Communications - May 2012

tweets on “hosni_mubarak” became progressively more negative, so eventually, by February 6, 85% of the tweets on the topic were negative.

influencers and tweets
For a clearer view of Twitter users and
tweets on Egypt, we looked at influen-
tial users and tweets on several Egypt-
related topics, ranking their influence
based on their follower relationships
and on how tweets propagated through
the follower network.

table 1. events during the revolution reflecting tweet volume compared with sentiment (per day and cumulatively); positive tweet fraction is the daily or cumulative number of tweets with positive sentiment divided by number of tweets with positive or negative sentiment. only dates corresponding to major events are shown; for tweets and sentiment for each day the topics were trending, see figure 1; N/t indicates the topic did not trend that day (daily) or did not yet trend (cumulative).

Date major events

Jan. 25"Day of Rage" protests in Cairo
signal start of major changes
in Egypt
Jan. 27 Egyptian government begins
limiting internet access in
Egypt
Jan. 29 Mubarak dismisses his cabinet
and appoints omar Suleiman
as vice President of Egypt
Feb. 2

Egyptian government ends blocking of internet access Feb. 6

Egypt-related topics stop trending on Twitter; Mubarak resigns Feb. 11

Number of tweets Daily Cum. 6,892 6,892 n/T n/T n/T n/T n/T n/T n/T 39,752 8,395 8,395 n/T n/T n/T 3,053 41,049 80,801

237,099 334,612

4,670 5,759

3,776 6,829 15,341 122,575 n/T 418,855 n/T 5,759 68,389 80,616 n/T 152,463 n/T 418,855 3,656 12,719 n/T 146,439

topic
cairo
egypt
hosni_mubarak
tahrir
cairo
egypt
hosni_mubarak
tahrir
cairo
egypt
hosni_mubarak
tahrir
cairo
egypt
hosni_mubarak
tahrir
cairo
egypt
hosni_mubarak
tahrir

Positive tweet
fraction
Daily Cum.
0.207 0.207
n/T n/T
n/T n/T
n/T n/T
n/T 0.219
0.267 0.267
n/T n/T
n/T 0.413
0.354 0.315
0.448 0.435
0.236 0.251
0.209 0.376
0.406 0.338
n/T 0.418
n/T 0.251
0.428 0.424
n/T 0.355
n/T 0.418
0.145 0.191
n/T 0.44

table 2. top five most influential individuals and organizations tweeting on the egyptian revolution, along with number of times each appeared in the daily list of top influencers.

Name

Al Jazeera

Count

32

Cnn

17

Mona Eltahawy 14

Photogra Ph by Jonathan raShad

Reuters

14

The nation

10

Description user names (individual count)

Arabic news channel based
in Doha, Qatar; name
translates as “the island”
AJEnglish ( 11), Dima_AlJazeera ( 6),
AJGaza ( 5), AlanFisher ( 3), Fatimanaib ( 3),
mohamed ( 2), Sherine T ( 2)

American news network
founded by Ted Turner
bencnn ( 4), cnnbrk ( 4), CnnLive ( 3),
natlsecuritycnn ( 3), vhernandezcnn ( 3)
Egyptian journalist and
public figure
monaeltahawy ( 14)