How do we Tweet? The Comparative Analysis of Twitter Usage by Message Types, Devices, and Sources
Keywords:
Social media, twitter, media use, active audienceAbstract
Facing the growing importance of social media in the marketing field, this study is intended to build a better understanding of Twitter usage. A total of 73,192 tweets were examined by message types, devices and platforms used. Instead of relying on the audience’s response (e.g., survey or experiment) or traditional content analysis, this study used a data-mining approach and software that are widely used in the computer science field. Overall findings indicate that individual users prefer mobile devices to desktops and use more official web pages or mobile applications provided by Twitter when they tweet, and their most popular message type was the Singleton, an undirected message with no specific recipient. However, we also found that tweets generated through business sources were different from those through official sources in terms of message type, devices, and the nature. The implications of these findings were discussed.
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Baran, S. J., & Davis, D. K. (2011). Mass communication theory: Foundations, ferment, and future. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Barnes, N. G., & Mattson, E. (2009, November 12). The Fortune 500 and blogging: slow and steady and farther along than expected. Retrieved from http://www.umassd.edu-/cmr/studiesresearch/fortune500.pdf
Boyd, D. M., & Ellison N. B. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.
Byun, C., Lee, H., & Kim, Y. (2012). Automated Twitter data collecting tool for data mining in social network. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services, 196-204, doi: 10.1145/2401603.2401621
Campbell, C., Pitt, L. F., Parent, M., & Berthon, P. R. (2011). Understanding consumer conversations around ads in a web 2.0 world. Journal of Advertising, 40(1), 87- 102.
“CBS claims record Super Bowl ratings in early tally: Early figures do not include half hour during blackout,” (February 04, 2013). Advertising Age. Retrieved from www.adage.com.
Chen, G. M. (2011). Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(2), 755-762. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.10.023
Chu, S., & Kim, Y. (2011). Determinants of consumer engagement in electronic word-of- mouth (eWOM) in social networking sites. International Journal of Advertising, 30(1), 47-75.
Cone Business. (2008). 2008 business in social media study. Retrieved March 11, 2010, from http://www.coneinc.com/news/request.php?id=1183
Duggan, M. (2015, August 19). The demographics of social media users. Mobile Messaging and Social Media 2015, Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/19/the-demographics-of-social-media-users/
Dumenco, S. (2011, December 14). And the No. 1 Social-TV Hit of the Year Is… (Hint: Not the Oscars or Super Bowl). Advertising Age, Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/trending-topics/1-social-tv-hit-year/231574/.
eMarketer. (2015, April). Social Network Ad Spending to Hit $23.68 Billion Worldwide in 2015. Retrieved from http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Network-Ad-Spending-Hit-2368-Billion-Worldwide-2015/1012357#sthash.lBpDFlob.dpuf.
Eversley, M. (2013, February 4). Super engagement record for Super Bowl. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/02/04/super-engagement-social-media/1890351/
Ferguson, D.A., & Perse, M. (2000). The World Wide Web as a functional alternative to television. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44(2), 155-174.
Hollenbaugh, E. E. (2010). Personal journal bloggers: Profiles of disclosiveness. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1657-1666 doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.06.014
Homburg, C., Ehm, L., & Artz, M. (2015). Measuring and Managing Consumer Sentiment in an Online Community Environment. Journal of Marketing Research, 52, 629-641.
Joinson, A.N. (2008). ‘Looking at’, ‘Looking up’ or ‘Keeping up with’ people? Motives and Uses of Facebook. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Florence, Italy, April 05-10 2008), CHI ’08, ACM, New York, (pp. 1027- 1036).
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68.
Kaye, B. K. (2007). Blog use motivations: An exploratory study. in Tremayne, M. (ed.) Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, New York, NY: Routledge, 127-148.
King, I., Li, J., & Chan, K. T. (2009). A brief survey of computational approaches in social computing. Proceedings of the 2009 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks. 2699-2706.
