Selected Papers of Internet Research 16: The 16th Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers Phoenix, AZ, USA / 21-24 October 2015 FROM  MOON  TO  COMET  LANDING:  RE-­IMAGINING  (SCIENTIFIC)   MEDIA  EVENTS  IN  THE  AGE  OF  TWITTER     Fabio  Giglietto   Università  di  Urbino  Carlo  Bo     Luca  Rossi   University  of  Copenhagen     Jiyoung  Kim   Cyber  Emotions  Research  Center       Introduction  and  related  works       The  Apollo  11  space  mission  took  place  46  years  ago.  It  was  an  international  event   covered  by  the  largest  media  sources  of  the  time.  The  global  participation  to  this   scientific  and  technological  achievement  is  commonly  considered  a  turning  point  in  the   history  of  media.       In  a  near-­perfect  comparison  to  the  famous  1969  event,  on  November  12  2014,  the   European  Space  Agency's  (ESA)  Rosetta  spacecraft  and  Philae  made  history  landing   for  the  first  time  on  a  comet.       Launched  toward  Comet  67P/C-­G  in  2004,  Rosetta  traveled  about  4  billion  miles   through  the  solar  system  before  reaching  the  comet  in  August.  The  lander  successfully   made  it  to  the  surface  of  comet  and  Philae's  landing  signal  was  received  by  Earth   communication  stations  at  16:03  UTC  On  November  12.  One  minute  later1,  the  Philae   Lander  Twitter  account  published  the  following  update  “Touchdown!  My  new  address:   67P!  #CometLanding”,  putting  an  end  to  the  dramatic  waiting  of  users  watching  the  live   broadcast  provided  by  ESA  and  NASA’s  website.       1  https://twitter.com/Philae2014/status/532564514051735552.     Suggested  Citation  (APA):  Giglietto,  F.,  Rossi,  L.,.  &  Kim,  J.  (2015,  October  21-­24)  From  Moon  To  Comet   Landing:  Re-­Imagining  (Scientific)  Media  Events  In  The  Age  Of  Twitter.  Paper  presented  at  Internet   Research  16:  The  16th  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Association  of  Internet  Researchers.  Phoenix,  AZ,  USA:   AoIR.  Retrieved  from  http://spir.aoir.org.     #CometLanding  was  therefore  a  (1)  live  transmission,  (2)  of  a  pre-­planned  event,  (3)   framed  in  time  and  space,  (4)  featuring  a  heroic  personality  or  group,  (5)  having  high   dramatic  significance.  All  but  one  “(6)  the  force  of  a  social  norm  which  makes  viewing   mandatory”  of  the  necessary  conditions  identified  by  Katz  as  the  basic  ingredients  of  a   media  event,  are  clearly  met  (1980).         While  even  traditional  well  established  events  such  as  the  broadcast  of  the  Olympic   Games  are  increasingly  facing  challenges  in  fitting  the  original  definition  of  the  concept   (Rivenburgh  2002),  it  is  clear  that  a  media  event  must,  by  definition,  interrupt  daily  lives.   Both  broadcasters  and  the  audience  adjust  their  schedules  to  attend  the  event.       Was  this  the  case  for  #CometLanding?  Can  we  still  talk  about  media  events  when  the   audience  feeling  viewing  as  mandatory  is  a  globally  scattered  elite,  instead  of  the   masses?  How  the  traditional  role  played  by  the  media  changes  when  internet’s   disintermediation  make  it  possible  for  the  creator  of  a  media  event  to  also  act  as   narrator?         In  this  proposal  we  present  the  preliminary  results  of  an  ongoing  study  on  these  issues.   Results  are  based  on  the  analysis  of  Twitter  live  commentary  collected  during  the  hours   immediately  before  and  after  the  landing  of  the  rover  on  the  comet.       We  focused  on  the  following  questions:       RQ1)  How  #CometLanding  compares  to  previously  studied  Twitter  media  events?  RQ2)   Who  are  the  actors  involved  in  the  Twitter  live  commentary  of  #CometLanding?  RQ3)   What  role  have  the  various  actors  played  during  the  event?     RQ4)  Are  there  any  traces  showing  that  the  audience  really  perceived  viewing  as   mandatory  and  adjusted  their  schedule  to  attend  the  event?       Methodology       Using  Twitter  streaming  API,  we  collected  406,011  tweets  (210,239  unique  contributors)   containing  either  #CometLanding  or  #Rosetta  hashtags  and  created  between     2014-­11-­12  16:03:25  CET  and  2014-­11-­12  20:49:34  CET.         In  order  to  answer  the  research  questions  we  employed  a  mixed  method  approach.  We   started  with  a  quantitative  analysis  of  the  Twitter  metrics  (RT,  @replies,  tweet  with  url)   and  the  network  structure  of  the  dataset.         Concerning  RQ1,  following  the  approach  used  by  Bruns  and  Stieglitz  (2013)  to  classify   media  and  emergency/crisis  Twitter  events,  we  compared  #CometLanding  with  other   events  ranging  from  #londoriots  to  #royalwedding  and  #eurovision.       For  RQ2  and  RQ3  we  have  extracted  both  the  reply  network  and  ReTweet  Network.   These  networks  have  been  analysed  through  standard  Social  Network  Analysis   techniques  that  have  been  previously  applied  to  the  study  of  Twitter  data  about  media   events  (Highfield,  Harrington,  and  Bruns  2013;;  Rossi  and  Magnani  2012)       Finally,  in  order  to  answer  RQ4,  we  planned  a  content  analysis  of  a  sample  of  original   tweets.  The  sampling  technique  will  leverage  the  results  of  quantitative  analysis.         Preliminary  results       Mapping  the  percentage  or  retweets  and  tweets  with  url  in  several  different  Twitter   datasets,  Bruns  and  Stieglitz  (2013)  observed  the  emergence  of  two  clearly   distinguished  clusters:  crisis/emergency  events  (e.g.  #tsunami,  #londonriot,  #lybia)  and   media  events  (e.g.  #eurovision,  #royalwedding).       As  shown  in  Figure  1,  both  retweets  and  tweets  with  url  are  significantly  present  in   Twitter  commentaries  around  #CometLanding.       Figure  1.  CometLanding  is  closer  to  emergency/crisis  events  than  media  once       Under  this  perspective,  the  deeds  of  Philae  and  Rosetta  seems  to  have  more  in   common  with  crisis/emergency  events  than  media  once.  The  scientific  nature  of  the   event  itself,  may  have  discouraged  some  viewers  to  express  their  personal  opinions   with  original  comments.  At  the  same  time,  the  slow  approach  of  a  lander  on  a  comet   miles  away  from  earth,  is  not  in  itself  a  news  event  rich  of  developments.         Nevertheless,  judging  from  the  list  of  top  retweeted  contributors  (Table  1),  the  Twitter   account  of  ESA’s  probe  and  lander  were  very  central  to  the  conversation.  If  the   presence  of  an  hero  is  an  ingredient  of  what  Katz  filed  under  “conquest  media  events”,   Philae  and  Rosetta  definitely  played  this  role.       username   Retweets   type   Philae2014   65,416   Lander   ESA_rosetta   33,223   Probe   esaoperations   14,369   Space   Agency   BBCBreaking   12,633   News   NASA   6,370   Space   Agency   esa   5,202   Space   Agency   ObservingSpace   4,124   Website   mashable   3,453   Website   BadAstronomer   2,460   Website   NASAJPL   2,208   Space   Agency   Table  1.  Typology  of  top  retweeted  users       It  is  worth  to  note  that,  unlike  what  usually  happens  on  Twitter  where  the  account  of   well-­established  news  outlets  are  often  prominent  (Highfield,  Harrington,  and  Bruns   2013),  only  BBC  Breaking  is  present  in  Table  1.  Furthermore,  this  account  appears  to   be  disconnected  from  the  network  of  reciprocal  retweets  that  links  the  major  actors   (Figure  2).       Figure  2.  Retweet  network:  node  size  and  color  according  to  degree  centrality           Conclusions       Despite  the  similarities  with  the  moon  landing,  preliminary  results  of  our  study  clearly   show  a  marginal  role  played  by  mainstream  media  and  a  prominent  role  played  by  the creator  of  the  event  (ESA).  ESA  (together  with  NASA)  created,  broadcasted  and   narrated  the  event  making  an  example  of  how  to  disintermediate  a  media  event  or,  in   other  terms,  how  to  run  a  media  event  without  the  media.  The  online  media  strategy   performed  by  ESA  (e.g  the  Twitter  “conversations”  between  Philae  and  Rosetta)   provided  an  experience  of  liveness  (Couldry  2004)  for  something  that  was  actually   happening  miles  away  from  Earth  and  25  minutes  before  (due  to  the  communications   delay).       The  planned  but  not  yet  performed  content  analysis  will  allow  a  better  understanding  of   the  intentions  and  feelings  of  the  online  audience  of  this  atypical  (or  brand  new  type  of)   media  event.         References       Bruns,  Axel,  and  Stefan  Stieglitz.  2013.  “Towards  More  Systematic  Twitter  Analysis:   Metrics  for  Tweeting  Activities.”  International  Journal  of  Social  Research   Methodology  16  (2).  Routledge:  91–108.     Couldry,  Nick.  2004.  “Liveness,  ‘Reality,’  and  the  Mediated  Habitus  from  Television  to   the  Mobile  Phone.”  The  Communication  Review  7  (4).  Routledge:  353–61.     Highfield,  Tim,  Stephen  Harrington,  and  Axel  Bruns.  2013.  “TWITTER  AS  A   TECHNOLOGY  FOR  AUDIENCING  AND  FANDOM.”  Information,   Communication  and  Society  16  (3).  Routledge:  315–39.     Katz,  Elihu.  1980.  “Media  Events:  The  Sense  of  Occasion.”  Studies  in  Visual   Communication  6  (3).  repository.upenn.edu:  84–89.     Rivenburgh,  Nancy  K.  2002.  “The  Olympic  Games:  Twenty-­First  Century  Challenges  as   a  Global  Media  Event.”  Culture,  Sport  Society  5  (3):  32–50.     Rossi,  Luca,  and  Matteo  Magnani.  2012.  “Conversation  Practices  and  Network   Structure  in  Twitter.”  In  ICWSM.  aaai.org.   http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/viewPDFInterstitial/4 634%26  lt%3B/5058.