M&G is leading the Twitter Network in SA

Analyzing the Twitter network of 500 South African journalists shows a prominent role for the tweeps of the Mail&Guardian. Using the Twitter names on Hacks List (http://hacks.mediahack.co.za/ ) downloading their relations, and analyzing them in Gephi (www.gephi.org ) and NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com/ ) creates the following graph:
(Published at Memeburn: http://memeburn.com/2012/07/how-to-make-your-journalistic-twitter-network-rock-a-case-study/)

Twitter 500 network of SA journalists

In order to make this hairball a bit more attractive I have set size to authority and gave different groups a color. (Use the down loadable pdf to zoom in) This network consists of 506 persons, sharing 2503 relations, which gives a density of 9%.

For detailed analysis we have to dig deeper than this graph. Here is the Top20 of tweeps for authority:

Top 20 Authority on Twitter
T_name	Medium	Group
ferialhaffajee	City Press	5
nicdawes	Mail & Guardian	0
gussilber	Freelance	1
mandywiener	EWN	4
phillipdewet	Mail & Guardian	1
stephengrootes	EWN	4
maxdupreez		4
hartleyr	Sunday Times	4
adriaanbasson	City Press	4
702johnrobbie	Radio 702	4
bruceps	Business Day	1
verashni	Mail & Guardian	3
mandyldewaal	Daily Maverick	0
antonharber	Freelance	4
carienduplessis	City Press	4
art2gee	Freelance	1
guyberger	personal	0
shapshak	Stuff	1
akianastasiou	Radio 702	1
brankobrkic	Daily Maverick	1

And here is the graph of this Top20

Top twenty tweeps for authority

The M&G has three persons in this list and scores thus high on authority, meaning that they respected sources on Twitter.

If we compare the number of tweeps for each medium, we see that the leading role of M&G is further detailed:

Top 10 media for Tweeps
Freelance	89	18%	gussilber
M&G	20	4%	nicdawes
EWN	16	3%	mandywiener
Buss Day	14	3%	bruceps
eNews	14	3%	nbikitsha
Caxton C	12	2%	amandzing
The Star	12	2%	kevinmccallum
Daily Mav	10	2%	mandyldewaal
New Age	10	2%	rylandfisher
News24	9	2%	janniemom
Nuus24	9	2%	mynuus24

The M&G is the medium with the highest number of journalists on Twitter; 20 journalists with nicdawes leading, which is 4% of the 500 in the list.

The journalists of the M&G are not closed elite on Twitter; that is only listening and following each other. Creating groups, tweeps how are closer connected and share more relations in the Twitter network, shows an interesting picture.

In the Twitter network the following 6 groups can be constructed:

Groups in the Twitter network

The biggest and therefore most important are: group 0 (color green and 28% of the the tweeps) dedicated to news and opinion and group 4 (color purple and 33% of the tweeps) dedicated to hard news. How is M&G related to these groups?

Top_tweep	Group	Color	Number	Percentage	Composition
Nicdawes	0	green	145	28%	news/opinion
gussilber	1	yellow	91	18%	busin/finan/IT
edenvalejourno	2	red	10	2%	caxton
Verashni	3	blue	56	11%	media 24
mandywiener	4	purple	169	33%	news
ferialhaffajee	5	Blue_light	35	7%	sport

Nicdawes of the M&G is leading in group 0, which concerns news and opinion. Vernashi plays a similar role in group 3 where Media24 plays an important role.

The twenty journalists at the M&G are as follows divided over the groups:

M&G tweeps per group

Group	Number
0 News and Opinion	6
1 Business/Finance and ICT	3
3 Media 24	2
4 Hard News	9

It shows an interesting division over different subgroups in the network. 6 M&G journalist are connected to the news and opinion subgroup were freelance journalists are in the majority. 9 of them are connected to the hard news subgroup were other leading media are represented.

Their mutual relations-the M&G network- looks as follows. It shows of course that the M&G tweeps watch each closely, which is not uncommon among journalists, as is shown by an analysis of UK journalists in the Guardian. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/apr/11/journalists-twitter-following ).

Twitter sub network of M&G journalists