#MarchForOurLives & #NeverAgain
Network visualizations of hashtags from #MarchForOurLives
I made several data visualizations at different intervals of two hashtags associated with the massive marches that occurred across the US on March 24, 2018. I’m not going to write a detailed analysis for this blog because I think the images speak for themselves. The size and scale of these network graphs reflect what we saw taking place across the country.
#MarchForOurLives was an enormous mobilization in the streets and online with widespread support that is evident in data visualizations of Twitter networks associated with the marches.
There were some trolls and automated accounts; detractors spreading photoshopped pictures, but their minimal influence was dwarfed by the popular support of real people tweeting the hashtags.
#MarchForOurLives
Network graphs from March 23 at 3:30pm to March 24 at 9:15am
User-to-hashtag graph: #MarchForOurLives
Tweets: 12,987
Nodes: 11,417
Edges: 10,689
Communities: 3,429
Impressions: 108,324,679
User-to-user graph: #MarchForOurLives
Tweets: 12,987
Nodes: 13,004
Edges: 15,051
Communities: 1,954
Impressions: 108,324,679
Network graphs from March 23 at 3:20pm to March 25 at 9:15am
User-to-hashtag graph: #MarchForOurLives
Tweets: 28,682
Nodes: 25,385
Edges: 23,264
Communities: 7,626
Impressions: 162,637,847
User-to-user graph: #MarchForOurLives
Tweets: 28,682
Nodes: 29,332
Edges: 32,839
Communities: 4,322
Impressions: 162,637,847
#NeverAgain
Network graphs from March 23 at 3:20pm to March 24 at 3:45pm
User-to-hashtag graph: #NeverAgain
Tweets: 19,782
Nodes: 17,754
Edges: 21,911
Communities: 4,565
Impressions: 73,753,332
Hashtags #MarchForOurLives and #NeverAgain were frequently tweeted together so they are intertwined in data visualizations.
User-to-user graph: #NeverAgain
Tweets: 19,782
Nodes: 18,845
Edges: 22,725
Communities: 2,175
Impressions: 73,753,332
Network graphs from March 23 at 3:20pm to March 25 at 11:45am
User-to-hashtag graph: #NeverAgain
Tweets: 34,550
Nodes: 29,639
Edges: 37,264
Communities: 9,290
Impressions: 120,314,548
User-to-user graph: #NeverAgain
Tweets: 34,550
Nodes: 31,530
Edges: 40,006
Communities: 3,469
Impressions: 120,314,548
Here’s a closeup of the long purple/pink cluster that extends from Emma’s account down to the bottom of the graph. It includes the March For Our Lives Twitter account, Miley Cyrus and Millie Bobby Brown, aka Eleven, from the Netflix show Stranger Things. Lady Gaga is to the left of the purple/pink cluster.
Several politicians, Trump, the GOP, the NRA and the POTUS accounts appear in the light green, red and blue areas in the upper right quadrant of the network. Most of these accounts didn’t tweet the hashtag #NeverAgain, they are in the network because other people mentioned their handles in tweets.
Finally, what is obvious from these graphs is the incredible influence of Emma González. The blue-green cluster to Emma’s immediate right are her classmates. Young students are the most influential nodes in this network.
These graphs only show a sample of the tweets from #MarchForOurLives and #NeverAgain, not the total amount of tweets. I downloaded a sample of 63,232 tweets from Tweet Archivist for both hashtags combined; together they made 282,952,395 impressions in a span of 2 days. Two hashtags made nearly 300 million impressions on Twitter alone, not counting other social media platforms, news articles or broadcast TV.
Gephi graphs in this blog were created using OpenOrd combined with Force Atlas 2 layout algorithms.
Impressions cited above are via Tweet Archivist who defines the metric as “the total number of times that the tweets of an archive have been delivered to Twitter streams. Of course, not everyone who receives a tweet will read it. As such, impressions are the largest possible audience for the given archive. Paid advertising works similarly; even though an ad was displayed on a website, there is no guarantee that a person actually saw it. Also, note that impressions does not deduplicate users, so if the same person sees a given hashtag twice, it counts as two impressions. Note that, because replies are only delivered to common followers’ timelines, they are calculated as a single impression.”
Times listed in this blog are eastern time zone.
