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New science of twitterology expanding influence in Korea

New science of twitterology expanding influence in Korea

Posted December. 10, 2011 09:02,   

한국어

Economists, sociologists, linguists and medical scientists are racing to study the social networking service Twitter, leading to the formation of a new discipline called "twitterology."

With more than 100 million people around the world posting about 250 million messages on their interests, thoughts and feelings in real time through their Twitter accounts every day, the social networking service has become a sea of information.

Scholars are attracted to Twitter as it allows them to select and analyze data based on language and region and figure out people`s relationships on the Internet. The real-time analysis of data on Twitter enables predictions of not only revolutions but also changes in share prices, according to experts.

The New York Times has called this field of study twitterology and presented the results of a number of studies. In Korea, social scientists are studying the influence of Twitter on elections.

○ Predict stock prices via Twitter

"Polls are expensive and incomprehensive. In addition, they are unable to obtain frank answers. Social networking services have opened a new era of research."

Johan Bollen, a professor at Indiana State University, said this in October on the reason he started his study titled "Twitter Moods Predict the Stock Market."

The 2008 global financial crisis showed that finance is no longer determined by rational investment information and that social networking services are a new world for behavioral finance economists who say people`s feelings and behavior affect business conditions and stock prices, he said.

Bollen collected 9.85 million Twitter messages from February through December in 2008. He said he intentionally chose this period given that it spanned the U.S. presidential election and the eruption of the economic crisis. He sorted out messages based on six mood dimensions, namely calm, alert, sure, vital, kind and happy, and compared each of them with the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The comparison showed that a rise in the calm index was followed by an increase in the Dow two to six days later.

Tweets are also used in epidemiology for tracing infection routes. A team of researchers at the University of Iowa analyzed how stories on the H1N1 new influenza strain that appeared in 2009 spread through Twitter. The routes where the stories spread were found to be the same as the routes where the virus spread.

Psychologists and sociologists analyze social networking services most frequently because they can turn people`s thoughts into data in real time.

○ Twitterology begins in Korea

Korean scholars are also trying to use Twitter for social science studies. Jang Deok-jin, a sociology professor at Seoul National University, published early this year the report “The Structure and Dynamics of Korean Twitter Network” after analyzing 1.1 million Tweets posted by Koreans between August and September last year.

According to the report, communication among Korean Twitter users are active with 75 percent of Tweets retwitted, with messages critical of the government frequently retwitted.

Jang said, "Ideas based on social science will merge with IT down the road and this will produce new study results."

A team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST, is also using Tweets to study human behavior on the Internet.

Lee Ji-soo, in charge of supercomputer research at KAIST, said, “We will enable social scientists to use technologies that can process a huge volume of data as government supercomputers do in studying social networking services.”



kimhs@donga.com