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2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

A Systematic Literature Review of Twitter Research


from a Socio-Political Revolution Perspective

Ricardo Buettner 1 and Katharina Buettner 1 , 2


1 FOM University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Management & Information Systems, Munich, Germany
ricardo.buettner@fom.de
2 PULS GmbH, Munich, Germany
katharina.buettner@yahoo.de

Abstract of the internet and especially the evolution of social


media outpaced this speculation. However, Kuran’s
From a socio-political revolution perspective we theory of (unanticipated) political revolution and the
review Twitter-related literature included in top peer- role of communication tools is very relevant in order
reviewed journals and conferences, and build up a to understand the power of social media such as Twitter
comprehensive picture. Based on this we identify em- within political revolutions. At the same time, it must
pirical and design-oriented research needs. be clear that Twitter does not lead the revolution.
Rather Twitter is a tool effectively connecting people
1. Introduction within a complex and non-linear social fabric (see for
example the debate of Tumasjan et al. and Jungherr et
Oh et al. [1] demonstrated that Twitter was used al. [4]–[6]).
heavily for “collective sense making ... maintain[ing] That is why – following the research call of various
situational awareness during the unstable political Information Systems (IS) scholars (e.g. [1]) – in this
situation” during the 2011 Egypt revolution [1, 210]. article we review all existing “substantial” scientific
Our work evaluates Oh’s [1] results concerning Twitter Twitter work related to the socio-political revolution
usage for collective sense making and maintaining perspective and build up a comprehensive literature
situational awareness for other revolutions and extends review following Kuran’s theory [2]. Based on this
it by using Kuran’s theory [2] of (unanticipated) po- review we identify empirically evaluable propositions
litical revolution. We use Goldstone’s contemporary and design-oriented research needs to stimulate future
definition of revolution as “an effort to transform the research on the theoretical progress of understanding
political institutions and the justifications for political the role of Twitter within socio-political revolutions
authority in a society, accompanied by formal or infor- and Twitter’s functionality of information and commu-
mal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions nication facilities during revolutions.
that undermine existing authorities.” [3, p. 142]. RQ1 : What are the research needs for understanding
Twitter is the world’s second most established social the Twitter usage phenomena during socio-political rev-
media platform after Facebook. Compared to other olutions?
social media platforms, Twitter offers a rich spectrum RQ2 : What additional Twitter functionalities are us-
of publicly available data containing profiles, up to 140 able during socio-political revolutions?
character messages (tweets), and following-follower The paper is organized as follows: In section 2 we
network information. Besides the very popular private- present the research methodology. Section 3 contains
and business-oriented use of Twitter and due to the related work. Kuran’s theory of unanticipated political
generally public but time-limited availability of most revolution is sketched in section 4. The comprehensive
data, Twitter offers a rich resource for research (cf. review including the particular empirical and design-
Twitter API). oriented research needs is presented in section 5.
Long before the advent of the internet, Kuran specu- In section 6 a compacted framework guiding future
lated that “television, for instance, could alter people’s research will be shown. Finally, the conclusion includ-
political preferences by enhancing their awareness of ing research limitations and future work is found in
how other societies are governed” [2, p. 53]. The rise section 7.

