Analyzing the Emotional Impact of Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover

Contributors: Sanjana Nambiar, Firas Darwish, Ivan Sidorenko and Levith Andrade Cuellar

Description

In this project we attempted to answer the question — To what extent has Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter affected how users emotionally respond to his content on Twitter?

We explain our project in more detail in this presentation.

Method

• Data Collection: To collect data we used the Twitter API.

• Range: We collected data sorrounding Musk's takeover date — 26 August 2022 to 18 November 2022. His takeover happens around November 1st.

• Tools:

  • Twitter Developer Account
  • Tweepy (Python Library)
  • TwitterAPI (Python Library)
  • VADER and NRCLex (Sentiment Analysis)

  We also devised our own system of accessing user replies based on specific tweets of Musk.

Project Files

Since we worked on this project mostly asynchronously, our project files were scattered throughout our computers. This repository contains some of our shared files exemplifying some of the work that went behind the project.

Results

1. Analyzing responses using VADER showed us that since his takeover of Twitter responses to Musk's tweets have become more negative.
2. Analyzing responses using NRCLex showed us that since his takeover of Twitter responses to Musk's tweets show intensifying feelings of "sadness", "anger", and "fear" while dissipating feelings of "trust".
3. Using statistical analysis we learned that since his takeover of Twitter users feel more passionate about Musk's content, and interact with it more frequently.

Conclusions

1. The climate has changed on Twitter, and this can potentially impact the perception of “openness” on Twitter.
2. The importance of this event, and how much of it was influenced by Twitter, has demonstrated the amount of leverage someone can have by participating on Twitter.