The Atlantic Cities on the evolution of Twitter, the nervous system of the emerging global consciousness…
We wrote in late 2011 about some early research suggesting that many Twitter users in fact follow other people located within their same city, evidence, Richard Florida wrote, that the Internet is reinforcing the value of place instead of eliminating it.
But now that Twitter is a few years older – and considerably more global – Leetaru and several colleagues have conducted a massive new analysis of the site that suggests the opposite: “In effect,” Leetrau says, “location plays a much lesser role now in terms of who we talk to, what we talk about, and where we get our information.”
“In reality on Twitter, even though you may be following a lot of people, you’re probably paying attention more to some than others. But there’s no way of recording that,” Leetaru says. “What we can do is say ‘well, here are the people you’re talking to. Here are the people you thought were interesting enough to retweet.'”
What it’s coming down to is this…
- NASA
“Where there’s power, there’s Twitter,” Leetaru says. “The more power, the more Twitter. That tells us that quite literally even in the most remote areas of Africa, if there’s power there, chances are there’s Twitter there at a relative density of power.”
There are a few exceptions: Iran and China show fewer tweets than we’d expect given the electricity levels there because Twitter is censored. But for the most part, once we realize Twitter is nearly everywhere electricity will allow it to go, that picture allows us to examine how (and if) all of these people, all over the world, are interacting with each other.
The researchers also found that the people you interact with regularly are close to you in space, and those you don’t, those who reference or retweet just once, are far away.