1530-1605/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE 2206


DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2016.277
2. Methodology 3. Related work
Nine years after the launching of Twitter, scholars
On the basis of a systematic literature analysis iden- have contributed from different disciplines such as
tifying Twitter-related socio-political revolution pub- Information Technology, Information Systems, Sociol-
lications, respective research requirements to foster ogy, Psychology, Philosophy, Politics, Communication
Twitter usage studies will be identified. These needs Studies, Business Studies, Law, Medicine, Geography,
will be formulated in the form of particular proposi- Education Sciences, Administration Sciences, Journal-
tions (Px ) and technology-/ design-oriented calls (Dx ). ism, and Linguistics with empirical, technical/design-
On that basis a framework guiding future Twitter oriented, and theoretical work. In addition, very
research will be shown. The literature review body is subject-specific Twitter reviews exist: Bruns & Burgess
structured based on Kuran’s theory [2] of (unantici- [8] contained a small review on behavioral research
pated) political revolution. methods for Twitter. Efron [9] shows a literature sur-
vey of Twitter retrieval methods, e. g., for sentiment
2.1. Literature search strategy analysis and opinion mining. Tiernan [10] reviewed
and discussed methodological points when designing
lectures incorporating Twitter. Wankel [11] gives an
In order to extract relevant research from the pub- overview of the use of the main social media platforms
lished literature, a systematic literature search captur- (Facebook, blogs, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, and
ing Twitter-related work from the beginning of 2006 Second Life) in teaching. Ebner et al. [12] exper-
until 06/01/2015 was undertaken. 18 meta-databases imentally investigated the use of the microblogging
(i.e. ACM DL, AIS Electronic Library, Cambridge platforms MBlog and MediaWiki within classrooms.
Journals, Emerald Online, IEEEXplore DL, INFORMS Arceneaux & Weiss [13] analyzed the press cover-
Pub, JSTOR, Mary Ann Liebert, Palgrave Macmillan age and public responses to Twitter technology from
Pub, SAGE, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, and Swets 2006 through the first months of 2009. Richter &
Inf. Serv., Taylor & Francis Online, WileyOnline, MIT Schäfermeyer [14] presented a very small overview
Press, ACS DL, PsycINFO) as well as the Journal of of case studies on social media marketing (four were
MIS (JMIS) were searched, resulting in over 2.100 related to Twitter). A current state-of-the-art review
articles that met the inclusion criteria (abstract or title of overlapping domains of geographic-related sensor
or keywords contains “Twitter”.). techniques (Sensor Web, citizen sensing and ’human-
Publications that were not related to the social in-the-loop sensing’, etc.), and the roles of these
network Twitter but related to birds/zoology etc. – domains in environmental and public health surveil-
which regularly also include the word “Twitter” – were lance and crisis/disaster informatics can be found in
removed from the database. In addition, a forward and [15]. Dredze [16] offered a very short overview of
backward search was performed (cf. [7]). several studies concerning heath-related tweet-content
including his own recent work. Micieli & Micieli
[17] reviewed ophthalmology related peer-reviewed
2.2. Quality criteria for study identification
literature for Twitter content. Smith and Lambert [18]
presented a small review of healthcare education.
To ensure including only “substantial” scientific Williams et al. [19] provided a documentation-oriented
crowdsourcing work in this review we only considered overview. Zimmer and Proferes [20] reviewed Twitter
international peer-reviewed publications (journal arti- research concerning disciplines and methods. Last but
cles and transactions) with completed research work. not least, danah m. boyd published a bibliography
For reasons of quality, poster sessions, editorials, in- (http://www.danah.org/researchBibs/twitter.php) of re-
terviews, commentaries, conference proceedings (with search on Twitter and microblogging. However, a com-
the exception of ICIS, HICSS, ECIS, AMCIS), and prehensive review concerning the utilization of Twitter
RIP papers were not included. within socio-political revolution processes is still open.
After reviewing 848 articles included in top journals
and conferences, 40 articles were identified as relevant 4. Kuran’s theory of unanticipated politi-
within the Political Revolution domain (considerably cal revolution
addresses the political revolution area). The identifica-
tion was based on a manual decision by two reviewers Kuran [2] has analyzed several political revolutions
at a reliability of 98.8%. (e.g., France 1789, Russia 1905/1917, Iran 1978/79)

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and found a typical pattern of revolutionary stages (see [55]), 2011 Wisconsin labor protest (#wiunion, [56]),
figure 1). 2012 Israel Hamas (IDFSpokesperson, [57]), 2013
Brazil Vinegar (#vemprarua, #todarevolucaocomeca,
I. Discontent of ongoing preference [46]), 2013 Turkey (#OccupyGezi, [58]) in different
the mass falsification of the mass stages and with varied success (figure 2).
II. Inner tension of shift of the density of
Stages of revolution (Kuran 1989)
the individual private preferences
I II III IV V VI
the straw that breaks 2007 Wikileaks
III. Trigger event
the camel‘s back
2009 Austria student protest
IV. (Unanticipated) increase of magnitude
Revolution and revolutionary speed 2009 Toronto G20

