This article presents a multi-method research design for measuring the (trans-)national quality of issue publics on Twitter. Online communication is widely perceived as having the potential to overcome nationally bound public spheres. Social media, in particular, are seen as platforms and drivers of transnational communication through which users can easily connect across borders. Transnational interactivity can be expected in particular for policy fields of global concern and elite or activist communication as practiced on Twitter. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of evidence for the enduring national structuration of political communication and publics as it results from a shared language (mostly), culturally defined media markets, established routines of social and political communication, and sociocultural stocks of knowledge. The study goes beyond measuring user interaction and also includes indicators of cross-referential cohesion. It applies a set of computational methods in network and discourse analysis and presents empirical evidence for Twitter communication on climate change being a prime issue of global concern and a globalized policy agenda. For empirical analysis, the study relies on a large Twitter dataset (N ≈ 6m tweets) with tweet messages and metadata collected between 2015 and 2018. Based on basic measurements such as geolocation and language use, the metrics allowed measurement of cross-national user interactions, user centrality in communicative networks, linking behaviour, and hashtag co-occurrences. The findings of the exploratory study suggest that a combined perspective on indicators of user interaction and cross-referential cohesion helps to develop a better and more nuanced understanding of online issue publics.

中文翻译：

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为世界准备好了吗？在Twitter上衡量政治问题公众的（跨）国民素质

本文介绍了一种用于评估Twitter上发行人的（跨国）质量的多方法研究设计。人们普遍认为在线交流有可能克服受国家约束的公共领域。尤其是社交媒体，被视为跨国交流的平台和驱动程序，通过它用户可以轻松地跨境连接。跨国互动尤其是在Twitter上实践的全球关注的政策领域以及精英或激进主义者的交流中。但是，仍然有很多证据表明，政治交流和公众的持久国家结构是由于语言的共享（主要是），文化定义的媒体市场，社会和政治交流的既定惯例以及社会文化知识储备所致。该研究不仅测量用户交互，还包括交叉引用内聚性指标。它在网络和话语分析中应用了一组计算方法，并为Twitter交流提供了经验证据，证明气候变化是全球关注的首要问题和全球化政策议程。为了进行实证分析，该研究依赖于一个大型Twitter数据集（N≈6m条推文），其中包含2015年至2018年之间收集的推文消息和元数据。基于地理位置和语言使用等基本度量，该度量标准允许度量跨国用户交互，用户在通信网络中的集中度，链接行为和标签共同出现。