Yuri Takhteyev

Geography of Twitter networks

Abstract The paper examines the influence of geographic distance, national boundaries, language, and frequency of air travel on the formation of social ties on Twitter, a popular micro-blogging website. Based on a large sample of publicly available Twitter data, our study shows that a substantial share of ties lies within the same metropolitan region, and that between regional clusters, distance, national borders and language differences all predict Twitter ties. We find that the frequency of airline flights between the two parties is the best predictor of Twitter ties. This highlights the importance of looking at pre-existing ties between places and people.

Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community

The notion of “community” has often been caught between concrete social relationships and imagined sets of people perceived to be similar. The rise of the Internet has refocused our attention on this ongoing tension. The Internet has enabled people who know each other to use social media, from e-mail to Facebook, to interact without meeting physically. Into this mix came Twitter, an asymmetric microblogging service: If you follow me, I do not have to follow you. This means that connections on Twitter depend less on in-person contact, as many users have more followers than they know. Yet there is a possibility that Twitter can form the basis of interlinked personal communities—and even of a sense of community. This analysis of one person’s Twitter network shows that it is the basis for a real community, even though Twitter was not designed to support the development of online communities. Studying Twitter is useful for understanding how people use new communication technologies to form new social connections and maintain existing ones.

Retrocomputing as Preservation and Remix

Purpose – The papers aim is to describe the world of retrocomputing, a constellation of largely non‐professional practices involving old computing technology. It seeks to show how retrocomputing serves the goals of collection and preservation, particularly in regards to historic software, and how retrocomputing practices challenge traditional notions of authenticity. It then seeks to propose an alternative conceptualization and suggest new avenues for collaboration between retrocomputing practitioners and memory institutions.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on extensive observation of retrocomputing projects, conducted primarily online.Findings – Retrocomputing includes many activities that can be seen as constituting collection and preservation. At the same time, it is often transformative, producing assemblages that “remix” fragments from the past with newer elements or joining together historic components that were never combined before. While such “remix” may seem to undermine preserv...