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I found this picture online and it really amazed me. Here are some of the statistics:

33% of active twitter users share their opinions about products and companies

32% of active twitter users make recommendations about products/companies

30% of active twitter users ask for recommendations about products/companies

This really goes to show that Twitter shouldn’t just be laughed at and taken lightly as people express serious opinions about stuff that they not only like, but also don’t like. This can in actual fact have an effect on a products sales or a company as if someone agrees with a tweet they might retweet it and depending on the amount of followers each person has, hundreds of peoples opinions could go on to be influenced just by one tweet.

19% of active twitter users seek customer support from companies via twitter

some companies refuse to have a twitter account as they think they won’t be taken seriously or that it’s unprofessional but by not having an account, those companies could lose that 19% of twitter users (roughly 26600000 people) as their customers.

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Secondary Research

this AMAZING video I found on Youtube, shows the network of retweets with the hashtag #jan25 at February 11 2011 - This was at the time Mubarak announced his resignation.

I think this just proves how rapidly news can spread on social media sites, and what is even more astonishing is that this is only 10% of the total! This data was collected in under four minutes, in that time the hashtag had been tweeted and retweeted a ridiculous amount of times. If twitter did not exist, I doubt that a majority of those people would have found out about the news as quickly as this video shows that they did, and they would also not have the ability to share and raise awareness about it (unless they had a megaphone).

Here is an article about it. (Unknown - Feb 15 2011)

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Twitter Journalism

An Article written by Rory O’Connor, Jan 20th 2009.

In this article Rory talks about not only how many people actually use Twitter, but the impact it can have. He brings up the Hudson River plane crash and how the first report was intact posted on Twitter. (The Tweet being ’There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.’ Along with this picture - )

“Twitter user Janis Krums scooped them all when he “tweeted” his report of “a plane in the Hudson” and posted an iPhone photo on TwitPic, all while rescue boats were still en route. The image spread around the social media world so rapidly — nearly 40,000 viewed the photo in four hours - that heavy traffic soon crashed the site.”

“Twitter has become a go-to source of news you can use when and where you want and need it — often when and where the legacy media cannot yet or no longer supplies it.”

The article also includes an interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, in which they further discuss Twitter in Journalism

Read the article here

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Secondary Research

I recently came across a newspaper article in The Sun titled “Arrest over Toon Twitter racism”. Here is the article

“A MAN has been arrested in connection with racist abuse on Twitter directed at Newcastle United Football Club.

The 29-year-old is being questioned after police received a flurry of complaints over comments made on the social networking site last night.

The abuse, posted as the Magpies prepared to unveil their new signing, Senegalese striker Papiss Demba Cisse, is alleged to have focused on the number of black players the club has in its squad.

Newcastle United have condemned the comments.

A Northumbria Police spokesman said: “We have received a report of racist comments made on Twitter.

“Northumbria Police takes all reports of racist abuse very seriously and inquiries are being conducted.

“A 29-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident and is currently in custody.”

Detectives from the force’s major crime team are handling the investigation.”

(Staff Reporter, 18 January 2012)

This article just proves how much of an effect social media sites such as twitter have on the news. It also proves that tweets made by even people who don’t have a large amount of followers can be seen and effect people deeply. I doubt that when this man created an account, for one minute he thought that one of these 140 character thoughts would get him into trouble, but that’s what social media is, a fast way to distribute information which can then be taken further.

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Secondary Research

Recommended to me by someone who had previously done this project, I decided to read a book called “Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter are Transforming Popular Culture” written by Mary Cross. Within the book are a whole range of opinions and facts about Twitter and blogging in general. It examines the digital revolution and how it is and will continue to change the way we all communicate and do things in our day to day lives, for instance it proposes that the internet has become the center of popular culture. The book not only gives descriptions of blogs but also looks at the demographics of users and the impact of the Internet on knowledge, thinking, writing, politics, and journalism, which is why I thought it was perfect for my research. The main focus of the book is how blogs and tweets are opening up communication. However this book is good as it also looks at the negatives such as hacking.

Click here to read!

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Activity 4

Questionnaire

Use: Collecting answers to specific questions from a large number of people.

Pros: Allows you to get specific answers to the questions that you want to ask. These are mostly quantitative results which are excellent for gathering into charts. If done online this is a very easy way to collect answers as it’s free and most people won’t mind just taking a few minutes out of their day to check a few boxes.

Cons: (If paper questionnaire) These are expensive not only to print but to distribute, there is also a good chance that you will not get all of them returned. Another con with Questionnaires is that there are always a few people who will answer inappropriately and therefore your results can be messed up by it. Cannot generally be used if qualitative answers are desired as most are just yes/no questions.

Focus Group

Use: To gather information (mostly qualitative) from a small number of people who usually either relate to the product or to the age group you are targeting.

Pros: Detailed answers to the exact questions that you want to ask, with also being able to discuss to get further understanding of different opinions - something you cannot do with questionnaires.

