Abstract
Academic conferences create an opportunity to disseminate new research, network with like-minded researchers, and make new connections. The use of Twitter at these conferences continues to expand. This article focuses on how the Twitter data generated during conferences can be visually analysed in terms of community detection, connectivity, and information flows. Using social network analysis techniques and an online survey, the article analyses the subgroups within the entire network, their institutional affiliations, and research interest, and then focuses on the roles of the highly connected Twitter uses in the network. Through in-depth analysis, the data revealed both how Australian geography academics use Twitter during a conference and how they cluster based on affiliations and research interest and also identified the information bridges in the social media conference network generated by using #IAG2019Hobart. The article concludes with some recommendations for further research.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 78-90 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Geographical Research |
| Volume | 59 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 9 Oct 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2021 |
Keywords
- academics
- conferences
- digital backchannel
- geography
- social network analysis