I am collecting data about the #ISIS hashtag to explore how the topic is being discussed throughout the world, specifically\u00a0in light of current events and the new presidency.\u00a0I have a particular interest in researching the \u00a0#ISIS hashtag, as President Trump has just announced that the United States will win the \u201cwar\u201d on ISIS, and I believe this will be an incredibly interesting and delicate matter to follow.<\/p>\n
My first look at the collected tweets provided me with a solid overview of what is to be generally expected from\u00a0the #ISIS hashtag. The ways in which #ISIS is tweeted about varies greatly depending on the locations the tweets are coming from. A significant amount of the #ISIS tweets from America right now are discussing #ISIS in the context of President Trump’s immigration ban. Tweets are coming in from both sides of the argument, with some mentioning #ISIS in saying that the immigration ban is necessary to keep #ISIS out, while others are saying that #ISIS and terrorism is not coming from the countries that were banned. A considerable amount of tweets also discussed things such as Trump’s claim that he was going to defeat #ISIS in thirty days, or the war on terror as a whole. Overall, there is a considerable amount of legitimate fear, or fear mongering in many of the tweets about the subject. This is a common theme, while another is strong patriotism and confidence in winning the “war” on #ISIS.The tweets were largely in line with what I had expected to see. The topic of #ISIS is discussed similarly throughout the world, with expressions of fear of their dangerous agenda and questions as to how #ISIS are to be stopped being common topics of discussion to most.<\/p>\n
When searching for hashtag #ISIS and the topic of ISIS and terror in general, the news results are vastly different. Searching for the topic of ISIS results in seemingly endless results, with articles being posted every few hours about ISIS and Middle Eastern terror as a whole. I immediately found an article from Newsweek regarding President Trump and the ways in which his policies and statements could be reinvigorating ISIS. The article discussed in length how statistics from jihadist forums show that ISIS members wanted Trump to win the election, and that he was seen as being the ideal choice for future propaganda to recruit new members. The second article that resulted from the hashtag topic search was a CNN article detailing how the country of Jordan has been increasing security at its borders. Officials in Jordan believe there to be increasing threats in the area, as Jordan is known as one of the key global powers in the battle against jihadist forces in the Middle East. Both of these articles had been posted by major news sources just hours before I searched the topic. Conversely, my search of #ISIS and #isis itself came back with minimal results in the past week. There were little to no articles from truly respected news sources resulting from the search, and a majority of the results were not written in English at all. In fact, I had to extend the search to an additional week back to even find a second comparable article in order to provide a legitimate analysis. The first article I found was from Blasting News, a new and respected social news magazine. This article discussed the effect of President Trump’s immigration ban, and took a similar tone to that of the Newsweek article. In addition to this, the author expressed the belief that this kind of exclusion would cut out valuable allies on the war on terror, and provide more incentive for terrorist groups. The second article I found through the #ISIS search was from Almasdar News, a news network based in, and focusing on, the Middle East. This article detailed recent reports that 9 ISIS militants were sedated and killed in Halta, Deir Ezzour, and speculated on who may have executed the killings. The author reported that many believe it to have been done by anti-ISIS popular resistance groups. In addition to this, the article discussed the Russian-supported, ISIS resistance by Syria in the area. In terms of the topics that resulted from the two different search methods, there was not a large difference in content. However, the number of results based on each search were vastly different. This is likely due to the fact that the hashtag of #ISIS is not necessarily one that is unique from the hashtag topic it pertains to. If news companies are looking to write on the subject of ISIS, they will simply refer to it as ISIS within the article. This is different than, for example, the topic of police violence and #blacklivesmatter, where articles may be referring to the movement and the hashtag itself in media.<\/p>\n
Looking back to the time in which Twitter did not yet exist can be helpful in order to see how news topics and events were discussed. Twitter has revolutionized the ways in which trending topics and news-related discussion is conducted, so seeing how a particular issue was discussed before this time is helpful to see how a topic has evolved. For my purposes, however, a search from this time is not helpful. ISIS was not discussed in the news at this time, as ISIS had yet to become a global threat, and from my searches, did not exist in any form that was newsworthy at all. I did not find this to be surprising, because so much has changed in the Middle East in the past ten years, with groups rising into and out of power. There was certainly discussion of terrorism at this time, however ISIS had yet to become a player in this discussion.<\/p>\n
In our reading “Scraping the Social?” by Marres and Welteverde, the collecting of, and connecting to data was a major topic. The reading expressed the idea that there is a difference between simply collecting data points and genuinely connecting to a greater issue overall. I believe, however, that in my case, these ideas are one in the same. Twitter as a resource allows researchers to see how people connect and respond to trending topics on a second by second basis. The live data points that are collected contribute to the story that is being told, by letting researchers know where in the world these topics are coming from, and how they relate to things like the announcements of new policies, or the occurrence of live actions. The hashtag of #ISIS is one that will be used thousands of times everyday, which taps into the greater issue, but the surges and sags of these tweets as noted by the collection of live data points illustrates how the topic matter flows as the world changes around us.<\/p>\n\n\n