February 11, 2020

Social Media Hashtag Analysis | Understanding Social Movements

As part of my Master’s project while studying for my MSc in IT Web Communication Design, I conducted a comprehensive analysis of social media hashtags related to significant social movements. This project utilized data from Twitter to explore the sentiments and trends surrounding the hashtags #ICantBreathe, #TamirRice, and #BlackLivesMatter.

Project Overview

The project focuses on extracting and analyzing data from Twitter to provide insights into public sentiment and engagement regarding these critical social issues. By leveraging R and various data visualization techniques, the project aims to present a clear picture of how these movements resonate within the community. For data mining, I utilized the TweetScraper, a simple crawler for Twitter Search that operates without using the Twitter API.

Key Features

  • Data Extraction: Implemented methods to collect and preprocess Twitter data for the specified hashtags using the TweetScraper.
  • Data Visualization: Created visual representations of data trends and patterns using R’s powerful visualization libraries.
  • Statistical Analysis: Conducted various statistical analyses to derive meaningful insights from the data, including sentiment analysis and engagement metrics.
  • Documentation: Provided thorough documentation and README files for each analysis project to guide users through the setup and usage.

Individual Projects

Technologies Used

  • R
  • RMarkdown
  • Data visualization libraries

This project serves as a valuable tool for understanding the dynamics of social media interactions and the impact of these movements on public sentiment. You can explore the overall project on GitHub and access the source code for each individual analysis project through the provided links.