My top three choices for the hashtag are #makeamericagayagain, #standwithPP, and #bitcoin. Particularly given the current state of the country, I feel that social injustice will cause more and more uproar over the next few months. Since I’m particularly concerned about LGBT and women’s rights in the near future, I’m curious to see how the first two hashtags will be used. We only recently made gay marriage legal in all 50 states, and with our new president’s potential plans, a significant amount of citizens are concerned about their legal rights. The same issue concerns Planned Parenthood – abortion rights are one of the current heated debates and I’d like to observe how society’s view of the president’s plans changes over time, regardless of whether any actions will be made by the congress yet. I add #bitcoin as a possible study option because I’ve read articles in the past on this alternate form of currency and am interested in learning more about how often people use it.
Upon analyzing the tweets collected so far, it seems that there’s a song that’s going viral that people are sharing in their tweets. This song is called “White People Crazy” and I’m seeing many tweets saying that this song is playing at their workplace and that it’s sure to go viral. Several tweets simply have the hashtag #makeamericagayagain. A majority of these tweets, relating to the song, mention Trump, and some also use the hashtag #trumpsamerica, and the overall commonality between the tweets is a negative or mocking outlook toward our new president. There have been 226 tweets collected so far. I didn’t expect to see this many tweets include #makeamericagayagain, but am not surprised that a majority of them are criticizing President Trump. Below are a few examples of these tweets:
@realDonaldTrump you gave a few people a job to for this so more jobs like this #MAKEAMERICAGAYAGAIN https://t.co/Hz8d6rThK8
thecat905
This is the best song in the streets https://t.co/onrKwSx3zm #trumpsamerica #makeamericagayagain
teimursafonov12
No articles came up for my hashtag #makeamericagayagain. As it seems, news sources focus less on hashtags than they do on more traditional language used in everyday life. Hashtags are a language used specifically in twitter that allow for people to study trends in topics exclusively on that website. The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag brought up several news articles, although without the hashtag itself included. This observation could be due to the fact that the Oscars happened recently and are a more often discussed topic than making America gay again. In general, news articles and tweets display distinct types of information that do not often overlap.
In 2006, there was also no mention of #makeamericagayagain. Back in 2006, gay marriage was not yet legal in most states and marriage equality, though frequently discussed and debated, was not likely to occur anytime soon. Because of this, it was necessary to “make America gay” in the first place before it could be made gay again. It’s fascinating that in just 10 years, the news has changed dramatically, as well as the method in which this news is broadcasted. With twitter, we are able to spread news much more quickly and analyze what is going on in society more swiftly.
Relating this research back to the article by Marres, it is truly impressive how much information can be collected by ‘scraping the social.’ Marres attempts to make a distinction between ‘scraping the medium’ and ‘scraping the social’ and although they are relatively similar, scraping the social involves more recent and up-to-date data, and this is exactly what I completed today. I feel that scraping is both collecting live data and connecting to the liveliness of the issue. By scraping tweets on #makeamericagayagain, I am collecting data by the hour of tweets that include this hashtag. This is the exact definition of live data – data that is recorded live. At the same time, the use of hashtags fluctuations with time. Depending on what is occurring in the current society, there is a change in what is being discussed in the news. When gay marriage was made legal, hashtags relating to gay marriage definitely exploded in their usage. Now, however, there is likely less use of these hashtags and they are replaced by hashtags relating to Trump and to bringing back what the country was like just a couple months ago. Studying #makeamericagayagain certainly helps me study the liveliness of this issue in modern society. Marres describes scraping as an analytic process, and studying live data and the liveliness of an issue both require significant amounts of analysis.
Works Cited:
Els, Rozanne. “On The Return Of Hollywood Pariah Mel Gibson, And #OscarsSoWhite.” Huffington Post, January 27, 2017. Accessed February 1, 2017.
Marres, Noortje, and Esther Weltevrede. “Scraping the Social?” Journal of Cultural Economy 6, no. 3 (February 22, 2013): 313-35.
Reign, April. “The Creator of #OscarsSoWhite: ‘Changes Are Happening’.” Newsone, January 26, 2017. Accessed February 1, 2017.
I found it extremely interesting to see how much the data you were able to collect differed from the #lgbtrights data. While I expected that a lot of tweets within our category would have to do with our political standing and in particular Trump, it was interesting to see how often Trump was being mentioned in your hashtag when compared to the others. I also think that it is really interesting that there is even a song that it is currently going around the internet right now pertaining to your hashtag. Seeing this displays the many ways in which different topics and discussions are able to go viral. Having worked in advertising and social marketing, I know how essential it is to appeal to individuals in a more interactive way in order to really catch attention and get things trending. In this case, it is clear that the usage of song/mixed media is a way in which different issues can gain online attention. What also is so interesting when tracking your post is to see the drastic changes our country has gone through in such little time with regards to gay rights. This is really emphasized by your 2006 searches when you note that back in 2006 gay marriage was not yet legal in most states and even marriage equality was not likely to occur anytime soon.
What also really caught my attention was the fact that the song is titled “White People Crazy.” While I was not surprised to see that there is a song trending to generate online attention, I am surprised that the hashtag #makeamericagayagain is correlated to a song called “White People Crazy.” I would expect a song generated to be one about Trump in particular as opposed to the entire white community. Something that would be interesting would be to look more into this song and its correlation to your hashtag- I personally would be very interested in hearing the song/really looking at the lyrics.
I thought that your post was very insightful and interesting when you were looking at the data from 2006 and found nothing. Because same-sex marriage was not legal in 2006, it would be impossible for the tag “make America gay again” to be involved in the news because America was never gay to begin with. I think that the song correlating with the hashtag is very interesting. I wonder what demographic is the one tweeting this song. Trump aggravates a lot of people, but i would guess that the people who are most upset would be black members of the LGBT community. I think it would interesting to further see the demographics of who is tweeting and where. It would also be cool to cross analysis my data for lgtb rights and your data to see how many people are tweeting both hashtags on their tweets, because I thought that our data sets would be similar.
Your data and insights made me reflect on my own data and wonder about the demographics of my tweets. Also, I want to see what percentage of my data is used as a way to cheer on and support the LGBT community and what percentage of my data is used to bash Trump and his administration. I also wonder why the song “White People Crazy” hasn’t appeared in my data, as our hashtags are very similar.