Cons: Having to gather people who are actually willing to sit down for a fairly long time and discuss. Also this could be a very time consuming form of research as you have to organise it and then also gather long winded answers. Cannot be put into spreadsheets ect. Also people may feel too embarrassed to speak their true opinion when there are others in the room so one cannot be completely sure that they are receiving true data.

Interview

Use: One to one questioning about a product or subject, mostly with someone who relates to the subject a lot. Mostly qualitative answers.

Pros: One on one questioning and answering which means that there are no interruptions and is less likely to go off topic than with focus groups.

Cons: As with focus groups, this form of research can be time consuming.

“Miss Tomlinson’s very average questionnaire”

We were given a handout of a very, well, average questionnaire. The aim of it, I assume, being to find out how many young people download or stream on the internet and how much, however this didn’t even ask for the age, or gender for that matter. An even bigger problem was the fact that instead of boxes to tick, making the life of whoever is filling it out much easier, this questionnaire expected the candidate to write their answers on lines, essentially wasting time. I decided to re-write this questionnaire in hope of receiving a better response.

1) Gender:

Male

Female

2) Age Range:

12-15

16-20

20-25

3) If you were to buy a hard copy of something (CD / DVD), Which platform would it be?

Games

Music

Films

4) Which of these would you download?:

Games

Music

Films

5) Do you download illegally?:

Yes

Occasionally

G) How often do you download music?:

Everyday

Once a week

Every other week

Once a month

A few times a year

Never

J) Have you ever used a TV on demand website? (Such as BBC iPlayer):

Yes

If yes, which one?

______________________________________________________

K) Do you share downloads? Please cirlce.

Yes

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How Twitter Impacts Media and Journalism

The Managing Director of ABC, Mark Scott, and a ‘leading futurist and entripeneur’, Ross Dawson, were interviewed about the role of Twitter in media. They both had opposing arguments with one emphasising that the public would prefer a source that they can trust to learn about the latest news, whereas the other points out the value of Twitter in breaking news. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-q8NLbY-Cg&feature=player_embedded

Ross then went on to write about the ‘Five Fundamental Factors on how Twitter impacts media and journalism’

The first is Twitters role in breaking news.

He quotes from the book that he wrote in 2002 called ‘Living Networks’. He says: “Media is becoming a participatory sport. You can tap into what any of a vast army of people are seeing and thinking, or contribute yourself to the global flow.”

(From Chapter 1 of Living Networks)

He then goes on to use examples of where twitter has been a vital part of sharing news, such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the plane landing in the Hudson, and most recently the unrest following the Iranian elections.

In the second factor, Dawson questions the ‘accuracy and verification of news on Twitter’.

Here he states that although he (and anyone who has any common sense) doesn’t think that EVERYTHING you read on Twitter is neccasarily true and is infact, often inacturate, most people are able to tell if the news is correct (by the source, format) and take it in the context of other news sources.

He goes on to say “There will be some people who are happy to wait until the mainstream media process the news and release it on the regularly scheduled TV news program or in the newspaper. However these days most people prefer their news fresh.”

The third factor highlights the pressure for faster news and media, by saying that as communication speeds up, the publics ecpectations for faster news has grown. Dawson says that he believes “that humans’ appetite for news and information is effectively insatiable, so we are never going to get to the point at which news is sufficiently fast and deep.”

Dawson also says that news has almost become a competition, with a lot of pressure being built up on who will be the first to post, with the winner gaining the most attention. “With Twitter added to the fray, the competition is even more intense.” (Dawson, 2009)

The fourth and fifth fators are Editorial policies and reputation for accuracy and the symbiosis of mainstream media and Twitter.

Click here for article link. (Written by Ross Dawson, June 15, 2009 at 9:31 pm)

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Primary Research

I asked Alison Pemberton, a teacher at The BRIT School, some questions about Twitter. I thought that she would be relevent to ask as she also runs the BDC twitter page; a way to communicate with students outside of school. By following, students can see job and internship oppourtunities, either posted or frwared by Alison, and they can also share their work with her for her to ‘retweet’ so that it can also be seen by others. I carefully thought up these questions in order to get another opinion from somebody who actively uses twitter in order to spread news and information. This is the video link.

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Primary Source 2

I conducted some primary research to get to the bottom of what is really the best platform to distribute news. To do this I read updates all day from the METRO newspaper’s Twitter, and then later watched SKY News to see if any of the stories tweeted about were in the headlines. The next day I read the METRO newspaper, and then did the same thing by watching SKY News to compare how many of the stories from the newspaper were mentioned in the top headlines. This is how I got on:

The METRO newspaper’s twitter updated extremely frequently with short paragraphs explaining recent events. For the entire day, 89 tweets were posted, all with links to a longer article. All of the headlines mentioned on Sky News had been tweeted about that day, which goes to show that twitter is a faster way of distributing information than television broadcasting.

