Partner: Digital Planet, Fletcher School, Tufts University
Project: The Twitter Takeover Saga
Date: 2022
Digital Planet, Tufts University - The Elon Musk Twitter takeover saga
When whispers that the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, was looking to purchase and takeover social media platform Twitter in early 2022, we worked with the Digital Planet team at Tufts University to delve into the perceptions behind one of the year’s biggest news stories to better understand the implications of what it could mean for misinformation and hate speech.
Throughout the 8-month period of February to October, we analysed over 16 million tweets, published by over 3 million authors in 5 countries; the US, UK, India, South Africa and Nigeria.
From this significant data set, we were able to ascertain the sentiment and emotions felt by the online community at various junctures in the story, be that related to the initial takeover bid, Musk threatening to walk away from the deal in June and Twitter consequently suing the billionaire. It became evident that sentiment was predominantly negative, especially when conversation volume peaked on October 24th, days prior to when Musk closed the deal on Twitter.
Figure 1 - Global sentiment surrounding Musk’s Twitter takeover was largely negative
Our multi-country analysis added an important layer to the research and provided nuance on how the emotions varied across continents of Europe, Africa and North America. For example, bursts of sadness and anger strongly characterised America’s reaction to Musk’s takeover, but in India, moments of joy were expressed following the closing of the deal in October.
Figure 2 - The spectrum of emotions experienced online by Americans throughout Musk’s Twitter takeover.