Twitter analysis #MH192
Harro Ranter harro.ranter@gmail.com April 23, 2014
1. Preface.....................................................................................................................................3 2. Selection..................................................................................................................................3 3. Timeline..................................................................................................................................3 3.1 Timeline of events.............................................................................................................3 3.2 Tweet volume....................................................................................................................5 4. Content analysis......................................................................................................................6 4.1 Twitter clients...................................................................................................................6 4.2 Influential twitter accounts................................................................................................6 4.3 Tweets...............................................................................................................................7 4.4 Hashtags............................................................................................................................8 4.5 Languages.........................................................................................................................8 4.6 Links..................................................................................................................................9 4.6.1 Websites...................................................................................................................10 4.7 Geo location....................................................................................................................11
Twitter Analysis #MH192 / the Aviation Safety Network
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1. Preface On Sunday April 20, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH-192 suffered a tyre failure on takeoff from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia. The airplane, a Boeing 737-800, entered a holding pattern over sea to the west of Kuala Lumpur. After burning fuel, the airplane landed safely. None of the 159 passengers and 7 crew members were injured. While the airplane was still in the air, people on Twitter started discussing Flight MH192. Photos of tyre debris began circulating, along with screen shots of flight tracking websites that showed MH192 circling in a holding pattern. When the airplane was still in the air, Malaysia Airlines already issued statements on Twitter and Facebook. This report analyses over 130.000 tweets that were sent while the incident unfolded, and in the hours following the safe landing. ! Please note this document uses comma (,) as decimal mark and full stop (.) as thousands separator.
2. Selection Using the official Twitter API all tweets were selected that contained the terms: MH192 OR PrayforMH192 This way tweets are selected using e.g. both the word 'MH192' as well as the hashtag '#MH192'. Tweets were selected on an eight hour time frame, from April 20, 23:12 hours local Malaysian time, which was time of the first tweet on the incident, until April 21, 07:12 hours. This resulted in a selection of 131.147 tweets. The actual amount of tweets related to the incident was much higher, since tweets with a general reference to the incident are not included. E.g. "I am glad the plan landed safely." The current dataset however sufficiently captures the essence of the event. And the specific keywords used, resulted in a dataset with a very high precision. Most, if not all, tweets were related to the MH192 incident.
3. Timeline 3.1 Timeline of events Time (MYT)
hh:mm since takeoff time
Event
April 20 Malaysian time 22:19
-
MH192 take off from Kuala Lumpur Airport, bound for Bangalore, India
22:29
00:10
MH192 enters holding pattern at 14.000 feet
23:10
00:51
First approach low pass carried out over runway 32L
Twitter Analysis #MH192 / the Aviation Safety Network
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23:12
00:53
First tweet: "@MAS What's happened to MH192? Why has it turned back? http://t.co/TWpitn52Cl"
23:33
01:14
@kam_al_gojo first to tweet #PrayForMH192 hashtag
April 21 Malaysian time 00:39
02:20
First tweet from Malaysia Airlines (@MAS) about MH192
00:41
02:22
@inquirerdotnet (Philippines news channel) first media to report the incident
01:24
03:05
MH192 leaves holding pattern at 7000 feet, descends towards airport
01:38
03:19
First tweet from Minister Tranport (@HishammuddinH2O)
01:42
03:23
MH192 carries out second approach and low pass over runway 32L
01:44
03:25
Second tweet from Malaysia Airlines (media statement)
01:56
03:37
MH192 carries out safe landing on runway 32L
Time (MYT)
hh:mm since landing time
Event
02:07
00:11
Third tweet from Malaysia Airlines (about safe landing)
02:08
00:12
MH192 tweets top at 2121 tweets per minute (35+ per second)
03:39
01:43
@H2OComms tweets Minister's @HishammuddinH2O arrival at airport
04:17
02:21
@H2OComms tweets Minister @HishammuddinH2O meeting with passengers
04:25
02:29
@H2OComms tweets Minister @HishammuddinH2O meeting with crew
07:06
05:10
Twitter account @prayformh192 created
15:27
13:31
Twitter account @mh192_ created
fig. 1 flight track of MH192
Twitter Analysis #MH192 / the Aviation Safety Network
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3.2 Tweet volume The first hour after the initial tweet about MH192 was quiet until Malaysia Airlines posted a tweet at 00:39. Online buzz increased significantly until just after the plane landed safely.
fig. 2 Number of tweets per ten minutes
The number of potential impressions (number of times a tweet could have been displayed in a user’s timeline) shows a roughly similar trend. The peaks in the early morning were caused by news channels with a high number of followers and continuing tweets of Minister of Transport Hussein.
