Polish Twitter users connected with football

Polish Twitter users
connected with football
Michał Dąbrowski, Dariusz Mydlarz
Introduction
● Twitter - microblogging platform
● Polish soccer community
● Zbigniew Boniek (@BoniekZibi) - main user
● Main group of interest based on
@BoniekZibi relations
● Relationships between users
Data Source
● Twitter API
○ REST
■ last 6-9 days
■ possible filtering by localization, keywords
■ many types of data (tweets, places, friends,
followers, etc.)
■ max. 180 requests per 15 minutes
○ Streaming
■ live consuming tweets as they are published
■ filtering options (keywords, languages, people
etc.)
Database
Gathering data
● Zbigniew Boniek (@BoniekZibi)
○ chairman of Polish Football Association
● REST API
○ all @BoniekZibi tweets
● Streaming API
○ from 17.10.2013 to 31.10.2013
○ listening to users connected to @BoniekZibig (at
least 4 tweets between them)
○ instantly growing group of featured users
Major events
Major events
● Trabzonspor - Legia Warszawa in UEFA Europe
League
● Official announcement new manager of Poland national
team
● FC Barcelona - Real Madrid in La Liga
● Lech Poznań - Legia Warszawa in Ekstraklasa
● Górnik Zabrze - Cracovia Kraków in Ekstraklasa (last
Adam Nawałka’s match - new polish team manager - as
a couch of Górnik)
● first Adam Nawałka’s press conference as a polish team
manager
Relations - incoming
Relations - outgoing
Relations
● Incoming
○ mainly reporters
○ hot, “starting discussion” tweets
○ many replies from followers
● Outgoing
○ mainly fans
○ rather retweets and replies
Centralities
● Nodes with highest betweenes
○ reporters
○ tweets valuable in information
○ “starting discussion” tweets
● High eccentricity rate
○ less active people (mainly club supporters)
○ supporters that are not part of popular discussions
● No regularity of closeness factor
Conclusions
● Twitter APIs are great and well documented
● Keywords are not always the best way to find specific
data
● Polish Twitter users connected with football are divided
into smaller communities
● Even though Polish football reporters are not the most
active users (according to tweets counter) their tweets
are often “attention catchers”
● Still relatively few Polish football players post (regularly)
on Twitter