V. Revolutionary guiding, suggesting, and 2010 Venezuela


Leadership threatening activities 2010 Germany Stuttgart21

VI. Post-revolution repression of would-be 2008/2009 Israel-Gaza


phase turncoats 2009 Iran green revolution
Figure 1: Kuran’s six stages of 2009 Moldova
revolution; in accordance to [2].
2011 Egypt
According to Kuran’s theory, for a revolution to start 2012 Israel Hamas
the majority of a population will be discontented with 2013 Brazil Vinegar
their living conditions but suppress these feelings and
preferences. Over time some individuals feel such a 2011 England
inner tension that “a relatively minor event makes a 2011 US Occupy movement
few individuals reach their boiling point and take to the 2011 Spain Indignados
streets in protest. This kicks off the latent revolutionary
bandwagon, and the opposition darts into power. The 2011 Greece Aganaktismenoi
magnitude and speed of the revolutionary process come 2011 Italy
as an enormous surprise, precisely because the masses
2011 Wisconsin labor protest
had been concealing their growing frustrations” [2,
p. 60]. A very crucial point for a successful revolution 2013 Turkey
is the emergence of suitable leader(s) from the mass
Figure 2: Investigated revolu-
and the repression of would-be turncoats.
tions; stages in accordance to [2].
5. Twitter usage during revolutions
5.1. Twitter usage during revolutions from the
Our review spans a wide range of initiated at-
perspective of Kuran’s theory
tempts at socio-political revolution: 2007 Wikileaks
(#Wikileaks, [21]), 2009 Moldova (#pman, [22]), 2009 It was found that most of the literature is related
Austria student protest (#uni, #wien, #socialrevolu- to stages II to V. The reason for that is the fact that
tion, [23]), 2009 Israel-Gaza [24]–[27], 2009 Iran Twitter is mainly used in these stages. For instance,
green revolution [28], 2010 Venezuela (#SOSInter- Lysenko and Desouza [22] investigated the role of
netVE, [29]), 2010 Germany Stuttgart21 (#s21, [30]), social networking sites in Moldova’s Revolution of
2009 Toronto G20 (#G20, #g20report, [31]–[33]), 2011 April 2009 and found that Twitter was mostly used
Egypt (#jan25, #egypt, #Tahrir, [1,34]–[42]), 2011 during the later phases of the revolution within the
England (#Riots, #RiotsCleanup, #WitnessAppeal, [37, active street protests and the subsequent information
43]–[45]), 2011 US Occupy movement (#occupythe- war and for communication about the conflict.
world, #OccupyWallStreet, #ows, [38,46]–[53]), 2011
Spain Indignados (#notenemosmiedo, #nolesvotes, 5.1.1. Discontent of the mass (I.). There are no
#15m, #spanishrevolution, [38,46,46]–[51,54]), 2011 specific Twitter revolution studies focusing on stage
Greece Aganaktismenoi movements (#greekrevolution, I. However, a large body of literature concerning sen-
#ayfagakalk, [51]), 2011 Italy (#15ott, #15oct, #15o, timent analysis exists, e.g. [4,59]–[62]. For instance,

