That was quick — the Berkman Center’s John Palfrey links to the Web Ecology Project’s report on Twitter’s effect on the unrest in Iran after the June 12 election. After initial reports about the site’s central role, pundits have backed off a bit on Twitter’s importance. The study, which looked at more than 2 million tweets from June 5 to June 26, notes:
As Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic comments, after reposting two messages from Twitter, “Those are recent tweets which probably tells you more about the mood than hard facts. But mood matters.” The proliferation of qualitative opinion regarding the Twitter-Iran issue has been helpful thus far in conveying the “mood” of the conversation, but this paper reveals some of those “hard facts” that give a fuller picture of the situation. With our report, we encourage researchers to further pursue qualitative analysis supported by quantitative data.
The Cambridge-based Web Ecology Project is affiliated with Harvard’s Berkman Center.
Posted by Brendan Lynch
Tags: Berkman Center, Iran, Twitter, Web Ecology Project
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