What do we get from Twitter - and what not? A close look at Twitter research in the social sciences

The state of Twitter research in the social science domain is investigated based on a set of 25 highly cited papers, identified with the Scopus database out of 370 social science publications on social media research. The analysis shows how social media research in the social sciences has risen since 2007. The selected top cited papers are analyzed concerning their domains, the applied meth-ods and the underlying data in use. It is shown that different methods, both experimental and analytical are applied, and that some papers have started to combine different modes of analysis. The size of the datasets used for studying Twitter varies considerably across studies. Furthermore, central advantages of studying data collected from Twitter are pointed out and open challenges in working with these particular data are listed. Challenges include, for example, data access via the Twitter API or via third party tools, representativeness of datasets and sampling strategies and ethical issues. (author's abstract

Citations in Web 2.0

Citations are a classic dimension of scientific communication. This paper looks at two different scenarios in which citation analysis can be applied to novel Web 2.0 environments: One case study deals with citations on Twitter and the other with analyzing blog posts and social bookmarking systems. (Autorenreferat

Twitter as a first draft of the present - and the challenges of preserving it for the future

"This paper provides a framework for understanding Twitter as a historical source. We address digital humanities scholars to enable the transfer of concepts from traditional source criticism to new media formats, and to encourage the preservation of Twitter as a cultural artifact. Twitter has established itself as a key social media platform which plays an important role in public, real-time conversation. Twitter is also unique as its content is being archived by a public institution (the Library of Congress). In this paper we will show that we still have to assume that much of the contextual information beyond the pure tweet texts is already lost, and propose additional objectives for preservation." (author's abstract

How does the local wind field control the aerosol distribution in coastal Dronning Maud Land?

Atmospheric circulation patterns and chemical concentrations in firn cores are highly related to each other. Atmospheric winds transport aerosols like sea salt and mineral dust over the globe and redistribute them. Because of this, it is possible to reconstruct atmospheric circulation bringing aerosol to Antarctica by analyzing chemical impurities in firn and ice. With these analyses, the gap caused by sparse atmospheric measurements can be filled and this knowledge can then be used to improve the understanding of local and global circulation patterns.Due to a very high accumulation rate (~600 kg/m²*a), coastal Dronning Maud Land (CDML) is a perfect site to conduct these studies.Here, the upper 6m of two firn cores drilled on Halvfaryggen and Sörasen (covering the time interval from 2002- 2007) were analyzed on ionic concentrations. This data was then contrasted to measurements from the air chemistry laboratories at Neumayer (NM) and Kohnenstation (KS), and synoptic measurements from automatic weather stations (distributed in CDML and at NM).The analyses show very different results: Sea salt ions (e.g. Na+) are higher correlated to ions measured in aerosol samples at the air chemistry laboratory at KS than to the one located at NM. In contrast, ions representing mineral dust (e.g. nss-Ca2+) only have a weak correlation over the whole area and time period. Accordingly, the deposition of aerosol is highly dependent on its origin and the topography in coastal Antarctica suggesting different transport pathways for sea level and higher altitude sites

Which social media interactions indicate positive opinions about cited publications? A comparison of user survey and sentiment analysis

One of the central questions in Altmetrics study is: which social media actions could be the best signal of positive stance towards scientific outcome? To investigate this question, a two-level study was performed. For one, we conducted an online survey and analyzed the results of more than 3,400 participants. Secondly, we performed sentiment analysis of comments in social media platforms and we investigated comments to social media posts (i.e. Reddit posts, YouTube videos, Google posts) that cite scientific articles and the comments section on the PLOS journal webpag

Ontologien

Ontologien sind formale, schematische Abbildungen eines Wissensbereichs, bestehend aus einem Vokabular und Regeln zu seiner Zusammensetzung. Sie finden als Wissensmodelle und als inhaltsbeschreibende Metadaten in verschiedenen (Internet-)Diensten Verwendung und etablieren sich damit zunehmend als eine zusätzliche Methode der Wissensorganisation, die neben klassischen Methoden (wie Thesauri und Klassifikationssystemen) zunehmend zum Einsatz kommt. Eine Besonderheit von Ontologien im Vergleich mit klassischen Ansätzen besteht darin, dass sie und ihr Einsatz eng mit der Entwicklung technischer Standards verbunden sind. Im Folgenden soll die Ontologie als Wissensrepräsentationsmethode anhand ihrer charakteristischen und wichtigsten Merkmale sowie mit Hilfe von Beispielen erklärt werden. (Autorenreferat

Making Sense of Microposts (#Microposts2015) Social Sciences Track

For the first time in its five year history the #Microposts workshop features a designated Social Science track. This paper introduces this new track by situating it within the overall workshop objectives. It highlights the importance of interdisciplinary studies in the attempt to make sense of Web user activities in general, and in the generation and consumption of Microposts in particular. This paper provides examples of related work in the field, such as Computational Social Science, reviews previous contributions to the #Microposts by the Social Science research community, and introduces the two papers presented in the track

Making Sense of Microposts (#Microposts2016) Computational Social Sciences Track

For the second time, the #Microposts workshop features a track to highlight social science perspectives on micro communication structures in online environments. This paper introduces the #Microposts2016 (Computational) Social Science Track, which all contribute to connecting research methods and approaches in computer science and social science. By providing a forum for closer interaction between the two fields, the track is becoming a platform for interdisciplinary projects and new ideas to combine different methodologies and theories. For this year’s special track we see the trend of relating Microposts to external demographics or survey data as a way to better understand Microposts in their broader contexts