Following this, users have to encode their initial responses to elements of political reality within the technological limitations of the microblogging service to create a digital artifact, tweet (C). These can in turn be aggregated (D). Based on these aggregates, various metrics can be calculated (e.g. mention counts of political actors or the structure of networks based on their interactions), potentially allowing inferences on the political phenomena giving rise to the data (4).

The relationship between tweets and political reality is thus filtered by various mediating steps, potentially introducing various biases leading the picture of political reality emerging from aggregates of tweets to be blurred or skewed. Three types of influences are likely to affect this mediation process. Some are based on characteristics of events in political reality (1), some on the individual characteristics of users (2), and some on the specific technological design of Twitter and respective usage conventions (3). These mediating factors have to be examined much more closely to understand which parts of political reality are likely to be emphasized by this process and which are likely to be neglected.

Political reality as found in aggregates of Twitter messages diverges from political reality in general. This is true for political events, popular topics of discussion, and attention towards political actors. This suggests some caution in expecting Twitter data to provide a true image of political phenomena. Instead, digital trace data appear to provide a selection of political reality determined by various mediation processes associated with the use of various digital services. Put differently, we have to take the dynamics and mechanisms of mediation of political reality through digital services seriously if we want to use digital trace data in the analysis of political and social phenomena.

Further Reading:
Jungherr, A. (2015). Analyzing Political Communication with Digital Trace Data: The Role of Twitter Messages in Social Science Research. Springer, Heidelberg. In Press.

Big Data, Computational Social Science, Herrenhausen Conference, Herrenhäuser Konferenz, Twitter, Volkswagen Stiftung
  • Recent Posts

    • New working paper: What do people expect from Artificial Intelligence? Public opinion on alignment in AI moderation from Germany and the United States
    • Neuer Kurs: Forschungsprojekt in der Computational Social Science
    • New Course: Misinformation, disinformation and other digital fakery (Summer 2025)
    • New Course: Artificial Intelligence and Democracy (Summer 2025)
    • Interview zu übertriebenen Ängsten vor Desinformation und digitaler Regulierungslust
  • Categories

    • Conferences
    • Interviews
    • Lecture Podcast
    • News
    • Notes
    • Public Speaking
    • Publications
    • Teaching
    • Videos
  • Archives

    • May 2025 (1)
    • April 2025 (3)
    • March 2025 (3)
    • February 2025 (7)
    • January 2025 (3)
    • November 2024 (4)
    • September 2024 (1)
    • July 2024 (2)
    • June 2024 (5)
    • April 2024 (4)
    • February 2024 (2)
    • January 2024 (1)
    • December 2023 (1)
    • November 2023 (1)
    • July 2023 (2)
    • June 2023 (1)
    • April 2023 (1)
    • March 2023 (1)
    • February 2023 (2)
    • December 2022 (1)
    • November 2022 (1)
    • October 2022 (3)
    • July 2022 (1)
    • June 2022 (4)
    • May 2022 (2)
    • April 2022 (1)
    • February 2022 (1)
    • January 2022 (2)
    • December 2021 (3)
    • November 2021 (1)
    • October 2021 (2)
    • September 2021 (3)
    • July 2021 (1)
    • June 2021 (4)
    • April 2021 (3)
    • March 2021 (2)
    • January 2021 (1)
    • December 2020 (1)
    • November 2020 (2)
    • October 2020 (2)
    • September 2020 (1)
    • July 2020 (1)
    • June 2020 (1)
    • April 2020 (5)
    • March 2020 (2)
    • February 2020 (1)
    • January 2020 (4)
    • November 2019 (1)
    • October 2019 (2)
    • September 2019 (1)
    • July 2019 (1)
    • April 2019 (3)
    • January 2019 (1)
    • November 2018 (1)
    • September 2018 (2)
    • March 2018 (1)
    • February 2018 (1)
    • December 2017 (1)
    • October 2017 (1)
    • September 2017 (1)
    • July 2017 (2)
    • June 2017 (1)
    • May 2017 (3)
    • April 2017 (2)
    • March 2017 (2)
    • January 2017 (2)
    • December 2016 (1)
    • November 2016 (1)
    • October 2016 (17)
    • July 2016 (11)
    • June 2016 (1)
    • March 2016 (1)
    • February 2016 (2)
    • January 2016 (1)
    • November 2015 (3)
    • October 2015 (1)
    • September 2015 (3)
    • May 2015 (1)
    • April 2015 (3)
    • March 2015 (3)
    • February 2015 (3)
    • January 2015 (1)
    • October 2014 (2)
    • August 2014 (2)
    • April 2014 (1)
    • March 2014 (1)
    • February 2014 (2)
    • December 2013 (1)
    • October 2013 (3)
    • September 2013 (3)
    • August 2013 (4)
    • July 2013 (3)
    • June 2013 (2)
    • May 2013 (1)
    • April 2013 (1)
    • March 2013 (1)
    • February 2013 (1)
    • December 2012 (1)
    • November 2012 (2)
    • October 2012 (3)
    • September 2012 (3)
    • August 2012 (2)
    • June 2012 (1)
    • April 2012 (8)
    • March 2012 (1)
    • February 2012 (1)
    • October 2011 (2)
    • September 2011 (1)
    • August 2011 (1)
    • July 2011 (5)
    • June 2011 (2)
    • May 2011 (4)
    • April 2011 (1)
    • March 2011 (2)
    • February 2011 (3)
    • January 2011 (2)
    • December 2010 (3)
    • November 2010 (1)
    • October 2010 (1)
    • September 2010 (3)
    • July 2010 (1)
    • June 2010 (2)
    • May 2010 (1)
    • April 2010 (4)
    • March 2010 (3)
    • February 2010 (6)
    • January 2010 (1)
    • December 2009 (3)
    • August 2009 (1)
    • April 2009 (1)
    • March 2009 (3)
    • January 2009 (2)
    • December 2008 (3)
    • November 2008 (3)
    • October 2008 (9)
    • August 2008 (1)
  • On the web

    • instagram
    • linkedin
    • xing
    • youtube
  • Navigation

    • Home
    • About
    • Blog
    • Publications
      • Digital Transformations of the Public Arena (2022)
      • Retooling Politics: How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy (2020)
      • Analyzing Political Communication with Digital Trace Data (2015)
      • Das Internet in Wahlkämpfen: Konzepte, Wirkungen und Kampagnenfunktionen (2013)
    • Podcast: Tech and Politics
    • Media
    • Teaching
    • Impressum
  • Contact

    • Feldkirchenstraße 21
      96052 Bamberg, Germany

    • https://andreasjungherr.net/https://andreasjungherr.net/
    • andreas.jungherr[at]uni-bamberg.de
Andreas Jungherr POWERED BY United Themes™