The rapid evolution of Twitter is changing the game of politics, business and media, leading Australian social media experts say.

With millions of active Twitter users worldwide, social media tools are giving people the power to influence mainstream media, political campaigns and businesses. The technology is used widely in areas including political debate and activism, media fandom and brand communication, says Associate Professor Axel Bruns of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at Queensland University of Technology.

“Take the death of Osama Bin Laden for example: news of his death emerged first on Twitter, and people who were following it already had an idea of what had happened before President Obama made the official statement,” he says.

“Social media, in certain aspects, are an even faster channel for both news and rumours. This can also be seen during political campaigns, where you can read almost real time Twitter updates and debates throughout the whole process.”

Dr Jean Burgess, Senior Research Fellow at the CCI, says that social media, on occasions, have fed news pieces back into the mainstream loop.

“People are picking up on smaller things that may have fallen out of the mainstream media, such as Tony Abbott making the statement about putting a price on carbon two years ago,” she says. “It recently went viral in social media channels, and the next thing you know, it’s back in mainstream discussions.”

The researchers are leading two projects that explore how people are using Twitter and how organisations can engage with the active userbase. The team has received funding to collaborate with German partners at the universities of Düsseldorf and Münster, in two of the eleven projects funded by the Australian Technologies Network and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) this year.

“There are hundreds of thousands of Australian Twitter users, and their conversations can give us an insight into our culture and society,” the researchers say. “We also need to make sure that social media are well connected with other media platforms, especially during crises or natural disasters.”

The researchers explain that the technology is also changing the way businesses interact with their customers.

“Businesses have to pay close attention to what’s being said on social media – if incorrect information is being shared, you’d want to amend it. If it’s constructive criticism, it might be useful feedback.

“For instance, when Skype crashed a week ago, the company tweeted that the outage was hitting a ‘small number’ of users. This generated an almost instantaneous response from people all over the world tweeting that they were all having problems with the program – far from just a small number.”

The increasingly diverse and sophisticated use of social media technology, the researchers say, is driving the need for better methods to study it.

“We are dealing with very large volumes of data that need to be processed in real time. Through our research, we develop social media analysis methods to help understand far broader cultural and social trends around specific issues; from environmental politics to multiculturalism to popular culture and sport.”