Archive

Tag Archives: tweets

Yesterday, JL Johnson @jaeljohnson was teaching my Twitter book to his Sociology 101 class at George Mason University. He asked his class to summarize my Twitter book in less than 140 characters.

@jaeljohnson tweeted: “Limitless comm in digi era&brevity reigns @dhirajmurthy asks good/bad? Look @ history 4 connections w/past tech says +info -depth #sociology”

When he and some of his students tweeted at me regarding this assignment, it reminded me of the many occasions I have been asked to summarize my book into a tweet. A former colleague of mine, Brian Purnell, asked me to do this during a filmed discussion (on YouTube) we had about my book. The best I could come up with on the spot, at the time was ‘I tweet therefore I am’, a reference to a chapter in my book which plays on the famous Cartesian aphorism. But, I quickly backtracked (as I do in my book) saying that Twitter does not follow the strict, reductive Cartesian dualism (separating mind and body), but rather is a part of modern social communication for many of us. What I mean by this is that Twitter is highly socially embedded for many users and any strict dualism is highly problematic. I ended up in my response to Professor Purnell [around 1:13 on the YouTube video] with the answer: ‘I am social therefore, I tweet’. This ties in with the larger argument in my book that Twitter is part of complex social relations and we tweet for a multitude of  sociopolitical reasons, which span from updating our followers to what we just ate to a cancer diagnosis or, more criminally, to hitting a cyclist (with that tweet leading to the Tweeter getting arrested).

I’m glad to hear my book went down well in @jaeljohnson’s sociology 101 class! I thought that the class’ tweet was insightful in teasing out some of the key aspects of my book, including its commitment to historicizing Twitter.

The Great British Class Survey was undertaken by Mike Savage of the LSE and other academics at the London School of Economics, the University of Manchester, City University and the Universities of York, Bergen in Norway, and the Université Paris Descartes, France.

The survey raises important questions regarding the construction and maintenance of class in the UK.

Like others, I took the online ‘What Class Are You?’ calculator at the BBC website. It measures income variables, one’s social network, and one’s social/cultural interests.

I collected 1426 tweets from April 4 2013 – April 11, 2013 which include the URL bbc.in/12acLLV (a main URL used to link to the GBCS calculator. Some initial results of examining these data are below. Please comment on ideas for better understanding these data.

Top Hashtags in Tweet in Entire Graph Entire Graph Count
whatsyourclass 1061
britain 12
class 11
fb 5
bbc 5
elite 3
rofl 3
poorgeois 3
sociology 2
joke 2
Top Words in Tweet in Entire Graph Entire Graph Count
class 2052
new 1140
whatsyourclass 1062
system 1029
britain 1007
s 1006
group 999
m 983
out 935
found 919
Top Word Pairs in Tweet in Entire Graph Entire Graph Count
class,system 1027
new,class 1015
s,new 999
britain,s 998
group,britain 959
system,whatsyourclass 942
found,out 918
out,m 914
middle,class 426
class,group 408

I collected 1204 tweets from April 4 2013 – April 11, 2013 which include the hashtag #whatclassareyou (a key hashtag used to discuss the GBCS). Some initial results of examining these data are below.

Top URLs in Tweet in Entire Graph Entire Graph Count
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973 1117
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22025328 7
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21953364 4
http://bbc.in/12acLLV- 2
http://bbc.in/12acLLV…not 1
http://jonathancresswell.co.uk/dailymail/ 1
http://bristolaf.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/the-great-british-class-calculator/ 1
http://bbc.in/12acLLV.nokiddin 1
http://bbc.in/12acLLV.Quessed 1
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973 1
Top Hashtags in Tweet in Entire Graph Entire Graph Count
whatsyourclass 1204
britain 12
class 6
bbc 5
fb 4
elite 3
rofl 3
joke 2
sticazzi 2
in 2
Top Words in Tweet in Entire Graph Entire Graph Count
class 1502
whatsyourclass 1203
new 1129
system 1023
britain 1021
s 979
group 968
m 953
out 928
found 899
Top Word Pairs in Tweet in Entire Graph Entire Graph Count
class,system 1021
new,class 1005
s,new 975
britain,s 972
system,whatsyourclass 966
group,britain 939
found,out 898
out,m 892
class,group 399
middle,class 397