Occupied with Place: Exploring Twitter Resistance Networks

Hemsley, Jeff; Eckert, Josef

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/47293 Copy

Description

Title

Occupied with Place: Exploring Twitter Resistance Networks

Author(s)

• Hemsley, Jeff
• Eckert, Josef

Issue Date

2014-03-01

Keyword(s)

• place
• social network analysis
• social media
• contentious politics
• geography

Abstract

"From Tehran Square to Gezi Park, Twitter is an emergent tactic of protestors in the public square. Our work utilizes the theoretical framework of contentious politics and its human geographic extension as a framework for examining the role of ""place"" in Twitter-based networks of resistance. We examine Twitter traffic about local instantiations of Occupy Wall Street across eight cities. The study addresses mutual communications between Twitter participants in hashtags related to each of these local instantiations. This work explores the role of place as a constitutive component of these networks. To do so, we employ descriptive statistical and chi-square tests to examine the significance of user-defined metadata regarding place to the exchanges between users within a network. We conclude that place matters and point to future directions in computational and traditional qualitative analysis, spatial-temporal studies of social media, and the effects of locational propinquity for network development."

Publisher

iSchools

Series/Report Name or Number

iConference 2014 Proceedings

Type of Resource

text

Language

english

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/47293

DOI

https://doi.org/10.9776/14114

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2014 is held by the authors of individual items in the proceedings. Copyright permissions, when appropriate, must be obtained directly from the authors.

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