Twitter bomb

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The term twitter bomb or tweet bomb (also spelled as one word) refers to posting numerous (pejoratively, "spamming") Tweets with the same hashtags and other similar content, including @messages, from multiple accounts, with the goal of advertising a certain meme (be it a product or an idea), usually by filling people's Tweet feeds with the same message, and making it a "Trending topic" on Twitter.[1][2][3]

It is a one of the tools used in Internet activism, both by mainstream politicians like Barack Obama and by groups like Anonymous.[1][2][4][5] It has also been used for more commercial advertising.[2]

The earliest recorded usage of the twitter bomb is from August 2008, when it was used by bloggers Liza Sabater and Kenneth Quinnell in response to Republican use of the #dontgo hashtag relating to offshore oil drilling.[6] The term was used for other purposes in 2008, but the other meanings have since disappeared.[2]

An example of a twitter bomb was the campaign organized by online activists in response to a piece by Washington Post on Hillary Clinton, posted online on July 31, 2009, that was deemed sexist.[2][7] An even earlier example, from April 2009, referred to advertising a YouTube video series, Ask a Ninja.[2] Since then, the term and tactics have entered mainstream use; for example in 2011 it has been used by Obama.[8]

The use of the twitter bomb tactics has been known to misfire, as people might be offended by spamming, or trolling.[2][9]

With regards to numbers, an example of a Twitter bomb analyzed in one research paper described how nine fake user accounts produced 929 tweets within 138 minutes, all with a URL link to a political website, presenting negative views on the US politician Martha Coakley.[3] The message might have reached about 60,000 before being eliminated by Twitter as spam.[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Mary C. Joyce (30 April 2010). Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change. IDEA. p. 221. ISBN 978-1-932716-60-3. Retrieved 30 April 2012. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Ethan Zuckerman, The tweetbomb and the ethics of attention, April 20, 2012. Last accessed on April 30, 2012.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 J. Ratkiewicz, M. D. Conover, M. Meiss, B. Gonçalves, A. Flammini, F. Menczer, Detecting and Tracking Political Abuse in Social Media. In Proc. 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media ICWSM (2011).
  4. ↑ John Clifford Green; Daniel J. Coffey (1 September 2010). The State of the Parties: The Changing Role of Contemporary American Parties. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 178. ISBN 978-0-7425-9954-3. Retrieved 30 April 2012. 
  5. ↑ Chris Richardson (2012-04-20). "Anonymous Plans “24 Hour Tweet Bomb” To Fight CISPA". WebProNews. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 
  6. ↑ Kenneth Quinnell, Twitter Bomb, August 5, 2008. Last accessed on August 27, 2012.
  7. ↑ Mary C. Joyce (30 April 2010). Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change. IDEA. pp. 155–156. ISBN 978-1-932716-60-3. Retrieved 30 April 2012. 
  8. ↑ "37K Followers Ditch Obama After Twitter Bomb - @BarackObama tweets handles of GOP legislators, state by state". Newser.com. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 
  9. ↑ "Social media activism and the (in)justice of the mob". Partisans. 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2012-04-30. 
  10. ↑ Neil Savage. 2011. Twitter as medium and message. Commun. ACM 54, 3 (March 2011), 18–20. DOI=10.1145/1897852.1897860 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1897852.1897860
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