Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
The Facebook-party gone wrong in Haren -a small village in the Netherlands- led to hysteric reactions by public administrations, policy makers, police and parents. The government even installed a committee to investigate how an innocent Facebook event could escalate to serious disruption of public order with street fighting and looting. The so-called social media have been quickly blamed for contributing to the situation. The New Media & Digital Culture (NMDC) research program at Utrecht University teaches its students to collect data first and draw conclusion after thorough analysis. Thomas Boeschoten, NMDC graduate student, got hold of 500.000 tweets concerning the Project X party in Haren and has set up a hackthon for a collective analysis. Researchers, data journalists and students team up to sift the large amount of data and to visualize which accounts were drawing attention to Haren and how the news spread over Twitter.
The hackathon takes place on 4 October, starting at 10:00 at Achter Sint Pieter 200 (room 0.24). A live blog on Tweetonderzoek.nl will document the hackathon as it unfolds. First results will be published on this website and on Tweetonderzoek.nl by Sunday.
More information on the hackathon and its participants (in Dutch): http://www.tweetonderzoek.nl/hackaton-500-000-tweets-over-projectx-onderzoeken/
Date October 2012 Category News
On Thursday 4 October, a group of students, researchers and data journalists will screen about 500.000 tweets to look for answers how the Facebook party in Haren created attention among Twitter users and how news spread over the networks.