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Jamal et al. [39] analyzed Twitter discourses and destruction of the historic public Gezi Park in Istanbul
proposed a method to detect subtle sentiment within in order to build a shopping mall [58].
the mass (e.g. anti-Americanism). That is why we The transition from stage III to IV is characterized
formulate the following design need: by consensus about the credibility of a alleged socio-
D1 : There is a design need for sophisticated sen- political relevant incident which potentially triggers
timent detection in order to extend Twit- a subsequent mass movement. Procter et al. [44]
ter functionality for socio-political revolution described the phenomenon during the 2011 riots in
purposes. England as follows: “A rumour starts with someone
tweeting about the occurrence of an alleged incident.
The rumour gets retweeted... Others begin to challenge
5.1.2. Inner tension of the individual (II.). There
its credibility... A consensus begins to emerge...” [44,
are more studies focusing on stage II. Passini [63]
p. 207]. The touchstone if a mass movement emerges
discussed the so-called Twitter revolutions in the light
is based on the credibility of the alleged incident and
of social psychology theories, especially the tensional
the consensus about its socio-political relevance. When
relationship between disobedience and democracy. It is
it turns out that the alleged incident did not occur
known from psychology that high inner tension is as-
or reporting about it has been partially manipulated
sociated with joking [64,65]. Interestingly, some schol-
(e.g. faked images of the burning London Eye during
ars report increased (curious) joking rates on Twitter
the 2011 riots [44], cf. [68]) the motivation of the
associated with the high inner tension of individuals.
masses recedes and the movement ends. Gleason [48]
For instance: “Deleting Dictator...Deleting Installation
demonstrated by the example of the 2011 Occupy
files...Some files could not be removed. Country still
Wall Street protests that “Twitter supports multiple
being used...Aborted. #Egypt #Mubarak” [41, p. 277].
opportunities for participation in the Occupy move-
Choudhary et al. [36] also show that during the 2011
ment – from creating, tagging, and sharing content to
Egypt protests humor was often used.
reading, watching, and following a hashtag – which
In addition some scholars proposed methods to auto-
may facilitate learners becoming more informed, en-
matically analyze inner tensions. For instance, Burnap
gaged citizens” [p. 966] [48]. Park et al. [49] revealed
et al. [66] demonstrated the possibility of forecasting
a “loosely connected hub-and-spoke network” of the
spikes in social tension via Twitter. Thorpe and Ahmad
2011 Occupy Wall Street activists. Wang et al. [69]
[26] revealed indications of inner tension in some
also analyzed the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests
individuals from a grassroots parkour group living in
and found that the arguments of those who initiated it
Gaza.
were very unstable which indicates a low credibility.
At the end of stage II a specific trigger event As a consequence a counterpublic emerged [50]. Sim-
constitutes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. ilar weak and inconsistent arguments were observed
during the 2010 Toronto G20 protests, resulting in
5.1.3. Trigger event (III.). Kuran [2] found that in a open criticism of the protests [32,33]. Earl et al.
every revolution of historical significance a trigger [31] analyzed the 2009 Pittsburgh G20 movement and
event occurred. This trigger event was also found in found that Twitter created “a new dynamic in protester
more recent revolution (attempts) [67]. For instance, and police interaction toward information symmetries”
within the Gaza conflict the Israeli Air Force (IAF) [31, p. 459]. Also the 2011 Spanish protests dissipated
began a massive bombardment of Hamas targets in the for the same reasons [51]. Against this background we
Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008, at approximately formulate:
11:30 a.m. (Israeli time) [27]. The 2011 Wisconsin
P1 : High credibility of an alleged incident is a
labor protests were triggered by the announcement on
precondition for starting a mass movement.
February 11, 2011 of Governor Scott Walker’s inten-
tion to strip about 175,000 public employees of their In addition to the high credibility of the incident
collective bargaining rights [56]. The shooting dead its socio-political relevance has to be high in order to
of Mark Duncon in Tottenham, London on August mobilize the masses. Various examples show revolu-
4th 2011 was the trigger event for the 2011 London tion imitators trying to trigger a protest by copying
riots [43]. The 2013 Vinegar Brazil protests were arguments. For example, González-Bailón [38] identi-
initially sparked by opposition to bus and underground fied the 2011 Spanish wave of protests as “a step in
fare rises in June 2013 [46]. On 10 April 2013, the the sequence of events that went from the Arab Spring
hashtag #ayfagakalk (“stand up” in English) appeared in the MENA region at the beginning of 2011 to the
on Twitter, which was related to the plan for the global Occupy movement” [38, p. 950]. That is why in

