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An #ICAF2016 Archive [13/04/2016 15:02:02-17/04/2016 17:44:39 BST]

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posted on 2016-04-18, 14:26 authored by Ernesto PriegoErnesto Priego

The International Comic Arts Forum is an annual academic conference dedicated to promoting the scholarly study and appreciation of comic art, including comic strips, comic books, comics albums and graphic novels, magazine and newspaper cartooning, caricature, and comics in electronic media.

The 18th annual conference (#ICAF2016) took place at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, United States, April 14-16, 2016.

This is a .csv file containing approximately 1,600 unique tweets publicly published with the hashtag #ICAF2016 from 13/04/2016 15:02:02 to 17/04/2016 17:44:39 BST. These times reflect the location of collection, not the location in which the tweets were originally published.

The Tweets contained in this file were collected by Ernesto Priego using Martin Hawksey's TAGS 6.0.
 
Only users with at least 3 followers were included in the archive. Retweets have been included (Retweets count as Tweets).

Some refining was performed both automatedly and manually to remove tweets not related to the conference but the data is likely to require further refining and deduplication.

Please note that both research and experience show that the Twitter search API is not 100% reliable. Large Tweet volumes affect the search collection process. The API might "over-represent the more central users", not offering "an accurate picture of peripheral activity" (Gonzalez-Bailon, Sandra, et al. 2012). It cannot be guaranteed this file contains each and every Tweet tagged with #ICAF2016 during the indicated period, and is shared for comparative and indicative educational research purposes only.

The data is shared as is. The sharing of this dataset complies with Twitter's Developer Rules of the Road.

Only content from public accounts is included and was obtained from the Twitter Search API. The shared data is also publicly available to all Twitter users via the Twitter Search API and available to anyone with an Internet connection via the Twitter and Twitter Search web client and mobile apps without the need of a Twitter account.

The profile_image_url and entities_str metadata were removed before public sharing in this archive.

Each Tweet and its contents were published openly on the Web with the queried hashtag and are responsibility of the original authors.

Tweets published publicly by scholars during academic conferences are often tagged (labeled) with a hashtag dedicated to the conference in question.

The purpose and function of hashtags is to organise and describe information/outputs under the relevant label in order to enhance the discoverability of the labeled information/outputs (tweets in this case). A hashtag is metadata users choose freely to use so their content is associated, directly linked to and categorised with the chosen hashtag.

Though every reason for Tweeters' use of hashtags cannot be generalised nor predicted, it can be argued that scholarly Twitter users form specialised, self-selecting networks that tend to observe, more often than not, scholarly modes of behaviour. Generally it can be argued that scholarlyTwitter users tag their public tweets with a conference hashtag as a means to report from, comment on and generally contribute publicly to the scholarly conversation around conferences.

Professional associations like the Modern Language Association recognise tweets as citeable scholarly outputs. Archiving scholarly tweets is a means to preserve this form of rapid online scholarship that otherwise can very likely become unretrievable as time passes; Twitter's search API has well-known temporal limitations for retrospective historical search and collection.

Beyond individual tweets as scholarly outputs, the collective scholarly activity on Twitter around a conference or academic project or event can provide interesting insights for the contemporary history of scholarly communications. To date, collecting in real time is the only relatively accurate method to archive tweets at a small scale. Though these datasets have limitations and are not thoroughly systematic, it is hoped they can contribute to developing new insights into the discipline's presence on Twitter over time.

No sensitive information is contained in this dataset.

This dataset is shared to archive, document and encourage open educational research into scholarly activity on Twitter.

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