Published
Edited
May 2, 2022
1 star
Changes in follower count
Following Musk's announcement on 2022-04-25, tectonic shifts occurred in the follower landscape. Compare the daily change in follower count for 50 liberal and 50 conservative Twitter celebrities.
liberal_follower_change = splitgraph`SELECT
"date",
avg("change") as avg_change
FROM
"neumark/theverge-post-elon-twitter-follows:latest"."file_4"
WHERE "change" is not NULL
GROUP BY date`
conservative_follower_change = splitgraph`SELECT
"date",
avg("change") as avg_change
FROM
"neumark/theverge-post-elon-twitter-follows:latest"."file_3"
WHERE "change" is not NULL
GROUP BY date`
Plot.plot({
y: {
grid: true
},
marks: [
Plot.line(liberal_follower_change, {x: "date", y: "avg_change", stroke: "#4e79a7"}),
Plot.line(conservative_follower_change, {x: "date", y: "avg_change", stroke: "#e15759"})
]
})
Is Twitter leaning conservative?
The rate of change plot above is clearly demonstrates that Musk's bid favored the conservative celebrities as opposed to those on the liberal list. That said, the 50 liberal celebrities still have a lot more followers than their conservative counterparts.
liberal_followers = splitgraph`SELECT
"date",
avg("followers") as average_followers
FROM
"neumark/theverge-post-elon-twitter-follows:latest"."file_4"
GROUP BY date`
conservative_followers = splitgraph`SELECT
"date",
avg("followers") as average_followers
FROM
"neumark/theverge-post-elon-twitter-follows:latest"."file_3"
GROUP BY date`;
Plot.plot({
y: {
grid: true
},
marks: [
Plot.line(liberal_followers, {x: "date", y: "average_followers", stroke: "#4e79a7"}),
Plot.line(conservative_followers, {x: "date", y: "average_followers", stroke: "#e15759"})
]
})
all_follows = (await splitgraph`
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT
display_name,
date,
followers,
'liberal' as affiliation
FROM "neumark/theverge-post-elon-twitter-follows:latest"."file_4"
WHERE date > '2022-03-28'::date AND display_name <> 'Barack Obama'
UNION
SELECT
display_name,
date,
followers,
'conservative' as affiliation
FROM "neumark/theverge-post-elon-twitter-follows:latest"."file_3"
WHERE date > '2022-03-28'::date
) a ORDER by display_name, date
`).reduce((acc, {display_name, date, followers, affiliation}) => {
acc[affiliation].push({display_name, date, followers});
return acc;
}, {conservative: [], liberal: []})
The above plot doesn't even include Barack Obama, who skews the data with his massive 113M followers.
## Appendix
import { splitgraph } from "@splitgraph/ddn"
import {Plot} from "@mkfreeman/plot-tooltip"
import {addTooltips} from "@mkfreeman/plot-tooltip"
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