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the case of the 2011 Spanish protests the movement nated by (a hierarchy of) leaders. That is why within
also fails. The same was observed by Vicari [55] for this stage, tweets become more personal and emotive
the 2011 Italy polycentric protest for global change. [41]. Not only do tweets become more personal and
We formulate: emotive [41] during this stage, but an interesting recent
P2 : High socio-political relevance of an alleged Twitter experiment by Coppock et al. [72] revealed
incident is a precondition for starting a mass that private messages to followers have the most effect
movement. in terms of mobilizing people. In contrast, public
tweets had no effect. This direct approach is particulary
5.1.4. (Unanticipated) revolution (IV.). Tweets like important since leadership via Twitter means leading
“#Egypt’s street awakening tomorrow #Jan25 #Rev- from a (physical) distance.
olution” [41, p. 277] or “Egypt is about to have a In addition, information selection plays an important
Facebook revolution” [41, p. 277] reopen and drive role. For instance, Oh et al. [25] analyzed Twitter data
the unanticipated revolution. In this stage, the high on the Israel-Gaza conflict between December 27th
speed of connecting people via Twitter drives the rev- 2008 to January 18th 2009. According to Oh et al. [25],
olution. For example, Maireder and Schwarzenegger “Twitter users are conceptualized as the ’gated’ who
[23] analyzed the #unibrennt hashtagged tweets of the play an active role in selecting and distributing news
occupation of Vienna’s largest lecture hall by students sources through their Twitter messages” [25, p. 1]. The
in October 2009. The grounded theory-based analysis concept of gatekeeping for information control was
[70] revealed that the low-obligatory and low-binding introduced by Barzilai-Nahon [73]–[75] and also plays
nature of Twitter use, and the immediacy of connection an important role in terms of leadership during revolu-
between the movement members were fundamental for tions by information selection. For instance, Meraz and
its success. Papacharissi [40] places emphasis on news framing and
Later, when the mainstream media began reporting its relevance to sociocultural context in order to lead
the protests attained greater visibility. The greater vis- the masses during the 2011 Egypt revolution.
ibility and ongoing internet functionality is important As described above in this stage it is crucial for a
to move the masses. Unfortunately some regimes shut successful revolution that suitable leader(s) from the
down internet access or manipulate its content [57,71]. mass can be identified [2]. Some scholars proposed
However, the visibility of the activists is important approaches for this. For instance, Kardara et al. [76]
in order to draw support from various actors. For proposed a framework to identify leaders within a
instance, Bruns et al. [35] demonstrated supportive Twitter group. Räbiger and Spiliopoulou [77] demon-
interactions concerning protests and unrest in countries strated an approach to separate the influencers from
from Tunisia to Syria during 2011 Arab Spring. Severo the non-influencers and Part [78] found that Twitter
and Zuolo [42] showed that the 2011 Arab Spring was opinion leadership impacts an individuals’ involvement
also supported by Egyptian migrants living in Europe in political processes.
(# right2vote). Tonkin et al. [45] investigated 600,000 Since all the above reported specific findings on
tweets concerning the riots in London and other British Twitter-based leadership are well-known from the per-
cities in August 2011 and found evidence that Twitter spective of the problem of general leadership from a
was used as a central organizational tool to promote distance, which is well documented in the human re-
illegal group action. Results also showed that Twitter sources literature [79,80], we consequently formulate:
users retweeted mostly to demonstrate support for their P3 : Twitter-based leadership during a revolution
beliefs in others’ comments. Jungherr and Jürgens [30] does not significantly differ from general lead-
showed that during the 2010 German Stuttgart 21 ership from a distance.
movement Twitter was largely used for tactical support.
In addition, various scholars focused on visionary
It is also interesting that successful mass movements
leaders within successful revolutions [21,81]. For ex-
are characterized by their success in getting support
ample, Lindgren and Lundström [21] analyzed Twit-
from people not directly affected by the revolution. For
ter activity under the #WikiLeaks hashtag and found
instance, Aday et al. [34] revealed that the majority of
that movements have a common language, agreed
attention to the Arab Spring via Twitter came from
definitions of the situation and a shared vision. We
outside the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
formulate:
regions.
P4 : Transformational leadership style is positively
5.1.5. Revolutionary leadership (V.). It is crucial for associated with the success of a revolution.
the success of a revolution that the masses are coordi- Furthermore, within the revolutionary leadership

