Abstract
On February 15, 2013, asteroid 2012 DA14 passed close to Earth during its flyby. We used this opportunity to analyze how the event affected the social-networking community of Twitter. We analyzed whether the flyby of the asteroid elicited more tweets about the asteroid close to the asteroid's trajectory compared to the neutral search term NASA. A spatio-temporal analysis of tweets about NASA revealed a natural movement of the geographical mean from east to west, mirroring the Sun's path through the sky. For the geolocation of users tweeting about the asteroid, this east-west movement changed direction, mirroring the asteroid's trajectory (from south-east to north-west) as soon as the asteroid was potentially visible from Earth. This effect appears to represent emotionally contagious flocking behavior among Twitter users influenced by the position of the asteroid itself.
Originalsprache | Englisch |
---|---|
Seiten (von - bis) | 1409-1415 |
Seitenumfang | 7 |
Fachzeitschrift | Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology |
Jahrgang | 65 |
Ausgabenummer | 7 |
DOIs | |
Publikationsstatus | Veröffentlicht - Juli 2014 |
Extern publiziert | Ja |
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
- Information systems
- Computernetzwerke und -kommunikation
- Informationssysteme und -management
- Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaften