Using Twitter for Serious Research
Jinfo Blog

By Catherine Dhanjal

Abstract

Twitter is potentially an important resource for the serious researcher. We ask business information expert Colin Smith for his thoughts and what to be wary of.

Item

The first tweet was sent on 21 March 2006. Twitter now has 316 million active users and 500 million tweets sent every day.

With that volume of information, knowledge and ideas being shared on a daily basis, surely researchers must want to tap into it?

We asked Colin Smith, a consultant with extensive experience in the online business information market through companies such as Dow Jones, Thomson Reuters and Factiva for his thoughts.

His Subscription Article for FreePint, "Twitter as a Research Tool - the Benefits and the Dangers" is based on his previous experience as well as his current role working as a consultant with Africa Alerts where he uses Twitter to look identify reliable sources of information relating to a variety of topics, such as Chinese investment in Africa, key influencers, trends and to research companies and individuals.

As a caveat, Colin warns, "As with other research tools, there are aspects of Twitter that should be treated with caution. These include the bias of a tweet; the currency of "retweets", corporate and sponsored Twitter accounts and the unsophisticated nature of searching."

Since May 2015 Google users in the US searching in English have been able to see tweets in their search results within the Google app for iOS & Android and mobile web. Whilst this feature will hopefully be made available in more countries soon, it's not there yet. 

Currently UK users of Google don't have access to tweets in the search platform, and whilst searching Twitter can be done on a very simplistic level, Colin explains that there are many sophistications which will make for much more targeted results for serious researchers.

FreePint Subscribers can log in now to read Colin's article "Twitter as a Research Tool - the Benefits and the Dangers" and even regular users of Twitter are sure to learn some very useful tips from his article such as use of the advanced search feature, best use of hashtags, lists, aggregators and sponsored sites.

« Blog