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stage the demand for information is high due to the The analysis-synthesis concept [86] comprises (a)
coordination requirements. The results of Kwon et al. the decomposition of the main task (goal) into sub-
[24] also confirm this general finding for Twitter use. tasks delegable to people and (b) the synthesis of sub-
The leadership structure is regularly very complex, tasks results in order to reach the superior goal. For
for instance, Morales et al. [29] described, based on example: The complex task of playing a music title has
complexity science, the structure and dynamics of to be broken down into sub-tasks such as playing spe-
a Twitter network involved in the 2010 Venezuelan cific musical instruments by musicians (analysis part).
protests. Results showed a community structure with The conductor is responsible for the orchestration of
highly connected hubs and three different kinds of the musicians (synthesis part).
user behavior determining information flows. If this
coordination complexity can not be managed, the 5.1.6. Post-revolution phase (VI.). In this stage the
movement becomes lost. For example, Theocharis et al. repression of would-be turncoats initiated due to new
[51] demonstrated a lack of coordination tweets within rumors is important. Please note that Doer et al. [37]
the failed 2011 Spanish protests. found that rumors spread much more quickly in Twitter
Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia [67] analyzed than in other network topologies. It only needs the
social media usage for political activism and social interaction of a few nodes to increase the speed.
movements and identified “a trend towards a more That is why rumor-spreading detection and prevention
integrated use of social media tools and applications”. systems are needed. Scholars initially sketched such
In more detail, Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia [67] systems, e.g., Tripathy et al. [87] studied models and
emphasized an intensive usage of Twitter for coordi- metrics for anti-rumor processes to counter rumor on
nation problems between the players (humans, media, Twitter. Miyabe et al. [88] demonstrated an approach to
organizations, etc.). In addition, Zeitzoff [27] investi- prevent rumor-spreading on Twitter. However, in order
gated the Gaza Conflict (2008-2009) via Twitter data to detect rumor more reliably at an early stage we
to capture the micro-dynamics of the conflict and recommend combining existing work on trend identi-
also revealed a complex coordination dynamic. Con- fication [89]–[95] and geo-located [96] event detection
sidering these complex relationships, the simultaneity [97]–[100] and formulate the following design need:
constraints, and the task/sub-task dependencies of the
revolution process [29,47,52,54], the current state of D3 : There is a design need for sophisticated rumor
the solution of the underlying “coordination problem” detection in order to extend Twitter function-
[82] by information and communication technologies ality for socio-political revolution purposes.
still fails. The coordination problem refers to the Finally it should be noted that some scholars re-
management of “dependencies between activities” [83, vealed scepticism concerning the role of Twitter within
p. 90]. That is why we call for a strong interdisciplinary socio-political revolutions. For instance, the Iran spe-
study of the underlying coordination problem in socio- cific findings of Wojcieszak and Smith [28] support
political revolution activities following Malone and voices that are skeptical about Twitter’s ability to
Crowston [83] and formulate: sustain revolution [101].
P5 : The usage of Twitter during a revolution is
rooted in a strong coordination problem. 6. Framework guiding future research
From a design science perspective scholars built
initial IT artefacts in order to deal with the coordination As shown in figure 3, the framework guiding fu-
problem. For instance, Purohit et al. [84] demon- ture Twitter research spans both, (a) the coordination,
strated an interesting approach to matching seekers sentiment and rumor analysis problems as the primary
and suppliers during social critical phases. Tang et al. technological-/design-oriented challenges and (b) five
[85] demonstrated an approach to effectively identify propositions from P1 to P5 to direct future empirical
target groups for communications (seeker). To proceed research:
with more sophisticated coordination mechanisms we As the coordination problem refers to the manage-
formulate the following design need: ment of “dependencies between activities” [83, p. 90],
D2 : There is a design need for a sophisticated co- this concept comprises the recruiting [102] and the
ordination mechanism based on the analysis- leadership of the whole crowd [103] by signaling,
synthesis concept in order to extend Twit- skills, rating, hierarchies, and markets [104,105] on
ter functionality for socio-political revolution the basis of technical coordination mechanisms such as
purposes. automated negotiation and auction systems [106,107].

2211
I. Discontent of ongoing preference Senti- This research is partly funded by the German Federal
the mass falsification of the mass ment Ministry of Education and Research (03FH055PX2).
II. Inner tension of shift of the density of detecti-
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