Twitter API
Social Media (Twitter)
Twitter & Major Media
The Twitter API allows users to pull tweets within specific timeframes and with specific search terms. Twitter is a common platform to share political opinions, and so analyzing tweets pertaining to the topic of abortion was particularly insightful. The following chart shows the number of tweets containing the keyword “abortion” over time for the entirety of 2021. Two major spikes in tweets occurred September and December. These dates relate to the events discussed in the introduction- in September the Texas Law banning abortion after 6 weeks took effect, and in December the Supreme Court argued a case that could overturn Roe V. Wade.
The trends of number of tweets matches closely the trend of percentage of daily news coverage over time by major news networks. Below are charts of percent of daily air time during the same period as the tweets for CNN, BBC and FOX News. Interestingly, while CNN gave the most air time to the coverage of abortion during the major events that occurred in September and December, Fox News more frequently covers the topic the rest of the year.
Twitter Subjectivity and Polarity
Below are charts of subjectivity and polarity during the same year as above. As expected from a social media source, the tweets are more subjective than objective. While polarity generally hovers around 0.05 for the topic of abortion, there are several major negative and positive spikes in the date.
Twitter Word Count
The following chart shows the most common words used in tweets speaking about abortion. Popular words include “Texas,” “women,” and “law.” Of note, is the fact that the word “pro-life” appears almost double the times “pro-choice” appears. However, it is impossible to tell if these were stated in conjunction with a negative or positive message.
Geospatial Features of Tweets
Below are maps of subjectivity and polarity during the same period. The maps show that the tweets from certain cities are more subjective than others. For instance, Toledo, Ohio has a subjectivity rating of 0.79 while Las Vegas has a subjectivity rating of 0.29. Similarily, polarity varies across the country.
Notes
- See the charts-codes-twitter for the code that produced these plots.