Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Westboro Baptist Church

On Twitter I asked if anyone would like an account analyzed. I offered to do a wordcloud of the Twitter biographies of followers of nominated accounts.

SomeGreyBloke was first off the mark. If you haven't done so already, do check out his videos. He suggested I check out the Westboro Baptist Church, famed for their "God Hates Fags" placards, their picketing of soldier's funerals,  and their poor personal hygiene.

He was likely unaware that the majority of their followers are not fans. A delightful amalgam of gay, atheist and sane Christian tweeps, the wordcloud of such diverging properties was not one likely to convey all views.

Instead I pulled all messages to @GodHatesFagsWBC and fed that into the mix.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Anjem Choudary - face of Islam in Britain?

Jim Rohn once said "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with". This unprovoked assault on English grammar contains a concept with which I agree, and if we apply this maxim to Twitter accounts followed by Anjem Choudary's we are left with the impression he is a nobody.

There is little I can do to analyze zero accounts followed. I can, however, examine those 2,186 folk who choose to follow Anjem. Who are they?

American Woman - gender analysis of Romney / Obama Twitter fans

Estimating gender, be it online or in real life, can be a hazardous matter with significant impact should one err.  Just ask my female friends Nick and Joe, or my male friends Michelle and Evelyn. Still, we can have fun trying. I humoured myself by working out that the majority of women behind Women 4 Shariah were, in fact, men earlier this week and thought I'd take the opportunity to have a glance at the US elections.

For this I selected Women for Romney Ryan (650 followers) and Women for Obama 2012 (2,228 followers).

I'd like to start by admiring Women for Romney Ryan's pluck. When they heard of my intentions they responded with:

and seem like a good-natured bunch.

On to the figures. I can only guess gender for folk who provide a first name. SuperWoman 2.0 seems to be voting Obama, for example, but it's not a first name my script recognises so it will show up as unknown. Similarly, guessing the gender of the Romney Ryan fan "Saving California" is beyond the capabilities of my script. To save you some effort with calculators I'll be showing stats once with the unknown tally included, and once without.

Women for Romney Ryan

Women for Romney Ryan. 36% Female, 24% Male, 40% Unknown
 Women for Romney Ryan (Unknowns excluded) 59% Female, 41% Male



Women for Obama 2012

Women for Obama 2012. 43% Unknown, 46% Female, 11% Male
 Women for Obama 2012 (Unknowns excluded). 20% Male, 80% Female

So in summary @Women_For_Obama has 3.4 times the number of followers, and less than half the percentage of male followers of @WomenForRR.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Ann Coulter - NSFW

The NSFW in the title of this post could stand for Not Safe For Work. The language used is far from that I normally employ, so be warned. Alternatively it could be the initials of Not Suitable For this World, a suitable epithet to describe Ann Coulter.

You've likely seen the tweet where she chose to make fun of the developmentally disabled. John Franklin Stephens, a Special Olympics athlete, has already written an excellent response. Late to the game and in the presence of a more powerful writer I'll restrict myself to some Twitter analytics.

First I tried to pull all negative comments sent to Ann Coulter. Unfortunately the thunderous volume of response was such that I had to restrict myself to a mere two hour window. Despite the short timeframe it contained over a thousand tweets, overwhelmingly negative. Hats off to the ambitious Tweeter who tried to make the hashtag #crawlbacktoyourcavecunt. Not a term I favour, but I respect your spirit.

Here's a wordcloud of tweets sent to Ann in that time. Link to John Franklin Stephens' blog post removed, as were some common words.. Click for a larger version.

And now the hashtags:

#1in88 #2012 #anncoulter #anncoulterscockhole #anncuntler #asshat... #AutismSpeaks #canSheDieNow #character #Classy #congrats #Coulter #crawlbacktoyourcavecunt #cunt #debate #Douchebag #downsyndrome #dumbass.. #dumbbitch #EducateYourself #EraseTheRWord #evil #evilheartlessbitch #fact #fb #Forgettable #forreal #FuckAnn #FUckCoulter #getaclue #GOP #growup #guessnot #Hitler #howdoesitfeel #hurtfulwords #hypocrite #Hypocritical #ignorance #ignorant #insanity #inspirational #itsokay #itsthetruth #JohnFranklinStephens #justsayin #khq #killitbeforeitbreeds #learnalesson #legit #lmao #loser #makesesick #MalalaYousufzai #MarkLevin: #mediawhore #message #moreeffective#hateful #moron #nary-a-peep #notabigdeal #outofthefryingpan #pathetic #PC #professionalism #proudofobama #puzzledlookonmyface #R #ragebait #realtalk #reputation. #respect #RETARD #Romney #rude #Rword #sarcasm #scary #shame #shameful #sinister #sitdown #SomeoneThatDumb #somethingbothpartiescanagreeon #specialolympics #spreadtheword #stayclassy #stfu #StupidPeople #tcot #thinkaboutitbitch #ThinkLongTerm #trash #ugly #watchwatchasay! #whoyouhurt #youcangetitallday #yougotserved #YouLearnedThatSomewhere #you'regraspingatstraws

Tweeters are imaginative. I had planned on reproducing them all, but you really should just view them yourself. Retweet and join in!

Women4Shariah

 

woMen4Shariah

My laptop's been running stats on Anjem Choudary since Sunday evening. He has many followers, mostly EDL members, and it's taking some time to run the reports in which I'm interested. One less popular group I spotted in the preliminary results was Women4Shariah. The name caught my eye - Anjem founded Islam4UK and I wondered if there was any connection.

While looking through the ladies who seek the enforcement of Shariah worldwide I noticed something odd. You can see some of the profile pictures above. You'll note that beards abound. The style of dress is, well, masculine. I didn't wish to rush to judge, but I started to suspect that some of these women for Shariah could be men.

So I checked.

I pulled a list of all followers, determined first names, then ran them through a script I wrote to estimate gender. Some accounts I couldn't tell. "Shariah Of Muhammad", "MuslimPrisoners" and "Sharia 4 Indonesia", for instance, are not accounts where the gender is easily discernible. Accounts of these sort I listed as unknown. The results are as follows:

With only 29% female I venture to suggest that they're missing their target market.