I published a new blog post for the LSE Impact blog examining the implications of Twitter’s 280-character increase on academic research. The abstract is copied below and a link is provided to the full entry.
Abstract
Twitter makes its data available in real-time and at no cost, making it a popular data source for many academic researchers. Wasim Ahmed discusses some of the implications of the decision to expand the character limit from 140 to 280. Greater space makes for greater depth and detail, addressing the difficulties of interpretation that 140-character tweets would sometimes present. However, some data retrieval tools have been slow to catch up, and the change may also make historical comparisons problematic. Overall, the character increase is of value to researchers and should inspire further innovative and exciting research.
Read my full post here:
Dr. Wasim Ahmed 