Twitter Map Portrait of TEDxBrum

TED & TEDx are brilliant events with high quality speakers talking about interesting things. If you haven’t checked them out before, have a look at the TEDxBrum and TED  websites.

Last year I mapped the social network impact of TEDxBrum. My work in this area has advanced with various private mapping projects as well as public ones such as the Birmingham Food Scene Map, so I thought it was worth re-visiting TEDxBrum, particularly as the theme this year is maps.

So, here’s what I call a “Twitter Map Portrait” of @TEDxBrum. It shows the interconnections between followers of @TEDxBrum and also allocates them into “communities” based on who else they follow.

Followers of TEDxBrum. Colours indicate different communities. Size indicates how well followed an account is by other TEDxBrum followers. Click the image for a larger view or download the PDF for maximum zoom-ability.

We can see that TEDxBrum’s followers break down into  several different communities, lets have a closer look and see if we can figure out what they represent. Comments on this are most welcome, particularly if you identify communities or themes I’ve not spotted, or if you disagree with my categories.

Yellow – “TEDx, and Outside Brum” Communities

Let start with the section of the Yellow Group at the top left:

TEDx… community (zoom of top left corner of map)

As we can see, there is a distinct TEDx… community at the top left. Accounts here follow each other, but don’t follow other Birmingham based accounts.

Other accounts in the Yellow Group. Click for a larger image.

The rest of the Yellow Group is a bit of a catch all, consisting of accounts who also follow celebrities and big name accounts. That isn’t to say it’s their only interest, just that it’s what they have in common. There may be other communities lurking here which I haven’t spotted. If you have any other theories about this group, please leave a comment!

Blue – “Technology and Innovation” Group

To my mind, technology and innovation seem to be the main themes here, with accounts such as Digital Birmingham, Birmingham Social Media Cafe,  Innovation Bham Campus (at Birmingham Science Park Aston ) and Nick Holzherr.  There are also some social media “stars” at the lower end of the group (Dave Harte, Karen Strunks, Jon Bounds etc.)

Magenta – “Birmingham Business, Food and  City” Group

This group seems to break down into at-least three sub-groups, which we could identify automatically if required. To my eye, they seem to be Birmingham Business – Concerned with business in the city such as Business Birmingham, Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and also Ed James (Bham Publicity Association/ Bham Press Club / Heart FM Breakfast); Food – Cafes, bars and other accounts which also appear in my map of Birmingham Food Scene; City- Accounts with a strong local focus  like Birmingham Live,   I Am Birmingham,  Outer Circle Bus and My Jewellery Quarter (who also feature in my analysis of the first TEDxBrum event).

Red – “Arts” Group

The arts is big in Birmingham, so it’s no surprise to see such a large arts-related group. I’m also considering creating a Birmingham Arts Scene map, and it would be interesting to compare prominence of accounts between the two. Prominent accounts include mac (or as I still call it, “The Midland’s Arts Centre”), Custard Factory, Ikon Gallery, as well as Cy(ber) Birmingham (also prominent in my food scene map).

Green – “Politics, Social Media, Social Conscience” Group

Local Political Accounts such as Politics in Brum and Claire Spencer and Bham City Council  and Social Conscience / Social Action such as Birmingham Friends of the Earth , Nick Booth (@podnosh),  Be Birmingham, and Louise Teboul. Also present are some core TEDxBrum Accounts such as Anneka Deva (TEDxBrum Curator) and Imandeep Kaur (TEDxBrum Outreach Co-ordinator)

Conclusions

TEDxBrum has a wide network, focussed on Birmingham, with representation from a number of key areas. It would be interesting to identify local communities that haven’t plugged in to TEDxBrum yet, for example, is there a local medical community on Twitter?

I’d be very interested to hear your comments on the groups identified and any other aspects,  either via twitter @AndyPryke (follow me for more similar investigations) or in the comments section below. A Birmingham Music Scene and Arts Scene map are currently planned, I’d be interested  in  your ideas for future maps, and, of course, I’m available for commercial work in the area too (which comes with a lot more detail) and I’m happy to chat about any type of data, analysis or visualisation.

Look forward to seeing you at TEDxBrum on the 8th of June!

Reproduction Rights

You are welcome to reproduce these images as long as you reference either @AndyPryke or include a link to this blog post. I’d love to hear if you do. Mapping Birmingham’s Food Scene by Andy Pryke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Acknowlegements

• R – Excellent language for data mining, analysis and visualisation.  Been using it since 2003 and it keeps getting better. Also the twitteR package by Jeff Gentry and igraph package by Gábor Csárdi
• XChange PDF Viewer – Very useful PDF viewer, allows annotations and easy to snapshot enlarged PDFs.
• Irfanview – Lightweight image viewer / editor with enough features for almost all my image editing
• Tony Hirst (@psychemedia) – The doyen of Twitter visualisation, whose tutorials have been very useful to me.

Aston