Note for first time bubblers: a "bubble" is a person place or thing, like a subject, but can also be a subject phrase. And sometimes is not a subject at all, but is still a relevant word within the context that you're looking at.
I put together a simple trending tool using my NewsBubbles engine that allows me to see the trend in the #gaza conversation on twitter by grabbing the gaza search information from their server on a regular basis. Found some supremely interesting results.
- The first 3 bubbles were EXACTLY the same: israel, hamas, israeli - in that order
- In the twitter trend, the bubble "terror" shows up as 4th most related to the word gaza whereas "terror" does not show up within the top 30 related bubbles in the news media at all.
- The most talkative "tweeple" about the subject right now (Jan 11, 09 7:00pm GMT) are @rafik, @oronhaus, @wfisrael, and @UnionSt who are not very popular, but quite opinionated and in the middle of a convo about it on different sides of the fence.
- Spanish people and their media are more supporting the civilians of Gaza, whereas people from the United States are more supporting Israel and their Military + people + decisions. Neither supports Hamas, and neither likes terror. I see this as a result of the difference between what each of the newspapers covers. El Pais (the national newspaper of Spain [btw: created by x director of Washington Post]) is contrary to most popular U.S papers on the subject.
- The bubble "peace" is higher up on the conversation trend, maybe suggesting the people are more for an end to the conflict, wheras on the Media trend it doesn't show up in the top 30. Instead, the media focuses more on the conflict, and the offensive, rockets and bombs.
- The media does not refer to israel as jews as a popular trend whereas people discussing the topic do.
People's Conversation Trend:
israel, hamas, israeli, military, terror, palestinian, idf, sight, militaryspokesman, spokesman, civilian, jews, peace, ignorance, useful, side, children, gaza war, people
The Media Publication Trend:
israel, hamas, israeli, offensive, palestinian, gaza strip, city, gaza city, militant, conflict, tunnel, military, bomb, leaflet, international, medic, call, wider offensive, attack, rocket sites, frantic diplomacy, troops
Both of the two results were taken from the same day this article was printed.
Conclusion
Another interesting thing is that looking at the twitter trend on their search engine, gaza is on the list as most popular at the time, as well as on NewsBubbles trend list for all of the articles printed yesterday, (NewsBubbles gives yesterday's trend on the home page,) and often times really close to the most popular. I am looking more into this, and expanding the conversational tool to cover tweets over more time so that a more solid trend will show up within that search.
It is interesting that the top three show up in the same order. I created newsbubbles to trend the media in such a way as to create a matrix of bubbles that is supposed to simulate the mind of the media. When compared in a simple way to the trend of conversation, it covers almost exactly the same topics in the same importance.
My personal opinion based off of my observations is that the News Media guides most of the conversation of the people. This is something I've seen over my whole life, but now that I'm using mathematics to plot this out, I'm finding it's true for the most part.
What are some other popular subjects you want me to perform trend comparison on?
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