Monitoring social media
Introduction
This originally started as a post on another thread dealing with the protests in Iran in 2022. But I also wanted to focus on it as an idea and develop it here. The material here is updated from the previous post.
This post is about social media postings (specifically on Twitter) and the 'Iran centredness' of the people who were tweeting about that country. I was curious to see whether the interest that people were showing in the "welfare of Iranian women" mirrored their interest in the disadvantaged people of other countries or not. If it did not I'd be wondering whether it really was female welfare that was motivating them or something else.
What I used
There are apps which allow you to download Tweets. You can then use whatever app you like to 'analyse' that raw data.
This time I used the following app:
vicinitas.io
And used their free service. This allows you to type in a Twitter users username and download all their tweets up to a maximum of 3,200.
The download is an excel file.
What I did
- I searched for Iran as a search term in Twitter
- I scrolled down past obvious Iranian names etc. and focused on non-Iranian accounts. I also ignored national politicians' accounts (but I did select two Members of the European Parliament), those of activists and those that might have an obvious link with Israel.
- I was looking for someone with a public profile and who if they appeared in the search might perhaps have a general interest in human rights of various descriptions. This is reflected in the column headers, IN=India; IQ=Iraq etc.
- Once the data loaded onto excel I did a simple word count for the number of times a particular country was mentioned in their Tweets.
The result
There are some interesting issues emerging from these comparisons. To help things along I have started a simple process of categorising different types of commentators. I have not used their real usernames here, the aim is not to single people out, but rather to demonstrate a methodology.
The generally concerned
MEP2 is a Member of the European Parliament and while he has posted the most about Iran he also obviously has something to say about a range of Middle Eastern countries, which makes his volume of material on Iran into context.
This is the sort of person who I see as defending a principle.
Tilting against Iran
In contrast to this politician we have MEP1 who is also a politician in the European parliament but singles out Iran far more than other Middle Eastern countries and in this instance I'd hazard that the interest is politically motivated.
Human rights - only as long as they are for Iranians
Two people fall into this category. The first is a well known (in the UK at least) businessman ACC3. He also posts about the death penalty generally. What motivates his almost exclusive singling out of Iran could be that he has no business interests there, but he does have interests elsewhere in the Middle East so he keeps quiet about those countries.
The second person is ACC4, this is a US based tweeter whose posts are generally fairly parochial (the sort of person who does not have a passport). However she does seem to have become very exercised about Iranian women, for some reason. Perhaps she has Iranian emigre neighbours, who have been working their magic?
Caveats
This is obviously very simplistic and there are lots of potential areas for error, but it is a starting point.
Conclusion
And notwithstanding the errors I think the process does highlight the difference between those people who will speak out based on principle and those who want to score political points.
I think it also shows how different groups of non-Iranians outside Iran have been co-opted into the debate.
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