Measuring the level of global awareness on social media

Abstract

We introduce a novel approach to measure the degree of global awareness by analyzing social media. Tracking six honest signals of collaboration on Twitter (strong leadership, rotating leadership, balanced contribution, responsiveness, honest sentiment, shared language), we illustrate how social media builds collective awareness through Twitter activity while prominent events are unfolding. We compare three events in 2015: Francogeddon—the sudden unpegging of the Swiss Franc to the Euro, the launch of the Apple watch, and the Greek vote on Grexit, finding that Francogeddon shows the highest short-term impact on global awareness.