Social Media Analytics as a Tool for Cultural Spaces—The Case of Twitter Trending Topics

Abstract

We are entering an era in which online personalities and personas will grow faster and faster. People are tending to use the Internet, and social media especially, more frequently and for a wider variety of purposes. In parallel, a number of cultural spaces have already decided to invest in marketing and message spreading through the web and the media. Growing their audience, or locating the appropriate group of people to share their information, remains a tedious task within the chaotic environment of the Internet. The investment is mainly financial—usually large—and directed to advertisements. Still, there is much space for research and investment in analytics that can provide evidence considering the spreading of the word and finding groups of people interested in specific information or trending topics and influencers. In this paper, we present a part of a national project that aims to perform an analysis of Twitter’s trending topics. The main scope of the analysis is to provide a basic ordering on the topics based on their “importance”. Based on this, we clarify how cultural institutions can benefit from such an analysis in order to empower their online presence.