Digital Observatory

About the Australian Twittersphere

As at end of April 2024

The Australian Twittersphere is a longitudinal collection of tweets from a periodically updated list of Twitter accounts that are identified as Australian (i.e., have a stated connection to Australia in the free text fields of the account profile). The Australian Twittersphere is made up of three collections:

  • In 2016, the TrISMA project classified approximately 530,000 Twitter accounts as being Australian and began collecting tweets from those accounts. The TrISMA project concluded and tweets ceased being collected in May 2017. This collection is known as the ‘2016’ collection.

  • In early 2018, the Digital Observatory was established and continued collecting tweets from the same accounts from approximately March 2018 to December 2018 using Twitter’s streaming API. This collection is known as the ‘2018’ collection.

  • In late 2018, the Digital Observatory developed an additional collector which began collecting tweets from the same accounts. This is known as our ‘2019’ collection, and ran from November 2018 until early July 2023 when X (formerly Twitter) closed the API. Beginning December 2020, the list of accounts in the 2019 collection was periodically updated according to a dictionary of phrases that include/exclude accounts as being Australian. Points in time at which the list of accounts was updated are represented by vertical dashed lines in the figures below.

The following reference outlines how the Australian Twittersphere was originally established (pre-Digital Observatory):

Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Highfield, T. (2014). A ‘Big Data’ Approach to Mapping the Australian Twittersphere. In: Arthur P. L., Bode K. (eds) Advancing Digital Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137337016_8

The population selection methodology employed from December 2020 through the end of the Australian Twittersphere collection produces a set of rules for whether a Twitter account would be included in the Australian Twittersphere. These rules are available as open data at https://researchdatafinder.qut.edu.au/display/n41990 and are citeable as:

Hames, Sam; Takahashi, Marissa; Miller, Alice; QUT Digital Observatory; (2023): Australian Twittersphere Population Rules. Queensland University of Technology. (Dataset) https://doi.org/10.25912/RDF_1711599518062


Figure 1. Number of tweets per month for all three collections (2016 - 2023).


Figure 1 shows the number of tweets per month from 2016 onwards for all three collections that together form the Australian Twittersphere. The 2019 collection ran from November 2018 through June 2023 and collected an average of 23 million tweets per month until the beginning of December 2020. In December 2020, the list of accounts in the Australian Twittersphere was updated (represented by a dashed vertical line), and until October 2021 collected an average of 39 million tweets per month. In October 2021, the list of accounts was again updated, and until its end collected an average of 39 million tweets per month.


Over the period March to December 2018 (indicated by the grey shaded area with orange border), the 2018 collection collected an average of 22 million tweets per month. Over the period August 2016 to April 2017 (indicated by the grey shaded area with green border), the 2016 collection collected an average of 37 million tweets per month.


Figure 2. Number of tweets per month for all three collections (all available data).


Figure 2 represents the same information as in Figure 1, but shows all available data back to as early as September 2006. The long tails that can be seen for the 2016 and 2019 collections are due to the use of Twitter’s free developer API which enables limited collection of historical tweets for Twitter accounts. Points in time at which the list of accounts was updated are represented by vertical dashed lines.


Figure 3. Number of tweets per month by tweet type for the 2019 collection (2016 - 2023).


Figure 3 shows the monthly number of tweets that are retweets and not retweets for the 2019 collection. From December 2020 to October 2021, an average of 17 million retweets per month were collected, and an average of 21 million tweets per month were collected that were not retweets. The latter includes quote tweets, replies, and original tweets.

From October 2021 onwards, an average of 17 million retweets per month were collected, and an average of 22 million tweets per month were collected that are not retweets.


Figure 4. Number of active users per month for all three collections (2016 - 2023).


Figure 4 shows the number of users per month from 2016 onwards for all three collections that together form the Australian Twittersphere. While the 2016 collection was operating (August 2016 to April 2017), the average number of active users per month was 550,922. While the 2018 collection was operating (March 2018 to December 2018), the average number of active users per month was 307,856.


The 2019 collection had 317,760 active users in November 2018 (the first month of collecting) and 231,176 users in November 2020 (the last month of collecting before the list of accounts in the Australian Twittersphere was updated in December 2020). From December 2020 to October 2021, the average monthly active users in the 2019 collection was 442,586. In October 2021 the list of accounts in the Australian Twittersphere was updated again, and in that final portion of the collection the average monthly active users was 445,806.


Figure 5. Number of users per month for all three collections (all available data).

Figure 5 shows the same information as in Figure 4, but includes all available data back to as early as September 2006. Points in time at which the list of accounts was updated are represented by vertical dashed lines.


Contact information

Digital Observatory
Research Infrastructure | QUT
digitalobservatory.net.au

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