"What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?" Summary

What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? By Haewoon Kwak, Changhyun Lee, Hosung Park, and Sue Moon

            This article quantitatively tested the process of how a tweet spreads and qualitatively observed the content of tweets in order to examine and test whether or not Twitter’s processes and information content supported the idea that Twitter is seemingly a use for the spreading of news. By observing 106 million tweets, along with 4,262 topics that were “trending” on Twitter (topics that are tweeted or “hashtagged” more than others), these researchers found that an average tweet that has been retweeted (adopted someone else’s tweet in such a way that your followers will be able to see that person’s tweet) reaches about 1,000 people and that approximately 85% of trending topics on Twitter are “headline or persistent news in nature” (“Conclusions,” page 10).

Full article at: http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs315/Papers/What%20is%20twitter-a%20social%20net%20or%20news%20media.pdf