figure 1. tweet volume (a) and sentiment (b) per day for six topics related to the egyptian revolution; tweet sentiment was measured in terms of “positive sentiment fraction,” or the fraction of tweets with positive sentiment.

omar_suleiman egyptians.

hosni_mubarak
tahrir
cairo
egypt

237,099

100,000

80,000

60,000

40,000

20,000

0

1/26/2011

1/25/2011

1/2 7/2 0 1 1

1/2 8 /2 0 11

1/2 9/2 0 1 1

1/3 0/2 0 1 1

1/3 1/2 0 11

2/1/2 0 1 1

(a)

2/2/2 0 11

2/3/2 0 1 1

2/4/2 0 11

2/5/2 0 1 1

2/6 /2 0 11

1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0

1/2 6/2 0 1 1

1/25/2011

1/27/2 0 11

1/28/2011

1/29/2011

1/3 0/2 011

1/3 1/2 0 1 1

2/ 1/2 0 1 1

2/2/2 0 11

2/ 3/2 0 1 1

2/4/20 11

2/5/2011

2/6/2 0 11

(b)

 

source, with influence across a number of topics, and the most influential single user worldwide on Egyptian topics during the revolution.

We also analyzed the most influential tweets to characterize the simultaneous conversations that were taking place. We define influential tweets as those that were frequently “ retweeted” or repeated by users to spread a tweet’s message.

We collected the most frequent retweets for each day the topics in Figure 1 were trending. In order to develop an understanding of what these influential tweets were saying, we sampled the 10 most influential and categorized them manually. We found most fit into three main categories: news (updates on major events), inspirational ( human-interest stories), and humor. Table 3 lists popular tweets from each category,

figure 2. Breakdown of the most influential users and most frequently retweeted tweets late January to early february 2011 worldwide; influential users in (a) represent 43% of the top 10 influencers for the days the egyptian topics were trending.

(a)

16%

11%

20%

16%

37%

Mona Eltahawy The Nation CNN Reuters Al Jazeera

(b)

65%

15%

17%

3%

News Inspirational Humor Other