Trending Topics

Our group presentation involves answering the question ‘How important in twitter in relation to current affairs?’ and so this blog is highly relevant in forms of research for our final presentation. Being frequent twitter users ourselves we found it interesting to research in this area and commented on how we find out about worldly news through the social networking site. As to why we decided to do further research in this area and also due to its popularity and contemporariness we think we will enjoy this topic and learn many new facts regarding twitter of which we didn’t already know.

Twitter is an online social networking site where people are able to interact with one another through the form of tweets. Tweets consist of 140 characters; and so twitter is referred to as ‘microblogging’. Relatively recent twitter was created in March 2006 and is popular worldwide. As of 2012 twitter was known to have over 500million registered users worldwide and since its launch, twitter has become one of the most visited and frequently used websites on the internet. Not only used on the internet twitter has many apps available for devices which allows for people to tweet on the go, not just from their computers.

Many twitter users will share the same thoughts with their followers and so when tweeting about a particular topic they will use a hashtag (#) in order to tag their thoughts. A phrase or word that has been hashtagged may trend as it may be used more frequently than other words/phrases. Trending topics are there for promotion purposes or to simply help people understand what’s happening in the world and keep up to date with latest affairs.

Twitter has many uses; most commonly for its celebrity culture, celebrities are able to make verified accounts, and tweet alongside their fans sharing news or breakthroughs etc. Celebrity culture is popular in today’s society and twitter is highly popular due to it being able to let followers communicate with their fans.  This often results in trending topics for celebrities such as ‘#HappyBirthdayJustinFromBeliebers’.

Alongside celebrity culture we have film and media. Twitter follower share the same thoughts in regards to their favourite movies and so by hashtagging the name of the movie, tweeters are able to share experiences and thoughts on the movie or TV show they have watched, these could also result in trending topics.

The trending topics I am going to focus on is on that occurs after a natural disaster. I am going to look at the Japan earthquake and how this caused for many twitter users to hashtag ‘hope 4 japan’ in order to raise awareness and support for the victims of the earthquake.

The Japan earthquake happened in March 2011, causing 15880 deaths. In order to raise awareness and get the news around, twitter users hashtagged ‘#Hope4Japan’ with messages of support. Members of twitter such as business organisations such as the red cross promoted their tweets alongside this hashtag and encouraged people to donate. A twitter account was made ‘@hope4japan’ where people again wrote message support and the account let people know about the latest updates of the tragedy.

 

This trending topic can be seen as highly relevant when analysing twitter and the topics that trend. By creating such a hashtag it allows for people to realise about the disaster happening in the world. It also allows for people to show concern and to want to help and makes them donate money and treat the victims of the earthquake. It shows how twitter can be used in order to share news and updates about latest tending topics, whether it is for a good cause or for celebrity purposes.

Twitter is constantly growing and many people use it as their source for news information. By following the ‘right’ people twitter can be helpful for researching about trending topics. This idea will be developed further in our group presentation, but for an example of a trending topic the Japan earthquake could be seen as an appropriate example as during that time of the disaster the ‘hope4Japan’ hashtag enabled for more awareness to be raised and twitter users to be educated through an online social networking website.