Read, Not Dead: A Case Study of # redanddead Viral News Spread

1. Read, Not Dead: A Case Study of #redanddead Viral News Spread 14thInternational Symposium on Online Journalism. University of Texas, Austin. 04/19/2013 Geoffrey M. Graybeal, JiranHou, and Carmen Hernández-Ojeda

2. Intro August 2012, The Red & Black shifts control from student editors to hired professionals. Students resign; form digital-only publication, The Red & Dead. Twitter account: @redanddead815; #redanddead Facebook Page: Red & Dead.

3. Literature Review • News content on Twitter Networks. • Few studies on journalism/breaking news (Brown-Smith, 2012). • Traditional news orgs primary source of info (Lariscy, Avery, Sweetser, &Howes, 2009). • Online Influences (Cha, Haddadi, Benevenuto & Gummadi, 2010). • User influence-content based (news)/conversational based (celebrities). • Topical influence. • Information flow and Twitter/Preferential Attachment (Himelboim, McCreery & Smith, 2011; Himelboim & Han, 2012).

4. Research Questions RQ1: What role did social media play in spreading news of Red & Dead? RQ2:How did news of The Red & Black editors’ resignation spread through Twitter so quickly? RQ3: How were the Red & Black editors able to build a sizable audience for a digital-only publication?

5. Methods • Content analysis. • 500 tweets from the @redanddead815 between Aug 15 to Aug 21, 2012. • 111 articles pulled from the Internet. • Social network analysis. • ATwitter-topic network of The Red and Dead. • 304 Twitter users and 840 user relationships were captured.

6. RQ 1. What role did social media play in spreading news of Red & Dead? • 80% of @redanddead815 tweets were posted during the account’s first three days. • Red & Dead asked for followers and influencers to spread the news. • Half of Aug. 15 tweets fell into the request and outsider influence categories.

7. RQ 1. What role did social media play in spreading news of Red & Dead? Red & Dead Timeline

8. RQ 2. How did news of The Red & Black editors’ resignation spread through Twitter so quickly? Red & Black alumni, ties. • Journalism. • Influential journalists first tweeted. • Professional organizations and advocacy groups. • Student journalists. • Red & Dead specific strategy. • Targeted influential people and organizations.

9. RQ 2. Findings

10. RQ 2. Findings “We worked hard to make sure the right people knew about our situation.” Lindsey Cook(@lindzcook) 950,000 followers 100,000 followers

11. RQ 2. Findings

12. RQ 2. Findings

13. RQ 3. How were the Red & Black editors able to build a sizable audience for a digital-only publication? 126,000 page views w/in 36 hrs. • News coverage. • Viral nature. • Social media. • Tweets drove traffic. • Key document. • Stories covering the incident referenced the blog publication. • Name recognition.

14. RQ 3. Findings

15. RQ 3. Findings

16. RQ 3. Findings

17. Discussion • Traditional news still matters. • Key players spreading content through SNSs. • News coverage  audience. • Journalists pivotal in enabling story to “go viral.” • Ambient journalism. • Topical influencers spread info (resonated beyond Georgia). • Student Press Freedom, college media, journalism.