Using Twitter for foresight: An opportunity?

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service and platform for public real-time communication. Concerning foresight, the value of Twitter has not been discussed or examined yet. Here this article concentrates on and considers different applications to examine how to use Twitter in foresight exercises. First, Twitter is discussed as a data source for retrieving input to roadmapping or scenarios. Therefore, an analysis framework is introduced and illustrated for the case of #quantifiedself. Second, options are outlined how to interact with a global network of people using Twitter as communication platform, e.g., for being used during foresight workshops or receiving input for scenario development. As the results show, both, the monitoring of topics and technologies, but also the active user engagement, are supported. In summary, Twitter is an opportunity to extend the considered data sources and to increase the number of involved stakeholder views. While the reliability of Twitter data still requires critical reflection, this article implies many new research opportunities.