Twitter and society / edited by Katrin Weller, Axel Bruns, Jean Burgess, Merja Mahrt & Cornelius Puschmann.

Includes bibliographical references.

Foreword: Debanalising Twitter: the transformation of an object of study -- Twitter and society: an introduction -- Pt. I, Concepts and methods : -- Concepts : -- Twitter and the rise of personal publics -- Structural layers of communication on Twitter -- Structure of Twitter: social and technical -- The politics of Twitter data ; -- Methods : -- Data collection on Twitter -- Metrics for understanding communication on Twitter -- Sentiment analysis and time series with Twitter -- Computer-assisted content analysis of Twitter data -- Ethnographic and qualitative research on Twitter -- Legal questions of Twitter research --

Pt. II, Perspectives and practices : -- Perspectives : -- From #FollowFriday to YOLO: exploring the cultural salience of Twitter memes -- Twitter and geographical location -- Privacy on Twitter, Twitter on privacy -- Automated Twitter accounts -- Information retrieval for Twitter data -- Documenting contemporary society by preserving relevant information from Twitter ; -- Practices : -- Popular culture : -- The perils and pleasures of tweeting with fans -- Tweeting about the telly: live TV, audiences, and social media -- Following the yellow jersey: tweeting the Tour de France -- Twitter and sports: football fandom in emerging and established markets ; -- Brand communication : -- Public enterprise-related communication and its impact on social media issue management -- Twitter, brands, and user engagement ; -- Politics and activism : -- Political discourses on Twitter: networking topics, objects, and people -- Twitter in politics and elections: insights from Scandinavia -- The gift of the gab: retweet cartels and gift economies on Twitter ; -- Journalism : -- The use of Twitter by professional journalists: results of a newsroom survey in Germany -- Twitter as an ambient news network ; -- Crisis communication : -- Crisis communication in natural disasters: the Queensland floods and Christchurch earthquakes -- Twitpic-ing the riots: analysing images shared on Twitter during the 2011 U.K. riots ; -- Twitter in academia : -- Twitter in scholarly communication -- How useful is Twitter for learning in massive communities? -- Epilogue : Why study Twitter?.

Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has evolved from a niche service to a mass phenomenon; it has become instrumental for everyday communication as well as for political debates, crisis communication, marketing, and cultural participation. But the basic idea behind it has stayed the same: users may post short messages (tweets) of up to 140 characters and follow the updates posted by other users. Drawing on the experience of leading international Twitter researchers from a variety of disciplines and contexts, this is the first book to document the various notions and concepts of Twitter communication, providing a detailed and comprehensive overview of current research into the uses of Twitter. It also presents methods for analyzing Twitter data and outlines their practical application in different research contexts.