Ko, H., Cho, C., & Roberts, M. S. (2005). Internet uses and gratifications: a structural equation model of interactive advertising. Journal of Advertising, 24(2), 57-70.
Kumar, A., Bezawada, R., Rishika, R., Janakiraman, R., & Kannan, P.K. (2016). From social to sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. Journal of Marketing, 80, 7-25. DOI: 10.1509/jm.14.0249
Kwak, H., Lee, C., Park, H., & Moon, S. (2010). What is Twitter, a social network or a news media? Paper presented at the 19th International conference on WWW, Raleigh, NC, April 26-30.
Larsson, A. O. (2013). Twitting the viewer –Use of Twitter in a talk show context. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 57(2), 135-152.
Learnonth, M. (2013, February 25). When did Twitter grow up? Answer: Now. Marketing has become an in-the moment game, thanks to one company, Advertising Age, Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/digital/twitter- grow/239992/
Lee, H., Han, Y., Kim, K. K., & Kim, Y. (2014). Sports and Social Media: Twitter Usage Patterns during the 2013 Super Bowl Broadcast. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Communication, Media, Technology and Design, 250-259
Lin, C.A. (2006). Technology fluidity and on-demand webcasting adoption. Telematics & Informatics, 25(2), 84-98.
Miller, R., & Washington, K. (2013). Consumer use of media & the Internet. Entertainment, Media & Advertising Market Research Handbook, 13, 21-28.
Muntinga, D. G., Moorman, M., & Smit E. G. (2011). Introducing COBRAs. International Journal of Advertising, 30(1), 13-46.
O’Connell, M. (2014, February 3). TV ratings: Super Bowl XLVIII is most watched in history with 112.2 million viewers. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-super-bowl-xlviii- 676651
OMNICORE. (2017, January 24), Twitter by the Numbers: stats, demographics & fun facts. Retrieved from https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/
Papacharissi, Z., & Rubin, A. M. (2000). Predictors of Internet use. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44(2), 175-196.
Pehlivan, E., Sarican, F., & Berthon, P. (2011). Mining messages: Exploring consumer response to consumer- vs. firm-generated ads. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 10, 313-321, Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/cb.379
Roy, S. K. (2009). Internet uses and gratifications: A survey in the Indian context. Computers in Human Behavior, 25, 878-886.
Schultz, E. J. (2016, January 4). See the ‘crash the Super Bowl’ finalists’ ads. Advertising Age, Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/crash-super-bowl-finalist-ads/301978/.
Shao, G. (2009). Understanding the appeal of user-generated media: a uses and gratification perspective. Internet Research, 19(1), 7-25. doi:10.1108/10662240910927795.
Stafford, T. F., Stafford, M. R., & Schkade, L. (2004). Determining uses and gratifications for the Internet. Decision Sciences, 35(2), 259-288.
Steinberg, B. (2012, February 6). Super Bowl breaks its ratings record once again. Advertising Age, Retrieved from http://adage.com.proxy- tu.researchport.umd.edu/article/special-report-super-bowl/super-bowl-breaks- ratings-record/232563/
Stelzner, M. (2013). The 2013 social media marketing industry report. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2013.pdf.
Tan, S. S. (1985). Mass communication: Theories and Research, New York, NY: Macmillan.
Twitter Inc. (n.d.). Twitter Usage / Company Facts Retrieved May 23, 2017 from https://about.twitter.com/company
Warc. (2016, March 21). TV Tweeters have higher ad recall. Warc.com. Retrieved from http://www.warc.com/LatestNews/News/EmailNews.news?ID=36426&Origin=WARCNewsEmail&CID=N36426&PUB=Warc_News&utm_source=WarcNews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WarcNews20160321.
Wohn, D. Y., & Na, E. (2011). Tweeting about TV: Sharing television viewing experiences via Social media message streams. First Monday, 16(3), 1-14. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=e7ccfea4-e8f1-4794-bec3.
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