ary to early February 2011, was discussed and debated as they unfolded through Twitter. The discussion was marked by strong negative sentiment less cohesive than for other types of

figure 3. twitter topics by category.

Twitter topics. Moreover, a significant
portion of the discussion reflected
broadcast news of ongoing events,
with most influential users and tweets
delivering news and a large propor-
tion of messages as a way to repost
this news for others within, as well as
outside, Egypt.

Politics

state_of_the_union
michael_steele william_daley
health_care_law
union_address

Entertainment

#oscars
golden_globes
elephants #mileyonsnl
national_anthem

Egypt
egypt
hosni_mubarak
tahrir cairo
egyptians mubarak
omar_suleiman
phil_kessel
vasco

Sports clay_guida kim_clijsters

#superbowl

Tech/Business

#nokmsft
honeycomb#newtwitter

wp7 google_translate

figure 4. twitter networks covering egypt compared with other twitter topics.

egypt Sports.

Politics
tech/business
entertainment

8

6

4

2

0

followers tweeting on topic
tweets per user
(a)

egypt Sports.

Politics
tech/business
entertainment

1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0

–0.2

Retweet
percentage
Clustering
coefficient
Negative tweets
per user
user
sentiment
(b)

Acknowledgments

This work is supported in part by National Science Foundation awards CCF- 0621443, OCI-0724599, CCF-0833131, CNS-0830927, IIS-0905205, OCI- 0956311, CCF-0938000, CCF-1043085, CCF-1029166, and OCI-1144061 and in part by U.S. Department of Energy grants DE-FC02-07ER25808, DE- FG02-08ER25848, DE-SC0001283, DE-SC0005309, DE-SC0005340, and DE-SC0007456.

 

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3. ghonim, W. interviewed by harry Smith. Wael ghonim and egypt’s new age revolution. 60 Minutes (feb. 13, 2011); http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2011/02/13/60minutes/ main20031701.shtml? tag=contentMain;contentbody

4. gladwell, M. does egypt need twitter? The New Yorker (feb. 2, 2011); http://www.newyorker.com/ online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/does-egypt-need- twitter.html

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Alok Choudhary ( [e-mail]) is the John g. Searle Professor of electrical engineering and computer Science at northwestern University, evanston, il, and a fellow of the aaaS, acM, and ieee.

William hendrix ( [e-mail]) is a postdoctoral research associate in the department of electrical engineering and computer Science at northwestern University, evanston, il.

Kathy Lee ( [e-mail]) is a graduate student in the department of electrical engineering and computer Science at northwestern University, evanston, il.

Diana Palsetia ( [e-mail]) is a graduate student in the department of electrical engineering and computer Science at northwestern University, evanston, il.

Wei-keng Liao ( [e-mail]) is a research associate professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer Science at northwestern University, evanston, il.