ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how such methods might be applied to data extracted from one leading social media platform, in order to shed new light on the various elements constituting “the” contemporary public sphere in Australia; many of the opportunities employed may also be translated to other communicative and national contexts. It focuses its attention largely on Twitter in exploring these opportunities: most centrally, due to its comparatively simple privacy settings, Twitter is an inherently “public” medium. The presence of thematically motivated public spherules and their ability or otherwise to sustain sealed “filter bubbles” can be examined by exploring the underlying structure of follower/followee networks in Twitter at a large scale. The communicative affordances provided by the Twitter platform may be appropriated by its users in a variety of ways, diverging from the practices outlined – not every hashtag represents an issue public.