After reading the METRO newspaper on the second day, I could not help but think that I’d seen some of the stories before and therefore I decided to take a look at the headlines from SKY News the previous night and relised that a number of the stories in the paper had been published a day after being annouced on twitter. The euro debt story along with the no parachute helecopter dive, the Shafilea Ahmed murder, and the Egypt elections had all been written about. This proves that newspapers are the slowest form of news distribution as the stories were a day late and had already been published on Twitter and then broadcast on Television. The only upside to it being that unline Twitters 140 character limit, the newspaper articles go into a lot more depth about the stories, however it’s a case of if you would prefer to know the latest news as it happens, or being a day behind but knowing a lot about the subject. The SKY News headlines for that night were as follows: Pressure is being put on culture secutary, Jeremy Hunt, over dealings with News Corp., a big slump in construction spells bad news for the economy, Scotland Yard detectives are to fly to Lybia to investigate the 1984 murder of Fletcher, and England is to put goaling technology through it’s paces. Not a single one of these headlines were mentioned in the newspaper that had been distributed earlier that morning.

Twitter vs. Television – The METRO newspaper’s twitter account was able to publish every one of the headlines that would later be broadcast on television, which proves that it is the fastest way to distribute information. The only advantage, I would say, that television broadcasting has, is that that the discussions of newspapers and interviews can help the audience to get a more accurate understanding of a topic and therefore enable them to properly get an opinion on it. It just comes down to how much time a person has as the news shows are usually very long and it takes less than 5 minutes to read through a day worth of tweets.

Twitter vs. Newspapers – as the twitter account I looked at, and the newspaper were the same company I think it’s very fair to say that Twitter is by far the better out of the two as if I had compared the METRO newspaper and The Sun’s twitter account, it would be arguable that one is better than the other, however that is not the case. Every Tweet that was broadcast the day I was tracking it was then mentioned an entire day later in the newspaper making it outdated and uninteresting. This is why I don’t think that there is any comparison between the two as Twitter is the clear winner.

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Activity 3

Social Media

Social media is fast becoming the most effective form of advertising. By using websites such as Facebook and Twitter, companies can reach a much larger audience than they would by advertising on the television, radio or on print. 300,000 people a day join twitter, along with the 700,000 people who join facebook every day, it’s no wonder that now, a massive 90% of people trust reccomendations they get via social media sites, wheras only 14% of people trust other forms of advertising.

By using Social Media websites, companies can not only inform consumers about products but also ask them their opinions on it. This is an example of exactly that. Companies like Lynx use social network sites to connect with consumers on a more personal level than they would be able to with, for example, a poster. The picture below shows the company Lynx demonstrating this. By asking consumers direct questions such as this, it helps them to improve in the future. For example, this shows that Lynx Africa is the most popular fragrance and therefore they should make more like it. Beth Corte Real (head of planning) - “The beauty of social media is that it’s so instant, and particularly for youth, you can talk directly to people using their language and where they increasingly socialise and live their lives”.

Even companies such as Dell have taken a few ideas from social media sites, by creating a website in which the public can suggest features and products. An amazing 417 ideas that have gone through said website have been acting upon, proving that communication with consumers is necessary for any company.

Social media sites are also a much cheaper way of conducting research. Alison Folkard, deputy head of insight proves this point: “We used to send out thousands of questionnaires, then it took weeks for them to come back and us go through them. Now we put out a questionnaire (on social media sites) and get far quicker responses.” This has helped the company find out helpful information such as consumers favourite airline, and also for just a fraction of the old research cost “We estimate it costs us about a tenth of what we used to spend on market research”.

Although social media research is a ground-breaking new way of discovering what an audience want, to gain full understanding, a company could not just rely on social media sites and therefore some more conventional methods of research such as interviews would need to be carried out. However, I still think that using social media sites to conduct research is the quickest and most effective method as people can do it from the comfort of their homes, on their phones, anywhere really. It also won’t have anybody hunting for a pen to tick those boxes with.

Digital life

Digital life is wbsite on which you can discover the most digital countries in the world based on who is the most digital. There are a number of other things that you can also find out from this website; such as what are they doing, what’s most important, for how long, and how social they are. These statistics were gained after Digital life asked over 50,000 people over 46 countries about their digital life.

The most digital country in the world for 16-20 year olds is France, with 71% of people within that agegroup using the internet. Spain, Italy, and Egypt follow with 60% of 16-20 year olds using the internet in those countries.

The country with the higest percentage for 21-24 year olds using the internet worldwide is Argentina, with 66%. After that comes South Africa with a total of 63% of 21-24 year olds making use of the internet.

For 25-34 year olds, Egypt is the most digital country in the world. 62% of people that age living in the country use the internet. Following that is Malaysia with 61% and Singapore with 59%.

Surprisingly, Vietnam is the most digital country for people within the age bracket of 35-44, 75% of them make use of the internet. UAE comes next with a total of 65% of 35-44 year olds using the internet, and after that; Turkey with 56%.

Saudi Arabia has the highest percentage in the world of 45-60 year olds who use the internet with 71%. Following is UAE with 70% and China with 67%.

The most digital country in the whole world is Saudi Arabia. 56% of all people living in this country make regular use of the internet. Egypt has the same amount of people using it, with again 56%. The third most digital country in the world is China with 54%.

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