An examination of the amount of personal social media posts that referenced the 45th occupant of the White House and whether or not they included words commonly considered to be “foul language”
The purpose of this examination is to determine if the actual number of social media interactions made during these years matched the personal perception of the topic providing the bulk of Facebook use during the period.
Project
Analysis of Facebook posts from 2016 to 2020
What I Did:
Created Python script to parse Facebook post data in JSON format and export to a .csv file for analysis. Post contents were checked for use of the word “Trump” and a selection of common curse words the presence of which was marked accordingly.
Afterwards the records were loaded into a SQL (Microsoft Access) database where the results were tallied. This step was done to showcase database techniques and wasn’t strictly necessary given the relatively low number of data points.
2016
The year of the election in question was relatively quiet in terms of postings. The early part of the year saw an increase due to the need/desire to update followers during a period of travel and transition.
Posts reached a low point during the height of the electoral season as schedules became crowded and the job did not encourage making public comments about the situation.
Cursing took place but was a significant minority of all posts, regardless of topic.
2017
Postings increased significantly in the wake of the election. The focus also turned significantly towards the new occupant of the White House.
While the amount of cursing increased the numbers were not out of line with the overall increase in post volume.
A significant dip in post volume during the summer coincides with new responsibilities related to a local organizing position, not a decrease in topical events.
2018
Overall postings declined drastically while cursing was eliminated almost entirely.
This is likely due to the social media constraints imposed on the running of a campaign for state legislature. Also a large amount of social media interaction had already begun to migrate to Twitter at this point.
2019
Posting amounts remain depressed throughout the year as Twitter continued to absorb most of the social media use market share.
A spike occurred in September which coincided with a trip to Wyoming. Most posts during this time were about the novelty of such an event.
2020
Postings increased significantly during this year but came nowhere close to 2017’s high water mark.
Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and then the new election necessitated an attraction to the more intimate space that Facebook provided but the decline in its popularity as a space for expression seems likely to continue.
Conclusions and Improvements
The initial assertion that the occupant of the White House during this period dominated the social media interactions from this period seem unfounded or at the very least based on observation bias.
However, since Twitter syphoned off much of the social media use from Facebook a follow-up examination of the posts on that site is recommended.