🧵1/ Some have asked why 'Back Boris' is trending. The simple answer is, because it's a polarising topic of course! As you can see from this analysis of around 15000 tweets involving 9000 accounts, the hashtag brings out both supporters and detractors of Johnson
2/ 'Back Boris', along with 'Scum Media' tend to trend every time Boris does something stupid (which, let's face it, is quite often). Johnson and Sunak's recent fines for having a knees up when the rest of the country couldn't even see dying loved ones has irked a lot of people
3/ Criticism of Boris tends to bring out his supporters like those scary demons from the film Ghost. I recoloured edges here by the most popular tweets (Remember, most hashtags are RTs). We can see, bad graphic design, poor spelling (#hypocripes), & digs at BLM, reign supreme
4/ Out in the anti-Boris nebula we have a picture of poo, someone denigrating the intelligence of Tories, and Kevin asking why there are so many pro-Boris copypasta accounts (IT'S JUST FOOTBALL FANS HAVING A LAUGH.... sure it is).
5/ Of course analysing biographies might seem redundant. But life is short. In the pro-Boris group, 'back boris' is the second most common biographical phrase with 313 accounts stanning Boris. As expected, being pro-Brexit features highly. Interestingly, 'woke' (as in anti-woke)
6/ is in number 8. Looks like the same crew who were hating on Nazanin... Something I found weird though was 'dms' (as in, No DMs) in 16 place. 150 ppl in the pro Boris account instruct people not to send them DMs! In addition to being a good marker for unpleasant people
7/ 'No DMs' is usually an indicator of a suspicious account. Or maybe angry Back Boris accounts just get a lot of fanmail? Who knows. Out in flavour country, we've got the 'socialists', pro-EU accounts, and 'johnson out' accounts. A lot of love for the NHS too. No surprises there
8/ There are barely any verified accounts in this hashtag. Not that I am suggesting verified = important. Just highlighting that its mostly regular no tick hoi polloi like myself, tweeting like an angry mob so you don't have to.
9/ So TLDR. Back Boris is trending because Boris fans are mad he's getting flack for being a bad Prime Minister. Anti-Boris folks are angry that Boris is Prime Minister and that some people back him. Pro-Boris types seem to be invested in anti-BLM & woke culture wars
10/ Some notable results include the number of people with 'back boris' (+300) in their account biographies. Also the amount of pro-Boris accounts who have 'No DMs' in their bio may warrant further scrutiny. Other than that, Racists gonna race, socialists gonna socialise. Laters!
11/ p.s. to re-emphasize, there is little overlap between the two communities (echo chambers).
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