Ambient affiliation on twitter: A case study on organic farming

This paper presents a virtual excavation of Twitter, an asymmetric micro-blogging service, aimed at anchoring what is revealed through digital trace data analysis. The specific objective is to assess the potentialities for ambient community formation and cultivation in business-oriented virtual partnerships and web alliances using Twitter. As case study, the work focuses on organic farming and the compelling need for finding up-to-date information, devising plans and coordinating activities at different levels to attain common goals and objectives. It turns out that tweet replies, retweeting and retweet content analysis offer powerful mechanisms for understanding Twitter-enabled cyber-formations.