fig. 3 Number of tweets per ten minutes (blue) and potential impressions per ten minutes (green)
Twitter Analysis #MH192 / the Aviation Safety Network
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4. Content analysis 4.1 Twitter clients The majority of tweets were published on mobile devices. Twitter's own app for Android, iPhone/iPad and Blackberry alone was responsible for 73% of all tweets . The ten most used Twitter clients were used to publish about 93% of all tweets. Twitter client Twitter for Android Twitter for iPhone web Twitter for BlackBerryÂŽ Twitter for iPad Twitter for Android Tablet TweetCaster for Android Mobile Web (M2) TweetDeck twitterfeed other
tweets 57.419 25.001 17.867 6.505 3.953 2.733 2.534 2.354 2.169 1.396 9.216
Percentage 43,8% 19,1% 13,6% 5% 3% 2,1% 1,9% 1,8% 1,7% 1,1% 6,9%
4.2 Influential twitter accounts Which twitter accounts had the highest number of potential impressions (number of times a tweet could have been displayed in a user’s timeline) when tweeting about MH192? News accounts are topping the chart: Impressions Tweets
Twitter name
10.275.281 7.138.828 6.618.420 6.507.371 5.732.420
5 1 1 9 3
@gmanews @detikcom @BreakingNews @bharianmy @ndtv
5.044.681
4
@ANCALERTS
3.233.190
5
@ HishammuddinH2O
2.710.177
1
@ElUniversal
2.319.929
2
@SkyNewsBreak
2.280.383
8
@tunfaisal _
Name (from bio) GMA News Detikcom Breaking News Berita Harian NDTV ABS-CBN News Channel Hishammuddin Hussein El Universal Sky News Newsdesk Tun Faisal
Twitter Analysis #MH192 / the Aviation Safety Network
Bio News channel, Philippines News channel, Indonesia Break news channel of NBC News channel, Malaysia News channel, India News channel, Philippines Minister of Transport News channel, Venezuela News channel, U.K. Member of UMNO political party in Malaysia
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4.3 Tweets Malaysia Airlines’ tweets had by far the highest number of retweets:
1. 02:07 hours: Official statement by the airline after landing
2. 00:39 hours: First official statement by the airline
3. 01:58 hours: Malaysian singer Hafiz Hamidun tweets about MH192
Twitter Analysis #MH192 / the Aviation Safety Network
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4.4 Hashtags The top ten hashtags used in tweets related to MH192 were: Hashtag #mh192 #prayformh192 #masalert #doakanmh192 #mh370 #nationtv #prayformh370 #prayforsouthkorea #mas #ggmu
Tweets Percentage 44.575 34% 39.379 30% 11.617 5,9% 1.933 1,5% 1.788 1,4% 1.471 1,1% 1.281 1% 563 0,4% 428 0,3% 338 0,3%
Many hashtags were related to prayers. Either in English (prayerfor...) or in Malay (doakan...) Some were even relating the MH192 incident with other recent accidents like the recent sinking of a ferry near South Korea, as reflected in '#prayforsouthkorea'. Or with references to flight MH370 which disappeared on March 8. The hashtag #ggmu was used by Malaysian singer Hafiz Hamidun who wished his followers good night, reflecting on both the safe landing of MH192 and the fact that Manchester United lost a match (GGMU = 'Glory Glory Manchester United')
4.5 Languages The majority of tweets were written in the English and Indian language.
fig. 4 Tweet language percentages
Twitter Analysis #MH192 / the Aviation Safety Network
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4.6 Links Some 29.000 links were shared in tweets relating to MH192.
Tweets
Link http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlreUg_CQAMtaps.jpg
Content
1.632
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Blra7TnCYAAgvoo.png 1.560
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Blrkx90IgAEti6-.jpg 1.187
1.176 http://fr24.com/MAS192 http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlriLLuCMAApEHO.png 623 http://news.detik.com/read/2014/04/21/034822/2560127/1148/m h192-alami-pecah-ban-saat-lepas-landas-puing-ban-berserakan-di621 landasan
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlrZ7DQCMAABVXo.jpg 575
462 http://www.flightradar24.com/MAS192/327a227 http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Blrp4wlIMAAR42W.png 440
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlreFp-CAAAwjx6.png 425
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4.6.1 Websites Most of the 29.000 links that were shared in tweets contained references to social media. Be it photos, videos, or Facebook posts. tweets
domain (website)
17.949 twitter.com
remarks Photo's posted through Twitter
2.467 facebook.com
Facebook posts
1.904 www.fr24.com
Flightradar24 flight tracking website
748 www.youtube.com
Youtube video's
621 news.detik.com
Detiknews (Indonesian news website)
494 liveatc.net
Live Air Traffic Control audio
276 instagram.com
Instagram photo's
262 www.ndtv.com
NDTV (Indian news)
235 blogspot.com
spam link
207 www.thestar.com.my
The Star Online (Malaysian news website)
A further categorization shows the relatively small amount of references to news website as compared to for instance flight tracking websites and user generated content like photos.
fig. 5 Link categories
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4.7 Geo location Twitter gives users the option of automatically adding geographical coordinates when posting a tweet. This shows the (approximate) location of the user at the time the tweet was posted. A total of 1.704 tweets (1,3%) contained geographical coordinates. A mapping of these tweets shows there was attention for MH192 from all over the world, but obviously the majority in Malaysia.
fig. 6 Tweets with longitude, latitude coordinates plotted on a world map
fig. 6 Tweets with longitude, latitude coordinates in Malaysia
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